Unmarried girls in this country enjoy an unrivalled reputation for gaiety and merriment. Bread is considered a love charm, and the two who eat from the same loaf will fall in love with each other. The suitor often sends an ambassador to a girl he has never seen, and if his proposal is accepted he calls the next Sunday. The lady is not supposed to take any notice of him, but continues her knitting in a stolid fashion. In some parts there is a religious betrothal ceremony, when plain gold rings are exchanged; but the more usual way of celebrating an engagement is by a social festivity. The lover must give a "Yes-Gift" to his future bride, which consists of a gold or silver cup--the size is not stipulated--filled with coins wrapped up in quite new white tissue-paper. He also gives her a prayer-book, while she offers in return some garment she has made for him herself. If it is a shirt he wears it on his wedding-day, and then lays it aside to wear in his grave. These quaint customs are mostly found in the country districts. Town-dwellers merely send out cards with the names of the pair printed on each one, and further announcements appear in the papers.
In Switzerland
there is not much romance in either wooing or wedding. The Swiss may not marry till the youth is eighteen and the girl sixteen, and up to the age of twenty the consent of parents or guardians is necessary. When the time draws near for the wedding, the pair must go together to a civil officer, and must each present him with a certificate of birth, and tell him their ages, names, professions, and where they and where their parents live. He then writes a deed containing their promise of marriage, which must be made public for at least a fortnight in the places where they were born, where they are living at the time, and where they wish to be married. If nobody makes an objection the ceremony can take place. May-Day is sacred to lovers in Lucerne. He plants a small decorated pine-tree before her house at dawn, and if he is accepted a right royal feast is prepared for him. The little tree is {[69]} treasured till the first baby appears. A Swiss peasant girl is often compelled to take the lover who lives nearest to her home, as the introduction of an outsider is resented by the men of the place.
The Hungarian
likes to linger over his wooing, and he is a past master in the art. The lovers have absolute freedom of intercourse, and secure privacy in the family circle by making a tent of his large, graceful cloak, under which they sit and make love undisturbed. All the actual formalities go through a third person, and much ceremony is observed in the negotiations. The first stage of courtship is marked by the "Loving Cup" feast, and the binding betrothal is known as the "Kissing Feast."
In Norway
courtship is of necessity a very long process among the peasant folk, for money is not easily earned, and no man may marry till he is a householder, while houses may only be built in certain places and under fixed regulations. Seven years is quite an average time for an engagement, during which they do their love-making in a simple, unaffected manner. No man ever jilts a woman, and broken engagements are almost unknown.
In Greece parents pay a man to marry their daughter, and no man may marry till all his own sisters are provided with trousseaux and dowers.
The girl who accepts an offer of marriage in Greenland is for ever disgraced. Her father may give her away or her husband may drag her by her hair to his own tent, and it is all right. She must be married by capture, against her own will, and the love comes afterwards, if at all.
A Thuringian girl gives her suitor sausage to eat as a sign that he is rejected. A Spanish maid presents her lover with a pumpkin as her way of saying "No." In the Russian district of the Ukraine the lady does the courting, and {[70]} besieges the man in his own house. Courtesy will not let him turn her out, so if he does not want her he has to seek other quarters for himself. On the Isthmus of Darien either man or woman can take the initiative, so every one gets a good chance all round.