It seems to me in every way probable, that in primitive times the blood of the child adopted, and of the parents adopting him, was partaken of by the three parties (as now throughout the East, in the case of the blood-covenanting of friends), in order that the child and his new parents might be literally of one blood. But, with the prejudice which grew up against blood-drinking, in India, the saffron-water came to be used as a substitute for blood; even as the blood of the grape came to be used instead of human blood, in many other portions of the world.
In China, an important rite in the marriage ceremony is the drinking of “the wedding wine,” from “two singularly shaped goblets, sometimes connected together by a red silk, or red cotton, cord, several feet long.” After their worship of their ancestral tablets, the bride and the bridegroom stand face to face. “One of the female assistants takes the two goblets ... from the table, and having partially filled them with a mixture of wine and honey, she pours some of their contents from one [goblet] into the other, back and forth several times. She then holds one to the mouth of the groom, and the other to the mouth of the bride; who continue to face each other, and who then sip a little of the wine. She then changes the goblets, and the bride sips out of the one just used by the groom, and the groom sips out of the one just used by the bride, the goblets oftentimes remaining tied together [by the red cord]. Sometimes she uses one goblet [interchanging its use between the two parties] in giving the wine.”[405] The Rev. Chester Holcombe, who has been a missionary in China for a dozen years or more, writes me explicitly: “I have been told that in ancient times blood was actually used instead of the wine now used as a substitute,” in this wedding-cup of covenanting.
Again, Professor Douglas says,[406] that for a thousand years or so, it has been claimed that, at the birth of each two persons who are to be married, the red cord invisibly binds their feet together; which is only another way of saying that their lives are divinely inter-linked, as by the covenant of blood.
In Central America, among the Chibchas, it was a primitive custom for the bridegroom to present himself by night, after preliminary bargainings, at the door of his intended father-in-law’s home, and there let his presence be known. Then the bride would come out to him, bringing a large gourd of chica, a fermented drink made from the juice of Indian corn; “and coming close to him, she first tasted it herself, and then gave it to him. He drank as much as he could; and thus the marriage was concluded.”[407] Among the Bheels of India, the drinking of the covenant is between the representatives of the bridegroom, and the parents of the bride, at the time of the betrothal; but this is quite consistent with the fact that the bride herself is not supposed to have a primary part in the covenant.[408] It is much the same also among the Laplanders.[409]
Among the Georgians and Circassians,[410] and also among the Russians,[411] the officiating priest, at a marriage ceremony, drinks from a glass of wine, and then the bride and the groom drink three times, each, from the same glass. The Galatians wedded, with a poculum conjugii, “a wedding cup.”[412] In Greece, the marriage ceremony concludes by the bride and the groom “drinking wine out of one cup.”[413] In Switzerland, formerly, the clergymen “took two glasses of wine, mixed their contents, and gave one glass to the bride, and the other to the bridegroom.”[414] Among European Jews in olden time, the officiating rabbi, having blessed a glass of wine, tasted it himself, and then gave it first to the one and then to the other of the parties covenanting in marriage.[415]
This custom of covenanting in the wine-cup, at a wedding, is said to have come into England from the ancient Goths.[416] Its symbolical significance and its exceptional importance, seems to have been generally recognized. Ben Jonson calls the wedding-wine a “knitting cup”[417]—an inter-binding cup. And a later poet asks, forcefully:
“What priest can join two lovers’ hands,
But wine must seal the marriage bands?”[418]
In Ireland, as in Lapland and in India, it was at the betrothal, instead of at the wedding, that the covenanting-cup—or the “agreement bottle” as it was called—was shared; and not unnaturally strong usquebaugh, or “water of life,” was there substituted for wine—as the representative of life-blood.[419]
In Scotland, as in Arabia and in Borneo, the use of blood in conjunction with the use of a wedding-cup has continued down to recent times. The “agreement bottle,” or “the bottling,” as it was sometimes called, preceded the wedding ceremony proper. At the wedding, the blood of a cock was shed at the covenanting feast. A reference to this is found in “The Wowing [the Wooing or the Vowing?] of Jok and Jynny,” among the most ancient remains of Scottish minstrelsy: