Traces of the sacredness of the threshold altar seem to exist in the wedding ceremonies in villages on the coast of Aberdeenshire, Scotland. “After the marriage is solemnized, ... the bride’s guests are entertained at her home, and the bridegroom’s at his.... When the bride returns to her father’s house, after the marriage, broken bread of various sorts is thrown over her before she enters. The same ceremony is gone through with the bridegroom at his father’s door.”[[88]]
When a girl among the Sea Dyaks of Borneo is married, the wedding takes place at her house. The marriage rite includes the erecting an altar before the door of the house, and placing on it an offering of prepared areca-nut, covered with a red cloth, the color of blood. The families of the bride and the groom then partake of that offering in covenant conclave.[[89]]
A lover, among the Woolwas, in Central America, when wooing a bride, would bring a deer’s carcass, and a bundle of firewood, and deposit it outside of her house door. If she accepted these, and took them over the threshold, it was a betrothal.[[90]] The covenant seemed to consist in the reaching across the threshold and accepting a proffered offering in a spirit of loving agreement.
Among the Towkas, in the same part of the world, a bridegroom would go with his friends to the home of his bride, carrying a bundle of gifts for her. Sitting down outside of the door, he would call on her family to open to him. There being no response, music would then be tried by his friends. At this the door would be opened just far enough for him to put a gift inside over the threshold. One by one his gifts would be passed in, in this way, while the door opened wider and wider. When the last gift was over the threshold, the lover would spring within, and, seizing the bride, would carry her across the threshold, and take her to a temporary hut erected within a charmed circle near by, while his friends guarded him from intrusion.[[91]]
And thus, in various ways, among widely different primitive peoples, the marriage customs go to show that the home threshold cannot be passed except by overcoming a barrier of some kind, and making an offering, bloody or bloodless, at this primal family altar. An essential part of the covenant of union is a halting at, and then passing over, the threshold of the new home, with an accompanying sacrifice.
4. STEPPING OR BEING LIFTED ACROSS THE THRESHOLD.
Even more widespread and prominent than the custom of offering blood, or of making a libation, or of overcoming a special barrier, at the threshold, or of anointing or stamping the posts or lintel of the doorway as a sign of the covenant, at the time of a marriage, and as a part of the ceremony, is the habit of causing the bride to cross the threshold with care, without stepping upon it. This custom is of well-nigh world-wide observance, and it has attracted the attention of anthropologists and students of primitive customs. A favorite method of explaining it has been by calling it a survival of the practice of “marriage by capture;” but this is nothing more than an unscientific guess, in defiance of the truth that persistent popular customs have their origin in a sentiment, and not in a passing historic practice. The earliest mentions of this custom, of the bride’s crossing the threshold without stepping on it, show it as a voluntary religious rite; and there are traces of its recognition in this light from the earliest times until now.
In the Vedic Sutras, or the sacrificial rules of the ancient Hindoo literature, it is specifically declared that a bride, on entering her husband’s home, shall step across the threshold, and not upon it. She is not lifted over the door-sill, but she voluntarily crosses it. Thus it is said: “When (the bridegroom with his bride) has come to his house, he says to her, ‘Cross (the threshold) with thy right foot first; do not stand on the threshold.’”[[92]] In this ancient ceremony, grains of rice are poured on the heads of the bridegroom and his bride.[[93]] This modern custom has, therefore, a very early origin. And again: “He makes her enter the house (which she does) with her right foot. And she does not stand on the threshold.”[[94]]
Putting the right foot forward seems to be a matter of importance in various primitive religions. “Put your right foot first” is a maxim ascribed to Pythagoras.[[95]] In his description of the proportions of a temple, the Roman architect Vitruvius said: “The number of steps in front should always be odd, since, in that case, the right foot, which begins the ascent, will be that which first alights on the landing of the temple.”[[96]] A Muhammadan is always careful to put his right foot first in crossing over the threshold of a mosk.[[97]]
Among the Albanians, when the bride is taken to the home of the bridegroom, accompanied by the vlam, or “the friend of the bridegroom,” it is said that “particular care is taken that the threshold should be crossed with the right foot foremost.”[[98]] Here, as in India, the crossing of the threshold is a voluntary act. The bride is not lifted over, but crosses of her own accord. If she be veiled, the lifting is a necessity.