“Thank you,” he replied, and then gave her absolution after this devout confession, and suffered her to depart.
The bridegroom, who had heard these words, was not best pleased, but nevertheless thought it not the right moment to show his vexation.
After all the ceremonies at the church were over, the couple returned home, and bed-time drew near. The bridegroom whispered to a friend of his whom he dearly loved, to fetch a big handful of birch rods, and hide them secretly under the bed, and this the other did.
When the time came, the bride went to bed, as is the custom, and kept to the edge of the bed, and said not a word. The bridegroom came soon after, and lay on the other edge of the bed without approaching her, or saying a word and in the morning he rose without doing anything else, and hid his rods again under the bed.
When he had left the room, there came several worthy matrons who found the bride in bed, and asked her how the night had passed, and what she thought of her husband?
“Faith!” she said, “there was his place over there”—pointing to the edge of the bed—“and here was mine. He never came near me, and I never went near him.”
They were all much astonished, and did not know what to think, but at last they agreed that if he had not touched her, it was from some religious motive, and they thought no more of it for that once.
The second night came, and the bride lay down in the place she had occupied the previous night, and the bridegroom, still furnished with his rods, did the same and nothing more; and this went on for two more nights, at which the bride was much displeased, and did not fail to tell the matrons the next day, who knew not what to think.
“It is to be feared he is not a man, for he has continued four nights in that manner. He must be told what he has to do; so if to-night he does not begin,”—they said to the bride—“draw close to him and cuddle and kiss him, and ask him if married people do not do something else besides? And if he should ask you what you want him to do? tell him that you want him to ride you, and you will hear what he will say.”
“I will do so,” she said.