Blood on the threshold, as an accompaniment of a marriage, is still counted important among Armenian Christians in Turkey. After the formal marriage ceremony at the church, the wedded pair, with their friends, proceed to the bridegroom’s home. “At the moment of their arrival a sheep is sacrificed on the threshold, over the blood of which the wedding party steps to enter the house.”[70]
In the island of Cyprus, a bridegroom is borne to the house of his bride on the wedding morning, in a living chair formed by the crossed hands of his neighbor friends. Dismounting at her door, “as he is about to pass in, a fowl is brought and held down by head and feet upon the threshold of the door; the bridegroom takes an axe, cuts off the head, and only then may he enter.”[71]
Like customs are found among yet more primitive peoples. Thus, for instance, with the western Somali tribes, in east Central Africa: “On reaching the bridegroom’s house a low-caste man sacrifices a goat or sheep on the threshold; and the bride steps over it;” and again when the bridegroom returns from his devotions at a neighboring _masjid_ (a place of public prayer) to claim his bride, as he reaches his threshold, “another goat is sacrificed, and he steps over it in the same way as his bride.”[72] Again the bridegroom himself brings the bride from her father’s hut to his own, accompanied by young men and maidens dancing and singing. “On reaching the new hut, the bride holds a goat or sheep in the doorway, while the bridegroom cuts its throat in the orthodox manner with his _jambia_ (long knife). The bride dips her finger in the blood, smears it on her forehead, ... and then enters the _gúrí_, stepping over the blood. The bridegroom follows her, also stepping over the blood, and is accompanied by some of his nearest male relatives.”[73]
There are traces of such customs, also, among the natives of South Africa,[74] and elsewhere.
Besides the bloody sacrifices at the threshold, in the marriage ceremony, there are, in different countries, various forms of making offerings at the threshold, and of surmounting obstacles at that point, as an accompaniment of the wedding covenant. All these point to the importance and sanctity of the threshold and doorway in the primitive mind.