In describing a wedding dance in Abyssinia, Parkyns observes:
This dance is performed by men armed with shields and lances, who with bounds, feints, and springs attack others armed with guns, so as to approach them, and at the same time avoid their fire, while the gunners make similar demonstrations, and at last fire off their guns either in the air or into the earth, and then, drawing their swords, flourish them about as a finish.
Finally the bridegroom fires off a gun and immediately rushes across to where the bride and her female relations are stationed.[119]
[119] _Life in Abyssinia_, vol. ii., p. 49.
Tylor informs us that a Scandinavian warrior generally sought to gain his bride by force, that he conceived it beneath his dignity to win her by pacific means. That the affair might appear more heroic, he waited until the object of his choice was about to wed another, and was actually on her way to the nuptial ceremony, when with his friends he would surprise the wedding cortege, seize the bride, and carry her off. It has been said of Scandinavian marriages that they were matters of deep anxiety to the friends both of the bride and groom, who, until the wedding was over, remained at home in suspense fearing an attack of the kind already mentioned. It was customary for a party of young men to station themselves at the church door, and, as soon as the ceremony was completed, to carry the news to the homes of the wedded pair. “Within a few generations the same old practice was kept up in Wales, where the bridegroom and his friends, mounted and armed as for war, carried off the bride,” and in Ireland they used even to hurl spears at the bride’s people, though at such a distance that no one was hurt.[120]
In the Amazon valley the bride is always carried away by violence. Among the Zulus, although a purchase price is paid for a woman, custom requires that a wife, after having been captured, shall make three attempts to return to her own home.
Of the marriage customs in ancient Sparta, Plutarch says: “In their marriages the bridegroom carried off the bride by violence.”[121] In Rome we have the familiar example of the Sabine women, who were captured or carried off by force.