Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 December 1891 — Brides Who Perch In Trees. [ARTICLE]

Brides Who Perch In Trees.

Among the Lolos of Western China it is customary for the bride on the wedding morning to perch herself on the highest branch of a large tree, while the elder female members of her family cluster on the lower limbs, armed with sticks. When all are duly stationed, the bridegroom clampers up the tree, assailed on all sides by blows, pushes and pinches from the dowagers, and it is not until he |has broken through their fence and jcaptured the bride that he is allowed ito carry her off. Similar difficulties assail the bridegroom among the Mongolian Koraks, who are in the habit of celebrating their marriages in large tents, divided into humerous separate but communicating compartments. At a given signal, as soon as the guests are assembled, the bride starts off through the compartments, followed by her wooer, while the women of the encampment throw every possible impediment in his way, tripping up his unwary feet, holding down the curtains to prevent his passage, and applying the willow and alder switches unmercifully as he stoops to raise them. As with the maiden on the tree top, the Korak bride is invariably captured, however much the possibilities of escape may be in her favor.