Entry of the bride
up in white cotton-gloved hands; and her bridegroom from
the roof above took small coins and corn and coloured rice, and
flung it all over her as she stood. The little boys of Garmrud
were on the look out: a great scrum ensued for the pennies: the
bride, unable to see what was going on and with the respon-
sibility of the candles, which must not blow out, in her hands,
swayed about, pushed hither and thither, and only sustained
by the buttressing uncles: it is as well to have relatives at such
moments.
With a great heave the threshold was transcended: in the
shelter of her new home the lady unveiled, while the bride-
groom, paying her not the slightest attention now he had got
her, devoted himself to our reception.
The bridegroom also has to stand at the end of the room till
one of the guests takes pity on him, and asks him to sit down.
This young man, however—he was just fifteen—bore it with
more cheerfulness than his fiancee. His new boots and orange
tie—for he was dressed as a Ferangi in honour of the occasion—
were sufficiendy glorious in themselves to make up for any
other discomforts of matrimony.
We had more dancing and a village idiot to come and tie
himself into knots on the floor for our amusement; a revolting
spectacle. And then, leaving the Pichiban bride to settle into
her new house, we returned to our own show, which was just
now reaching the dramatic moment of the meeting between
bride and groom at the outskirts of the village.
After three or four attempts, and as many gallops up and
down the open space by the torrent, the young men of her
family had induced the bride to leave the shelter of the paternal
home. Accompanied by seven female friends the little pro-
cession encircled the village and was now coming back to it
across the cornfields on the west. The bridegroom, climbing
his roof, saw his bride in the distance, flung himself on to his
[277]