owe formal deference to males. In Bulgaria the wives are from
five to ten years older than the husbands, because boys of fourteen
begin to make love, but to adult marriageable women.[1214] All these
facts make it a phenomenon worthy of special mention that the people of
the Ukrain are very continent, cherish a high ideal of love between the
sexes, and greatly dislike all improprieties in language and
conversation.[1215] The popular Russian wedding songs are sad. The bride
is addressed as a happy child, free in her father's house, with a sad
future before her, of which she is blissfully ignorant.[1216] In Karelia
"a bride radiant with happiness is an unknown sight. With the betrothal
begins the time of tears, which lasts until the marriage feast in the
house of the bridegroom. Even if she is happy and contented the mores
require that she shall shed tears and affect sadness."[1217] The
"wailer" is a functionary in a Russian village. She teaches the bride to
bewail the loss of her "maiden freedom."[1218]

+379. Tribes of the Caucasus and Sahara.+ The Cherkess of the Caucasus
live in big houses, in a joint family, under the authority of a
patriarch. Wives were bought or captured in common, but so many as the
men. Darinsky thinks that those who could, and wanted to, buy separate
wives threatened the arrangement. Hence the men, in a body, opposed
monogamic unions. Such unions were a crime against the crowd. Hence the
customs arose which are now prevalent,--the concealment of all marital
relations, the public ignoring of each other by the spouses, and the
practical jokes and horseplay at weddings by boys and neighbors. It is a
survival of old manifestations of opposition and disapproval.[1219] The
men of the tribes in Sahara are often absent for days together. This
gives the women liberty. The men begrudge this and punish the women for
assumed infidelity. Some of the women are famous prostitutes.[1220]

+380. Mediaeval sex mores.+ The mediaeval sex mores were produced out of
two opposite currents of thought,--that women were evil and dangerous
and to be shunned, and that women were lovely and adorable, and worthy
of reverence and worship. Both of these sets of ideas degenerated into
folly and vice, and became modes of selfishness and luxury. Elaborate
hypocrisy and insincerity became common. Technical definitions of terms
were used to obscure their ethical significance. _Minne_ came to have a
bad meaning and was used for eroti