re it.
This was a consequence of the ancient German notion of marriage,
according to which a wife merged her life in that of her husband for
time and for eternity.[1317] The usage, however, was softened gradually.
The widow got more independence, and more authority over her children
and property, over the marriage of her daughters, and at last the right
to contract a second marriage after a year of mourning.[1318] In
England, in the eleventh century, a widow's dower could not be taken to
pay her husband's taxes, although the exchequer showed little pity for
anybody else. The reason given is that "it is the price of her
virginity."[1319] The later law also exempted a wife's dower from
confiscation in the case of any criminal or traitor.[1320] In the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in France, "a period in which,
perhaps, people supported widowhood less willingly than in any other,"
the actual usages departed from the acknowledged standards of right and
propriety.[1321] The same was true in a greater or less degree elsewhere
in Europe, and the widowed probably destroyed the prejudice against
remarriage by their persistency and courage in violating it. In the
American colonies it was by no means rare for a widow or widower to
marry again in six or even in three months.

+410. Remarriage and other-worldliness.+ It is evident that the customs
in regard to the treatment of widows, second marriages, etc., are
largely controlled by other-worldliness. If the other world is thought
of as close at hand, and the dead as enjoying a conscious life, with
knowledge of all which occurs here, then there is a rational reluctance
to form new ties by which the dead may be offended. If the other world
and its inhabitants are not so vividly apprehended, the living pursue
their own interests, and satisfy their own desires.

+411. Tree marriage.+ In several cases which have been presented, we
have seen how the folkways devise means of satisfying interests in spite
of existing (inherited) institutions which bear injuriously on
interests. A remarkable case of this kind is tree marriage amongst the
Brahmins of southern India. The established opinion is that a younger
brother ought not to marry before an older one. The latter may be
willing. That is immaterial. The device is employed of marrying the
older brother to a tree, or (perhaps the idea is) to a spirit which
resides in the tree. He is then out of the way and the younger brother
may m