she was summoned, and if she refused to come out her representative was dragged out by the Giritzvater's orderlies. But while those who submitted to his jurisdiction were subjected to considerable indignity, being put up to auction, and if not bid for cast into a gravel-pit, those who refused to do so apparently escaped the ordeal or only underwent it by their proxies.[1]
Traces of a similar usage are found in festivals during the month of May, Thus at Provence in Canton Waadt the following song was sung on May 7th in 1843:
"Jeunes filles de quarante ans,
Qui avez passé votre temps,
Vous l'avez passé, le passerez
Sans vous marier . . .
Belles il faut vous consoler!"[2]
Lastly, childlessness is a social offence in the country round Geneva. On the first Sunday in May the village children visit the houses of couples which have been married a year but have no children. The usage is called "crier les allouilles" or "allouiller," and as allouille means the fête of the brandons, allouillâ has apparently come to mean 'to throw out of window.' The children have to be bought off with gifts of sweets and pence.[3]
In Brittany the duty of bringing into the world an allotted number of children is a motive of the grimmer Breton stories.[4]
The observation that marriage is a duty under any circumstances has already been emphasised by Westermarck,[5] but he does not allude to any specific penalties
- ↑ Ibid., 1903, pp. 295-8.
- ↑ Ibid., 1907, p. 258. In some parts of Canton Neuenburg it was the custom for boys to sing at the "Maisingen" if the beeches were in leaf on May-Day, otherwise the girls sang: p. 257.
- ↑ Ibid., 1903, p. 161.
- ↑ E. Sidney Hartland, Ritual and Belief, p. 200.
- ↑ Origin and Development of Moral Ideas, ii, p. 66 ff.
