'With This Yak Grease I Thee Wed'
Feb. 11, 2005 -- -- If you think getting married is tough these days, be grateful you don't live in ancient Persia. Couples back then declared their intentions by publicly drinking each other's blood.
The betrothed couple would slit their arms in dramatic fashion as villagers gathered around to celebrate, according to sex historian Lance Rancier, author of "The Sex Chronicles: Strange-But-True Tales From Around The World," (General Publishing Group), a look at courtship rituals in more than 300 ancient cultures.
Of course, oddity — like beauty — is purely in the eye of the beholder. Why did ancient Britons break bread over the bride and groom? Why did Tibetans splash newlyweds with yak grease? For the same reason we throw rice: to wish the bride and groom luck and fertility.
Brides who aggressively diet, fearful of the wedding photographer's unforgiving lens, might welcome how the Nigerian Ibos of West Africa showed off their wealth. A bride spent most of her engagement in a fattening house. If she wasn't plump enough, the groom could reject her.
"A plump bride is valued in [many] cultures, particularly when food is scarce," says J. Christopher Kovats-Bernat, an anthropology professor at Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania. "Thinness as a desired trait — a sign of wealth and power — is much more of a contemporary idea."
It's safe to say, marriage has always been a gamble. Wedding and wagering evolved from the same Anglo-Saxon word — weddian, which means "to vow."
"In a sense, the groom was gambling the future of his family on a woman," says J. Joseph Edgette, resident folklorist at Widener University in Pennsylvania. "He would pay the bride's family for the woman's hand in marriage, and on that union hung the economic future of his family."
Talk about a money-back guarantee: The Anglo-Saxon groom often stipulated that the bride's family return his payment if his wife didn't conceive in the first year. Consider it early evidence of prenuptial agreements.
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