Note 6 — Chapter I · Marriage Laws and Customs.

We are told that this rude custom obtains today in “Far Cathay,” Blackwood’s Magazine, July-Dec., 1887, vol. 42, p. 671.

E. J. Woods in his book, “The Wedding Day in All Ages and Countries,” claims that the old Hebrew expression of “taking a wife,” arose from the custom of capture, not common to the Israelites, but common to other primitive peoples. (Vol. I., p. 9.) He quotes Plutarch, as authority for the custom of the Spartans to carry off their brides by capture. (Vol. I., pp. 40, 41.) Refers to the Rape of the Sabines (vol. I., p. 52), the “Institutes” of Menu, as providing one of the forms of marriage by capture, known to the four classes of India (vol. I., p. 124). He claims that “the capture of women prevailed among the aborigines of the Dekkan and in Afghanistan.” (Vol. I., p. 137) He maintains that “In New Zealand and the Fejee and other islands of the Pacific, the custom of capture of women for wives has prevailed from the earliest times of the known history of those places.” (Vol. I., p. 191.) “The form of capture is observed in the marriages of the Kalmucks, the Nogay Tartars, the Mongols, of the Ortous, in Tartary, the Circassians and the people generally of the Caucasus.” (Vol. I., p. 210.) He claims that marriage by capture obtained in Poland, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (vol. I., p. 220), that the seizure of wives by force obtained in Ireland (vol. II., p. 50), so if this record is true, since this custom is found to obtain in these countries so late as recent historical dates, it is not unbelievable that capture was the order of the early barbarous days in our own and other countries.