SPENCER AND GILLEN, _Native Tribes of Cent. Australia_, 104, 105, 554-60, name four methods of obtaining wives among these aborigines: (1) charming by means of magic; (2) capture, being of "much rarer occurrence;" (3) elopement, a form "intermediate" between the method of charming and that of capture, often leading to bloody fights; (4) the custom "in accordance with which every woman in the tribe is made _Tualcha mura_ [prospective mother-in-law] with some man. This relation is entered into while the male and female are in tender years; so that the boy is thus betrothed to the prospective, unborn daughter of his _Tualcha mura_. This is the usual method of obtaining a wife in the Arunta and Ilpirra tribes. [521] FISON AND HOWITT, _op. cit._, 200. [522] _Ibid._, 348-55. _Cf._ DAWSON, _Australian Aborigines_, 34. The examples thus far presented have all been selected from the matrimonial customs of non-Aryan peoples; but the symbol of capture, in a great variety of forms and combinations, may also be found in every subdivision of the Aryan race. It appears in the marriage ceremonies of Sparta, Crete, and among other Hellenes.[523] The nuptial celebration of the Romans was characterized throughout by the show of force. For this reason they hesitated to hold weddings on religious days, lest these should be desecrated by the seeming violence done to the bride.[524] With the rising of the evening star took place the _domum deductio_, or carrying home, of the woman.[525] The girl fled to the lap of her mother, whence she was dragged forcibly away by the bridegroom and his friends who rushed noisily in.[526] On the way she held back, weeping and struggling, while her attendants sang hymeneal songs, not always the most refined in character. Thus in his nuptial hymn Catullus has the choir of maidens exclaim: "Say, Hesper, say, what fire of all that shine In Heaven's great vault more cruel is than thine? Who from the mother's arms her child can tear-- The child that clasps her mother in despair; And to the youth, whose blood is all aflame, Consigns the virgin sinking in her shame! When towns are sacked, what cruelty more drear."[527] At the door the bride makes a last effort to resist; but she is lifted forcibly over the threshold, and even in the house she is held fast by the arms, until at last she is fully initiated into the sacred rites of the bridegroom's house.[528] It is noteworthy that the custom of dragging the bride into the husband's house, or of lifting her over the threshold, exists even now in many places. It appears in Africa; among the Ests, Kalmucks, and Bedouins; the Indians of southern California, and elsewhere in North America.[529] In "China, when the bridal procession reaches the bridegroom's house, the bride is carried into the house by a matron, and lifted over a pan of charcoal at the door."[530]