In Central America, among the Chibchas, it was a primitive custom for the bridegroom to present himself by night, after preliminary bargainings, at the door of his intended father-in-law’s home, and there let his presence be known. Then the bride would come out to him, bringing a large gourd of _chica_, a fermented drink made from the juice of Indian corn; “and coming close to him, she first tasted it herself, and then gave it to him. He drank as much as he could; and thus the marriage was concluded.”[407] Among the Bheels of India, the drinking of the covenant is between the representatives of the bridegroom, and the parents of the bride, at the time of the betrothal; but this is quite consistent with the fact that the bride herself is not supposed to have a primary part in the covenant.[408] It is much the same also among the Laplanders.[409] Among the Georgians and Circassians,[410] and also among the Russians,[411] the officiating priest, at a marriage ceremony, drinks from a glass of wine, and then the bride and the groom drink three times, each, from the same glass. The Galatians wedded, with a _poculum conjugii_, “a wedding cup.”[412] In Greece, the marriage ceremony concludes by the bride and the groom “drinking wine out of one cup.”[413] In Switzerland, formerly, the clergymen “took two glasses of wine, mixed their contents, and gave one glass to the bride, and the other to the bridegroom.”[414] Among European Jews in olden time, the officiating rabbi, having blessed a glass of wine, tasted it himself, and then gave it first to the one and then to the other of the parties covenanting in marriage.[415] This custom of covenanting in the wine-cup, at a wedding, is said to have come into England from the ancient Goths.[416] Its symbolical significance and its exceptional importance, seems to have been generally recognized. Ben Jonson calls the wedding-wine a “knitting cup”[417]--an inter-binding cup. And a later poet asks, forcefully: “What priest can join two lovers’ hands, But wine must seal the marriage bands?”[418] In Ireland, as in Lapland and in India, it was at the betrothal, instead of at the wedding, that the covenanting-cup--or the “agreement bottle” as it was called--was shared; and not unnaturally strong _usquebaugh_, or “water of life,” was there substituted for wine--as the representative of life-blood.[419] In Scotland, as in Arabia and in Borneo, the use of blood in conjunction with the use of a wedding-cup has continued down to recent times. The “agreement bottle,” or “the bottling,” as it was sometimes called, preceded the wedding ceremony proper. At the wedding, the blood of a cock was shed at the covenanting feast. A reference to this is found in “The Wowing [the Wooing or the Vowing?] of Jok and Jynny,” among the most ancient remains of Scottish minstrelsy: