It is not very long ago that a ceremonial of the same kind was observed quite near us, in Wales. On the day fixed, the bridegroom and his friends, all on horseback, came to take the bride; but they found themselves in the presence of the friends of the young girl, also on horseback, and a mock fight ensued, during which the future wife fled on the crupper of the horse of her nearest relative. But instantly the squadron of the bridegroom, counting sometimes two or three hundred horse, galloped in pursuit. Finally they rejoined the fugitive, and all was terminated by a feast and common rejoicings.[261] In Livonia every marriage was also the occasion of a simulated combat of cavalry, as with the Welsh, but it took place before the marriage.[262] In Poland also, and in Lithuania and Russia, the seizure of the girl often preceded marriage. I shall here end the enumeration of these customs, which are all manifestly symbolical of capture. We still find the trace of it even in the Brittany of to-day, where the representative of the husband, the _bazvalan_, and the parents of the _fiancée_ sing, alternately, strophes of a marriage song, in which the one asks and the others refuse the bride, offering in her stead either a younger sister, or the mother or grandmother.[263] Our inquiry is terminated; it remains now to ask what is the meaning of this ceremonial so widely spread in all ages and in all countries. III. _Signification of the Ceremonial of Capture._ The author of an interesting book on primitive marriage, Mr. McLennan, and after him a great number of sociologists, have concluded that in savage societies sexual unions or associations have been generally effected by the violent capture of the woman, that by degrees these captures have become friendly ones, and have at length ended in a peaceful exogamy, retaining the ancient custom only in the ceremonial form.