Lifting the bride over the threshold has been practiced in recent times, in England, Ireland, and the United States.[120] Both bride and bridegroom were carried, on the shoulders of their elders, across the threshold of their new home, and laid on their bridal bed, in the marriage ceremonies of some of the tribes of Central America. And again the bridegroom carried his bride in this way.[121] In either case, it was the crossing of the threshold without stepping on it that was the thing aimed at. 5. LAYING FOUNDATIONS IN BLOOD. In the building of a house, as a new home, the prominence given to the laying of the threshold, or to its dedicating by blood, is another indication, or outcome, of its altar-like sacredness. In Upper Syria a sacrifice is often made at the beginning of the building of a new house, and again at the first crossing of its threshold. “When a new house is built,” among the Metâwileh, “the owner will not reside in it until, with certain formalities, a black hen has been carried several times round the house and slaughtered within the door,” as if in covenant dedication of the house.[122] Among the Copts in Egypt, when the threshold of a new house is laid, the owner slaughters a sheep or a goat on the threshold, and steps over the blood, as if in covenant for himself and his household with Him to whom all blood, as life, belongs. Then he divides the sacrificed victim among his neighbors; and they in turn come and step across the blood on the threshold, invoking as they do so a blessing on the new house and its owner, while coming into covenant with him.[123] The foundation-stone of a new building is, in a sense, the threshold of that structure. Hence to lay the foundations in blood is to proffer blood at the threshold. Traces of this custom are to be found in the practices or the legends of peoples wellnigh all the world over.[124] Apparently the earlier sacrifices were of human beings.[125] Later they were of animals substituted for persons. The idea seems to have been that he who covenanted by blood with God, or with the gods, when his house, or his city, was builded, was guarded, together with his household, while he and they were dwellers there; but, if he failed to proffer a threshold sacrifice, his first-born, or the first person who crossed the bloodless threshold, would be claimed by the ignored or defied deity.