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There they ate and drank merrily all
night, and next morning they cut a square piece of turf in the grove
and took it home with them. After that, though it fared well with
the people of Malmyz, it fared ill with the people of Cura; for in
Malmyz the bread was good, but in Cura it was bad. Hence the men of
Cura who had consented to the marriage were blamed and roughly
handled by their indignant fellow-villagers. "What they meant by
this marriage ceremony," says the writer who reports it, "it is not
easy to imagine. Perhaps, as Bechterew thinks, they meant to marry
Keremet to the kindly and fruitful Mukylcin, the Earth-wife, in
order that she might influence him for good." When wells are dug in
Bengal, a wooden image of a god is made and married to the goddess
of water.
Often the bride destined for the god is not a log or a cloud, but a
living woman of flesh and blood. The Indians of a village in Peru
have been known to marry a beautiful girl, about fourteen years of
age, to a stone shaped like a human being, which they regarded as a
god (_huaca_).


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