RUSSIAN MARRIAGE MARTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18275, 16 December 1922, Page 2 (Supplement)

RUSSIAN MARRIAGE MARTS.

GIRLS BEEK HUSBANDS.

Perhaps the best known of all Russian marriage markets is the one which takes place annually at Klui, near Moscow. It occurs during the week of Epiphany (Russian style), and all the young women' who wish to get married in the course of the year are mustered in a long row in the principal street of that large and straggling country town.

In order to make themselves attractive to tli£ young men who come to see and admire them they wear nearly all their belongings on their backs. Their finery does not consist only of their best clothes, but h includes a lot of old family trinkets, sometimes valuable scarves, cloaks, and ftirs, heavy silver jewellery and necklaces, jackets showing rows of prettily ciselated or filigree silver buttons.

Many of the girls bring even their linen and other doriiestic property along with them in gaudily painted chests and trunks, sitting on them like dragons watching a treasure. After exposing themselves for hours to the close scrutiny of would-be Benedicks the girls march off in a procession to church, there to perform at the shrine of some saint particularly- potent in procuring connubial bliss, such ns St. Chrysostom and St. Niazanzen, worshiplul prayers. On the way to the church it is not only permissible, but good form, for the young men to follow and accost one or the "other of the girls in the -way of conversation. If any two of the young people think they suit ono another, a formal visit ia paid by the intended groom to the parents. But before the actual marriage is arranged, a number of interviews take place between the respective parenta, every item of the trousseau being exacted beforehand and noted down as part of the bride's dowry.