; Mr. Mueller to see dawn and dawn-myths; Schwartz to see
storm and storm-myths, and so on. As the orthodox teachers are thus at
variance, so that there is no safety in orthodoxy, we may attempt to
use our heterodox method.

None of the three scholars whose views we have glanced at--neither
Roth, Kuhn, nor Mr. Mueller--lays stress on the saying of Urvasi,
'never let me see you without your royal garments, _for this is the
custom of women_.'[67] To our mind, these words contain the gist of
the myth. There must have been, at some time, a custom which forbade
women to see their husbands without their garments, or the words have
no meaning. If any custom of this kind existed, a story might well be
evolved to give a sanction to the law. 'You must never see your
husband naked: think what happened to Urvasi--she vanished clean
away!' This is the kind of warning which might be given. If the
customary prohibition had grown obsolete, the punishment might well be
assigned to a being of another, a spiritual race, in which old human
ideas lingered, as the neolithic dread of iron lingers in the Welsh
fairies.

Our method will be, to prove the existence of singular rules of
etiquette, corresponding to the etiquette accidentally infringed by
Pururavas. We shall then investigate stories of the same character as
that of Urvasi and Pururavas, in which the infringement of the
etiquette is chastised. It will be seen that, in most cases, the bride
is of a peculiar and perhaps supernatural race. Finally, the tale of
Urvasi will be taken up again, will be shown to conform in character
to the other stories examined, and will be explained as a myth told to
illustrate, or sanction, a nuptial etiquette.

The lives of savages are bound by the most closely-woven fetters of
custom. The simplest acts are 'tabooed,' a strict code regulates all
intercourse. Married life, especially, moves in the strangest fetters.
There will be nothing remarkable in the wide distribution of the myth
turning on nuptial etiquette, if this law of nuptial etiquette proves
to be also widely distributed. That it is widely distributed we now
propose to demonstrate by examples.

The custom of the African people of the kingdom of Futa is, or was,
even stricter than the Vedic _custom of women_--'wives never permit
their husbands to see them unveiled for three years after their
marriage.'[68]

In his _Travels to Timbuctoo_ (i. 94), Caillie says that the
bridegroom 'is not a