In the process of what is commonly termed “marriage by capture” we have a method of courtship which closely resembles the most typical form of animal courtship, and is yet found in all but the highest and most artificial stages of human society.  It may not be true that, as MacLennan and others have argued, almost every race of man has passed through an actual stage of marriage by capture, but the phenomena in question have certainly been extremely widespread and exist in popular custom even among the highest races today.  George Sand has presented a charming picture of such a custom, existing in France, in her Mare au Diable.  Farther away, among the Kirghiz, the young woman is pursued by all her lovers, but she is armed with a formidable whip, which she does not hesitate to use if overtaken by a lover to whom she is not favorable.  Among the Malays, according to early travelers, courtship is carried on in the water in canoes with double-bladed paddles; or, if no water is near, the damsel, stripped naked of all but a waistband, is given a certain start and runs off on foot followed by her lover.  Vaughan Stevens in 1896 reported that this performance is merely a sport; but Skeat and Blagden, in their more recent and very elaborate investigations in the Malay States, find that it is a rite.

Even if we regard “marriage by capture” as simply a primitive human institution stimulated by tribal exigencies and early social conditions, yet, when we recall its widespread and persistent character, its close resemblance to the most general method of courtship among animals, and the emotional tendencies which still persist even in the most civilized men and women, we have to recognize that we are in presence of a real psychological impulse which cannot fail in its exercise to introduce some element of pain into love.

There are, however, two fundamentally different theories concerning “marriage by capture.”  According to the first, that of MacLennan, which, until recently, has been very widely accepted, and to which Professor Tylor has given the weight of his authority, there has really been in primitive society a recognized stage in which marriages were effected by the capture of the wife.  Such a state of things MacLennan regarded as once world-wide.  There can be no doubt that women very frequently have been captured in this way among primitive peoples.  Nor, indeed, has the custom been confined to savages.  In Europe we find that even up to comparatively recent times the abduction of women was not only very common, but was often more or less recognized.  In England it was not until Henry VII’s time that the violent seizure of a woman was made a criminal offense, and even then the statute was limited to women possessed of lands and goods.  A man might still carry off a girl provided she was not an heiress; but even the abduction of heiresses continued to be common, and in Ireland remained so until the end of the eighteenth century.  But it is not so clear that such raids and abductions, even when not of a genuinely hostile character, have ever been a recognized and constant method of marriage.