Among the many rituals, rituals and customs that have spread throughout the world, a so-called first night right occupies a special place. The rite is to deprive the virginity of the bride, who has just played a wedding and she will have the first night of love. The groom seems to be relegated to the background and becomes an outside observer of what is happening, and the defloration of the bride, or, more simply, the very first sexual act in her life, is performed by another person.
As a rule,
this is the feudal lord, the owner of the patrimony and the entire population living on its land, or it is the leader of a large tribe, or a landowner with several hundred serfs. In any case, the bride was no longer virgin to the groom. And in some countries, right at the wedding with the bride, all male guests had to have sexual intercourse in turn. After copulation, a man presented her with a gift. After this intimate part of the
wedding ceremony, the friendship between the groom and his bridesmaid friends became even stronger.
On the European continent during the Middle Ages, the right of the first night was enshrined in law. It was believed that the overlord or even any petty feudal lord gave the young woman a peculiar ticket to life, personally depriving her of innocence. In most cases, the groom fully supported the right of the first night, since at that far time the feeling of superstition and religious mood was so all-consuming that the grooms were revered for happiness if their chosen one passed through someone else's bed.
After a few centuries, the picture has changed. Increasingly, it was possible to meet a groom who did not want to share his beloved bride with the elderly princes and counts, giving the right to the first night. He preferred to pay off, pay for the immunity of his wife. In many countries of Europe and Asia, sexual intercourse with the bride was replaced by other ritual activities. The gentleman had to step over the bed with the bride lying or stretch his leg across the bed. This was considered equivalent to sexual intercourse.
And sometimes the first night of the young was furnished with so many noisy and restless manifestations of living participation in the wedding process that another groom would be glad to give his place to friends or even to a casual passer-by. In Macedonia, for example, sending newlyweds to the room where they were supposed to spend their first night and giving the groom the right to their first
wedding night, numerous friends made an unimaginable noise, pounded in pots and beat with sticks on the walls. Then they closed the door to the chambers and left to return exactly five minutes later, open the door and ask if everything worked out, where is the sheet with traces of blood and why there is no news for so long.
And when the sheet was received and older women brought it to the public, there was no end to the joy of the wedding guests. Thus, the bloody right of the first night was nevertheless taken over by the groom. The sheet was hung out in a conspicuous place and after that dozens of clay pots were broken: “how many shards, so many young children will have.” And the powerful people of this world, counts, landowners, nobles and others like them, participated on equal terms in the wedding celebration, although not already as performers of the ritual, but as simply honored guests, which did not prevent them from having fun with everyone.