Among the numerous rituals, rituals and customs that have spread throughout the world, the so-called right of the first night occupies a special place. The rite is to deprive the virginity of the bride, who has just played the wedding and she will be 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 committed by another person.
As a rule, it is a feudal lord, the owner of the patrimony and the entire population on his land, or the leader of a large tribe, or a landowner with several hundred serfs. In any case, the bride was no longer the virgin. And in some countries, at the wedding with the bride, all the male guests had to perform sexual intercourse in turn. After copulation the man presented her with a gift. After this intimate part of the wedding ceremony, the friendship between the groom and his friends along the bride's line grew even stronger.
On the European continent, during the Middle Ages, the right of the first night was legislated. It was believed that the suzerain or even any small feudal lord gave the young woman a peculiar start in life, personally depriving her of innocence. In most cases, the groom fully supported the right of the first night, since at that time the feeling of superstition and religious mood was so overwhelming that the grooms were considered to be happy if their chosen one was passing through someone else's bed.
A few centuries later the picture changed. More and more often it was possible to meet the groom, who did not want to share his beloved bride with elderly princes and counts, giving the right of the first night. He preferred to pay off, pay for the inviolability of his wife. In many countries of Europe and Asia, the sexual act with the bride was replaced by other ritual actions. The gentleman had to step over the bed with the lying bride 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 displays of live participation in the wedding process that another groom would be happy to give his place to friends or even to a casual passer-by. In Macedonia, for example, sending newlyweds to a room where they were to spend their first night and giving the groom the right of the wedding night, numerous friends raised unimaginable noise, pounding in pots and beating sticks on the walls. Then they closed the door to the rooms and left to return exactly five minutes later, open the door and ask if everything turned out, where the sheet with the traces of blood and why so long there is no news.
And when the sheet was received and the elderly women carried it out to the general view, the joy of the wedding guests was not the end. Thus, the bloody right of the first night still took on the bridegroom. The sheet was hung in a prominent place and after that dozens of earthenware pots were broken: "how many shards, so many young children". And the powerful of this world, counts, landlords, noblemen and others like them, took part in the wedding ceremony on an equal footing, although not as performers of the ritual, but as simply guests of honor, which did not prevent them from having fun together with everyone.