These women have their modesty in their feet, and also their
coquetry; to unbind the feet of a woman is for a man a voluptuous
act, and the touch of the bands produces the same effect as a
corset still warm from a woman's body on a European man. A
woman's beauty, that which attracts and excites a man, lies in
her foot; in Mordvin love poems celebrating the beauty of women
there is much about her attire, especially her embroidered
chemise, but as regards the charms of her person the poet is
content to state that 'her feet are beautiful;' with that
everything is said. The young peasant woman of the central
provinces as part of her holiday raiment puts on great woolen
stockings which come up to the groin and are then folded over to
below the knee. To uncover the feet of a person of the opposite
sex is a sexual act, and has thus become the symbol of sexual
possession, so that the stocking or foot-gear became the emblem
of marriage, as later the ring. (It was so among the Jews, as we
see in the book of _Ruth_, Chapter III, v. 4, and Chapter IV, vv.
7 and 8). St. Vladimir the Great asked in marriage the daughter
of Prince Rogvold; as Vladimir's mother had been a serf, the
princess proudly replied that she 'would not uncover the feet of
a slave.' At the present time in the east of Russia when a young
girl tries to find out by divination whom she will have as a
husband the traditional formula is 'Come and take my stockings
off.' Among the populations of the north and east, it is
sometimes the bride who must do this for her husband on the
wedding night, and sometimes the bridegroom for his wife, not as
a token of love, but as a nuptial ceremony. Among the
professional classes and small nobility in Russia parents place
money in the stocking of their child at marriage as a present for
the other partner, it being supposed that the couple mutually