MARRIAGE CUSTOMS IN OTHER

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 254, 10 July 1926, Page 22

MARRIAGE CUSTOMS IN OTHER

DECLARING THE VALUE OF YOUR GIFT

Fancy going to a wedding reception and hearing the value of your gift, along with your name, called out by a groomsman with a voice like a megaphone! I have known that happen in Finland, where, in the country districts, it is usual for the bride to sit with a sieve covered with a rich silk shawl in her lap, into which guests

drop their gifts as they some up to offer their congratulations. Time was when such gifts of cash went towards paying for the bride s outfit; nowadays they help to buy something needed in the bridal couple’s new home. But a Finnish peasant girl still goes to the altar in the hcaw bridal crown of ancient workmanship that is the common property of the countryside, and, moreover, she wears it, with but little respite, throughout the whole of the four days’ celebrations

In Wales thev have, or did have when I was a girl, a generation-old wav of making pretty sure of wedding presents. This was the sending out of the “Bidding Letter,” a document which, dispatched by the. respective parents of the bride and bridegroomelect about three weeks before the ceremony, wound up with—“and whatever donation you may be pleased to confer on us then will be thankfiily leceivcd, warmlv acknowledged, and cheerfully repaid whenever called for <>n a similar occasion ” The best man, not the recipients, always made a precise record of the gifts for each familv’s future reference and guidance. Until quite recently the peasant folk of Sweden had one custom in common with those of China, that of employing a matrimonial go-between. But whereas in China the girl's parents take the first step in thus promoting a betrothal, in Delccarlia, that beautiful province of Sweden where the maidens still go to church on Sun-

davs in striped petticoat and peakec bonnet, the would-be bridegroom is tin one to engage the services of a go between. Though the Swedish girl has more than an inkling of what is coming there is never a flicker of interest or iier face as she sits with downcast eyes knitting, the while her suitor’s

prospects are being talked over with lier parents And she seems hardly less deaf and dumb when, the preliminaries settled by the go-between, the suitor himself comes to pay his first formal call. Only at the betrothal feast do her stolidity and his embarrassment lessen as thev exchange rings and he makes the traditional offering of a silver goblet filled with coins, each wrapped separately in new white tissue paper. Armenian brides and bridegrooms remain outside the church door to. be blessed by the priest before he invites them to go to the altar for the marriage ceremony. Once there, a scaled green cord is slipped round the bride’s neck and a red cord round the groom’s, a custom no more awkward than the Russian one of the best man and a groomsman holding crowns above the heads of bride and bridegroom as they stand with lighted tapers in their hands.

Once, in the Tyrol, I came across a curious custom introduced into the Alpine hamlet by nuns during the Middle Ages. There, on her wedding morn, a ' girl is presented by her mother with a special handkerchief embroidered with the words, “The Bridge of Tears.” On that morsel of linen and lace the bride is supposed to dry her tears whenever she quarrels with her husband, and also to treasure it, intact and unwashed, till life ends, so that there may be a fit covering for her face when, as the folklore puts it, she “leaves her home for cternitv.”