SOME WEDDING SUPERSTITIONS

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 2 March 1935, Page 11

SOME WEDDING SUPERSTITIONS

Lucky for Bride to Weep at Her Wedding

M Y . small daughter said to me the • other day, turning my wedding ring round and round : “But why do you oiily wear it on this finger?”

How can they reconcile this with the notion, very widely held ,that it is lucky for a bride to cry at her wedding? In the Tyrol they go so far as to have a special handkerchief ready .blessed for the purpose. I believe that this comes from the days when, a belief in witchcraft included the certainty that no witch could weep move than three tears, and those from her left eyo.

I gave her the answer my mother j gave me to the same question, andj which has been l given thus for a couple! of thousand years (writes Helen Simp- j son in the Daily Mail). People! thought that a vein ran through the third finger direct to the heart, and thus heart and hand were both embraced by the ring. An old writer says that the thumb is too busy, the little finger not sufficiently honourable, the forefinger too little protected, the middle finger is used for scratching; therefore The third finger bears the ring. Why wear a ring at all? Because without beginning or ending, -it is the symbol, of eternity, and so for married love. To lose it is, for a woman, horribly unlucky, since it means losing at the same time her husband’s affection ; to break it means death: But as for wearing thin, there is a. pretty proverb of Queen Elizabeth’s day' which I hope is fru£, for it tells us:

-'A tearful bride, though her" appealance might suffer, did at least afford her husband proof that she was not an league with Satan. From that period and earlier, from a time when even in church men had to be prepared against sudden danger 1 comes the custom of the bride standing at her husband’s left hand, and taking his left arm as she goes down the church from the altar. His right, the sword hand, was thus left' free to defend her. .... -

I came across a new superstition the other day. Bubbles in water or tea, •said my informant, mean kisses when a. married woman pours out. Does this explain the astonishing popularity of champagne at weddings? I roeovnmend soda water to the teetotal bride.

As your ring wears. So pass your cares. These ring questions started, another train: of thought in my head: Where do our white ribbons and favours come from; why do we have them at all? And why that old shoe which even the most vigilant departing bridegroom cannot always prevent being hung at the back of his car? The favours are easy to interpret; their colour signifies virginity, and the true lovers knots are tied to recall the knot in which Roman brides tied tlieir girdles. As for the shoe, it is an old custom twisted. Once, a long aime ago, the bridegroom’s shoe vras laid- on the bride’s head as a sign that she would be subject to him, and then thrown to be scrambled for by the guests: The boy or girl who caught it would he married within the year. In - Yorkshire they used, once, to pelt the bride and bridegroom with old shoes, an uncomfortable custom. History does not relate if the shoes were picked up afterwards and kept for luck, but probably, having touched the married pair, they retained' something of wedded happiness. Now for that most popular superstition of all:

Once in a bride’s bouquet I found, tucked away among the orange blossom, a sprig of rosemary. I asked her' about it; she laughed and would not answer, and 1 for ..a long:, time I could find nobody who knew what. its significance might be. • . ..A. At last an old'lady in a cottage enliighltened me. “"Why,” she (Maid*, “where rosemary grows thick, the woman wears the breeches.” I wonder if the husband of. that bride understood the omen of her sweet-scented bouquet? There is a legend;not very differentfrom this in Cornwall, concerning the Well of St. Keyne. Whichever one of the pair first drank its waters, said tradition, should reign id the house. I Was told of a bridegroom once, who ungallantly left his wife at" the church door and legged it for the well.

She watched unmoved, and when her relatives urged her to join the race took from her bosom a tiny bottle oftlie water of St. Keyne which, she had; brdught with her to church, and drank it at her ease while he panted;' out of' sight-. She deserved, it seems to me; to order that household, . There is no end to the superstitions in regard to marriage. The fact is, it is one of those'evettfs in which nobody can help being difficult, always, to put such exeitement or such interest into words; and so; we put it into deeds. It is easier to throw an old shoe than to say good-bye face to face. It is pleasant to think that sunshine will bring happiness, or that by the single expedient of refusing to be married in May bliss must ensue. Who knows ? The will to be happy is much; and if these small symbolic actions serve to strengthen that will, then there is still something to he said for their continuance.

Marry in May, You rue the day. That is left over from Roman times. In May were held in Rome the great feasts ‘of the dead, and I suppose it went against ordinary good feeling to rejoice at such a: time. A good many English people will not be married on a Friday, just as sailors do not care to set out to seai on that day; yet in Scotland it is, or was, a favourite day for weddings. The English proverb says that a Friday moon brings foul weather, and, taking this with that best known saying of all : Happy the bride the sun shines on we may suppose, that the English t e trving to give their brides a. chance of sun.