THE WEDDING CAKE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23599, 8 September 1938, Page 19

THE WEDDING CAKE.

CUTTING RITES BREAKING A BANNOCK (From Oub Own Correspondent) (By Air Mail) . LONDON, Aug. 18. A prospective best man has asked for some information concerning the ceremony of cake-cutting. “Marianne Mayfayre,” of the Daily Telegraph, suplpies the accompanying information, with the preface: “ One’s recollection of many fashionable wedding receptions of recent seasons goes to show that the cake-cutting rites are as important as ever they were in the programme arranged on these festive occasions.

“The cutting of the cake appears to be a version of the ancient ceremony of breaking the cake over the bride’s head, a rite which is still sometimes performed in the north. “When Lord Clydesdale brought his bride, Lady Elizabeth Percy, to his ancestral home 3t Strathaven. Lanarkshire, after their honeymoon last December, a Scots bannock was broken over the bride’s head for luck as the bridegroom carried her over the threshold. After breaking the cake over the bride’s head, according to ancient custopi. the pieces, were given to onlookers, who, receiving them, were supposed to dream that night of their future spouse. “.Smollett describes how, ‘A cake being broken over the head of Mrs Tabitha Lismahago, the fragments were distributed among the bystanders, according to the custom of the ancient Britons, on the supposition that every person who ate of this hallowed cake should that night have a vision of the man or woman whom heaven designed should be his or her wedded mate.’”