WEDDING SYMBOLS

Timaru Herald, Volume XCVIII, Issue 18069, 17 March 1923, Page 3

WEDDING SYMBOLS

THE OLD-TIME TRADITIONS

■ The spirit of the age that pays no attention to tradition, is mamiesuiig itseu even m tno immemorial, eusioms of our weutungs. An Jtugiihii. uuue has clotued as wen as her attendants, in silver; m rums a undo has gone to the aitnr in uiue shoes and stockings, and with a blue cavaner cloan slung over Her white satin wed-

ding uress. Tin's break witu tradition —which is at the same nine the delving of superstition —lias been proceeding slowly for more than half a century (states a. writer’ in tho Aianehester “Guardian”). When tho Empress Eugenic married Napoleon it was not only her own country-women who were horrified to see that to the diadem of six hundred brilliants which bound her head, and the diamond with three hundred rays which glittered in her corsage, she had added a- rope of pearls wound four times round her neck. The Castilian proverb that the pearls women wear on their wedding day symbolises the tears they arc la ted to shod was a cardinal tenet in m a fringe beliefs. The Empress shed tears enough, but since that fateful wedding how many brides in every country have clasped a, pearl chain round their necks! They have, too, cut tho tradition that

j relegated martial good fortune only to the first half of the week. “Alonday for health, Tuesday for wealth, AVednesday the best day of all; Thursday for ’losses, Friday for crosses, Saturday no luck at all.” That philosophy was disregarded even in Victoria’s day. day were you married?” asked Aliss Earle, of Pot-Pourri fame, of Lady AValdegrave, of wli'ose history sho was not very well aware. “Oh, my dear, I have been married nearly every day in the ■■week!” A lost of our wedding lore is drawn from Greece and Rome. From the silver wedding-dress that stirs society

it is not a- long step to the immense golden-vellow veil in which Greek and Roman brides were enveloped, and with the gold veil went a gold coronet, the “corona nuptials” which indicated triumph.' It was the Crusaders who brought to England from the Saracens the- wreath of orange blossoms, with its symbol, not of victory, but of fertility—an emblem the Romans sought in the harvest field. Our wedding-cake derives from the Roman austerity of salt, water, and flour eaten by the bride with the three wheat-ears in her hand, which were tHe Italian symbol of plenty. A character in Victorian, fiction summed up tersely both the ethics and the convenances of the wedding toilette. “If she’s a good girl she oughi tto wear a white dress, and if she isn’t she ought to wear a black one.” The white wed-ding-dress, it. seems to be agreed, comes to us from Alary Queen of Scots, who

broke with tho tradition of colour, not because she was “good,” but because her dazzling beauty responded best to whiteness. Even in those days of finger-snappuig at the conventions and historical foundations which support the- bridal wreath el orange blossom, the bride-cake, and even the white, wedding-dress, will not quickly yield—certainly a blue cavalier cloak in Paris and a silver bride in London will not accomplish the revolution. But Roman legacy does not end with a bride veiled and eorrmeted and the wed-ding-cake. Afarried women of to-day wc-ar their wedding-rings as they do because the Romans believed that a „ e rve ran through the “ringjinger' to tho heart.