The Month of Marriages.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXVII, Issue 15, 13 October 1906, Page 52

The Month of Marriages.

(By

Warwick James Price.)

Half the acts of life are guided and guarded by folklore. Present-day proclaimed scepticism to the contrary notwitlistanding, this statement is ready of proof. Which being the faet, it becomes an of-conrse that so vastly important a matter as love should be of all things richest in its literature of predictions and omens. The ‘"Who?” and the “When?” and the “How?” of courtship and marriage all are foretold. Such changes, however, are to the outward seeming only. Love alters not with the passing centuries, nor has its lengthy creed lost materially of the ceremonial tenets of an older day. There is that old warning couplet: Change Hie name and not the letter. Change for worse and not for better. Miss Brown may ignore it to In-come Mrs. Borers, and Miss White may laugh at it while telling her intimates that she is to be Mrs. Wells; but do not both of them in that very laughing, doubting apology thereby prove this all-but immortal folk-lore of marriage, even though, as daughters of the newest of the centuries, they decline wholly to be bound by it? To be sure, an elder and unmarried sister no longer feels it incumbent upon her to dance barefoot at the younger maiden's bridal, so to ward off the hideous threat of spinsterliood, nor has that venerable prophecy its onetime weight—about ••Thrice a bridesmaid, never a bride"—but , for the rest, hymeneal superstitions are practicidly as abundant and as revered as ever they were. curiD Fixes the month. For the days of engaged impatience ami blissful planning, the well-observed dictates of Dan Cupid are all but endless. First must be considered the month. To begin with, Lent is barred; for “Married in Lent, you’ll live to repent,” and the average girl will decide such a question without hesitation, even at the cost of waiting 40 days longer. May, too, is held unlucky. Perhaps this belief goes back to Ovid’s time, for the Latin poet laid a ban upon the month as that in which fell the celebrations in honour of the great dead. Perhaps Plutarch laid his wiser finger on the root of the evil, in calling attention to the faet that a May wedding slighted both Venus and Juno, whose months were, respectively, April land June. Perhaps the fifth mouth is really unlucky; for no other reason than in it Mary Queen of Scots began her own much-married and none-too-for-tunate career. The truth, though its origin is obscure, comes down to this, that those four weeks of lavishly beautiful stage settings are yet looked upon askance. Not one of the months but has its own prediction. Thus runs the best-known of the formulae: — M i tried in January’s boar and time, widowed you’ll be before your prime; Married in Febr’ys sleety weather, life you’ll tread in tune together; Married when Marell winds shrill and roar, your home will lie on a foreign shore; Married 'neath April's changeful skies, a checkered path before yon lies; Married when bees o’er May-blooms flit, Strangers around your board will sit; Married in queen-rose month of June, life will be one long honeymoon; Married as July’s flower banks blaze, bitter sweet mem'ries in after days; Married in August’s heat and drowse, lover and friend in your chosen spouse; Married in gold September’s glow, smooth, and serene your life will flow: Married when leaves in October thin, toil and hardship for you begin; Married in veils of November mist, Fortune your wedding ring has kissed; Married in days of 1 December cheer, T.ovc’s star shines brighter from year to year. It may scorn amusingly evident from this that the sect's at Cupid's shrine have tried hard to say nice things of pretty nearly all the units that go to ■build up the year (“playing safe,” would be the term used of their craft by the betting fraternity). WORK FOR THE BRIDE-TO-BE. Every single day of preparation has its own time-honoured instructions for the happy little woman in the case. If •he is wise, she will add Io her inward rejoicings, as well as satisfy the Fates,

by doing lier.-wlf a good part of the work Upon her trousseau. And by all means should she help mix the bridal-cake; she may not spoil it, and she certainly will advance her chances for that jov of life, which (of course) she deserves. Everyone knows it is bad luck to put on the entire wedding-outfit before the final dressing for the ceremony itself, and almost every bride knows that the colour of her gown for that momentous of all moments is a matter not to be settled merely by what is becoming. What is written in the hymeneal law and prophets’ Married in gray, you will go far away: Married in black, you will wish yourself back: Married in brown, you will live out of town; Married in red, you will wish yourself dead; Married in pearl, you will live in a whirl; Married in green, ashamed to be seen; Married in yellow, ashamed of your fellow ; Married in blue, iie will always be true; Married in pink, your spirits will sink; Married in white, you have chosen aright. Then, arises the question of the day of the week, where the jingle is perhaps widest known of all: — Monday for health. Tuesday for wealth. Wednesday the best day of all; Thursday for losses, Friday for crosses Saturday no luck at all. So comes at last the day—and it is safe predicting that at least the she of the ‘high-contracting parties’’ will, first thing of all, fly to the window for a look at the weather; for “Happy the bride the sun shines on.” And. when she begins to don those pretty things that rcpresPnt the busy labours of happy hours, what then? Well, she will put on her right shoe before her left: that points to success in life. She will use no pins; they betoken spite. She will take good care that the Only-man-in-all-the-world doesn’t see her till she conies at last to be joined to him for life; for there’s a saying about the ill hick of that, too. Mr Bridegroom (of whom scant notice is taken by the-originators of all this mass of sage advice) here comes in for a single warning: He is not to stand at the junction of a cross-roads or besie a barred gale on this wedding-morn. If he does, look out! Of the march to the church there is much to say. The fairies of ill omen announce that no funeral must be met on the way, and they foretell dire results if the steeple clock should perchance strike while the ceremony is going on. The fairies of promises declare that the attending maid who catches the bride's bouquet, thrown among the guests when Miss has become Mrs, will be the first married, and that she who gets the ring, deep-buried'in the great cake, will join for life the man of her heart’s own choice before the year is out. THE BEST MAN OF OT.D TIME. Those same bridesmaids, it is relevant to remark, were in the “once upon a time” regarded as no more and no less than pretty scapegoats, whose very presence should attract the evil eye, and so divert from the bridal pair the ill omens in the air around. The original best man, too, was far from the purely ornamental creature into which he has degenerated to-day. He seems to have made his debut when weddings were strenuous affairs; when the groom, more likely than not, carried off his chosen one by force or craft, and made his peace with the “old folks” afterward if he could. In those days the best man had to be just that. » . » » »