Most of the rural wedding customs belong to the days when, in accordance with the popular maxim: Better wed over the mixen [dunghill] than over the moor, the bride’s old home with her parents, and the new one she was to share with her husband were both within walking distance of the church where the wedding took place. Then all the neighbours were the friends of both bride and bridegroom, they had all grown up together with the same local traditions, and they all clung to the observance of the same ceremonies. Now railways and bicycles, newspapers and cheap magazines, have broken down the old order of things. The bridegroom’s friends and relations are often complete strangers to the bride’s kith and kin, their ways and beliefs are unknown to each other. They cannot join together in some time-honoured ceremonial when the newly-wedded pair enter their future home; instead they wave hats and handkerchiefs in the wake of a train or a motor which is carrying the couple to a distant dwelling-place. The bride, too, has up-to-date ideas. She wants to make a sensation like Lady Dunfunkus Macgregor’s daughter, a description of whose marriage she has just read in the Daily Mail, or like Miss Gwendolen Fitzwilliam in the current number of the Family Journal. Her dress and her doings, and all the wedding festivities must as far as possible be modelled on a fashionable pattern, till finally, modern conventionalities and not ancient customs rule the day. Two or three years ago the Weekly News of a very small town in Herefordshire was sent to me in order that I might read therein an account of a village wedding in which I was interested because I had known the bride’s parents all my life. Her father was the village blacksmith, and sexton of the parish, as his father, and grandfather, and great-grandfather had been before him. Here was described how the bride wore a ‘gown’, and how her mother ‘held a reception in a marquee’, and how the bride changed into her ‘travelling costume’, and how ‘the happy couple’ then ‘took their departure in a motor-car’, to ‘spend the honeymoon’ somewhere at the seaside. Indeed, from the newspaper report it might have been a fashionable ‘Society’ wedding, except for one recorded detail: in the list of wedding presents it appeared that the bridegroom’s father had bestowed on the happy couple ‘a pig’! I am glad to say that the young people did not continue to live up to the style of their wedding, and the bride has since often spoken of the pig as the most valuable of all their wedding presents, for within a year this exemplary animal presented them with no less than twenty-eight robust and healthy piglings!
Names for publishing the Banns
The usual preliminaries to a wedding, namely, the giving in of the banns of marriage, and the publishing of the same in church, can be very variously expressed in dialect speech, for example: to put in the cries (Sc.), or t’spurrins (Yks.), or the askings (Lan.); or to put up the sibbritts (Chs. e.An.), or sibberidge, cp. O.E. sibbrǣden, relationship; to be asked in church (gen. dial.); to be asked out (gen. dial.), i.e. to have the banns published for the last time; to be called in church (Lin.), or called home (Wil. Dor.); to be church-bawled (Sus.); to be prayed for (e.An.); to be shouted (Lan.); to be spurred (Yks. Lan. Der. Lin. Wil.). The word spur in this sense is from O.E. spyrian, to investigate, inquire into, but popular etymology has connected it with the ordinary literary English substantive spur. Hence the jocular remark when a person has been once asked in church: Why, thoo’s gotten one spur on thee! In many villages (Lin. Hnt. Rut.) it is customary to ring what is called the Spur-peal, either at the close of the morning service, or in the evening of the Sunday when the banns are published for the first time. Formerly in parts of Wiltshire a man whose banns had been published for the first time was said to have: vallen plump out o’ the pulpit laas’ Zunday, and he was asked how his shoulder was, since it had been put out o’ one side. Parallel to this is the remark: He’s gotten broken-ribbed to-day (Lin.); and further, there are the expressions: to fall over the desk (w.Cy.); and to be thrown over the balk (n.Cy.), balk here signifying the rood-beam dividing the chancel of a church from the nave. If after the banns have been published the marriage does not take place, the deserted one is said to hang over the balk; or, to be hung in the bell-ropes (Chs. Der. Wor.). Tradition in Sussex says that if a man goes to church to hear his banns read, his children will be born deaf and dumb. If a man withdraws his banns after they have been given in, his projected marriage is spoken of as a rue-bargain (Lan.). Them at’s e’ a horry to wed gen’lins eats rew-pie afoore thaay’ve been married a year is a Lincolnshire way of saying: Marry in haste and repent at leisure. To get married is: to tie a knot wi the tongue, at yan cannot louze wi’ yan’s teeth (Yks. Nhp.).
Formerly in Scotland and the north of England it was not uncommon for the wedding-guests to contribute either in money or in kind to the expenses of the marriage entertainment. Such a wedding was called a bidden-wedding (Cum. Wm. Lan.), bride-wain (n.Cy.), or penny-wedding (Sc.). In Lancashire, when the couple to be married were of the very poor, it was once customary for the friends to assemble on the wedding-day, and build for them a house of clay and wood, termed post and petrel; or wattle and daub. The relations provided a few articles of necessary furniture, and when the clay bigging was completed the day was concluded with music and dancing.
Lucky and Unlucky Days for Weddings
In fixing the date of the wedding care must be taken to note on which day of the week it falls, for each day of the week is supposed to have its special influence on the future life of the wedded pair:
Monday for wealth,
Tuesday for health,
Wednesday is the best day of all,
Thursday for crosses,