You remember, Judicia, how we have sometimes been amused at the profound melancholy which occasionally invests a wedding at home. Do you remember how we have seen the weeping mother of the bride or groom sobbing out her congratulations, and how sometimes the whole assembly was almost dissolved in tears.
Well, in the olden times the Finns carried the mournful wedding to the nth degree of melancholy. As late as 1899 a writer in a popular magazine, speaking of a Russian wedding just across the Finnish border, says: “Such a thing as a radiant bride is unknown in those regions, and the chief idea seems to be to make as great a show of grief as possible, and to make the function as dismal as a funeral.”
A weeping wedding is not now known in Finland except in the remotest districts, but I am told that not long ago a company of professional wedding weepers were brought to Helsingfors from the far north to show how they could enliven marriage festivities and to remind a modern bride of the customs of long ago.
The Kalevala, that thesaurus of rhythmical information concerning ancient customs, tells us what was said to the bride before she left for her new home, to make her thoroughly appreciate the old homstead, and also the way in which she replied to the jeremiad. I will quote for you a few more lines:
“Hast thou never, youthful maiden,
On both sides surveyed the question,
Looked beyond the present moment,
When the bargain was concluded?
All thy life must thou be weeping,
And for many years lamenting,