“Here come our party at last! What a host they have collected! the church will not hold them all. And there is pretty Lota, with her bridesmaids after her. Well, I hope no one will pull her crown off; how pretty she looks in it.”
“Not half so pretty as that little fresh-looking, innocent, Lilla Nordlingen,” said Birger. “Upon my word I am half inclined to make love to her myself.”
“You had better not, Mr. Guardsman, you do not stand the ghost of a chance; how she would turn up that innocent little Norwegian nose of hers at a brute of a Swede. Besides, do you not see how she is making love to the Captain, how uncommonly smart the Captain has turned out in his red uniform! to which the moustache he has been growing ever since he has been here, forms so appropriate an appendage. Your blue and yellow would look dingy to eyes that have been dazzled with such scarlet magnificence.”
“Ah, well, we will see. The Captain looks as if he were saying to her, ‘Aimez moi vite, car je pars demain.’”
“That’s your best chance,” said the Parson, maliciously; “but come, the bells are ringing in, and we had better get into the ranks of the procession. Here comes Nordlingen, with his long-legged Candidatus at his heels.”
While the Pfarrherr went in to array himself in his robes, the different marriage parties, warned by the bells, had begun to arrange themselves into one grand procession; while their respective musicians, who together formed a pretty numerous band, laid their heads together about the tune to be played on this grand occasion, and tuned their fiddles into concord.
The party had by this time increased considerably, and when at last the band, having settled their harmonious differences, marched up the nave of the church playing, somewhat incongruously, a jolly polka, there marched after them no less than six happy couples, with their followers, each bride and each bridegroom having a silver ort (ninepence) tied up under their respective garters, for luck. Only two of the six were crowned brides, and that, Birger whispered, as they took their places, was a wonderfully large proportion.
First after the fiddlers came the Candidatus in his gown, who had gone out to marshal the procession; then came the married men related to the parties, in their short blue jackets and white-fronted shirts, some of which were clean; then came the bridegrooms with their bridesmen, dressed something in the same fashion, except that they affected buckskin breeches and white stockings: each bridegroom, by way of distinction, had a fine white handkerchief (cambric, if he could possibly come by it), tied round his right arm; then came the bridesmaids in green, (which there is not an unlucky colour as it is with us), with bare heads, and their hair, which was plaited with many coloured ribands, hanging down their backs in two tails; then the bride-leaders, married women, who are supposed to encourage the brides during the ceremony, and lastly, the brides themselves, in all their splendour. The chancel was as full as it could hold, the principals disposing themselves round the altar, kneeling, while the bridesmaids held canopies of shawls and handkerchiefs over their heads, and the congregation craned in through the chancel rails, while the priest proceeded with the service.
Scarcely was the benediction pronounced, when the fiddlers again struck up their polka, and the happy couples, now arm-in-arm, marched down after them, (the wedding-party forming a sort of escort), and proceeded with great ceremony to the præstgaard meadow, where the marriage feast—an enormous pic-nic—was prepared for them, and where the wedding presents, many of them of considerable value, were set out for public inspection.
These were not exactly the expensive sort of trumpery which forms the staple of bridal presents in England,—silver vessels that no one ever drinks out of, and dressing cases far too expensive for ordinary use. The presents here were real honest implements of house-keeping or farming; pots and pans, and plates and dishes, and chairs and tables,—spades, pickaxes: a tonne of rye-meal was the offering of one,—a sack of potatoes of another; here was a pile of oderiferous salt-fish,—there a flitch of bacon, at which one of the Captain’s best jokes missed fire—bacon having no allegorical value whatever in Norway; here again was a good milch cow, tethered to a tree, or half-a-dozen sheep or pigs folded with hurdles, while the bride’s feather-beds would have borne a high value in England. Lota’s were something quite magnificent. With such hunters in her train, as Torkel and poor Svensen, and her own brother Jan, (who in his younger days and before he had found out some one to whom to transfer his youthful allegiance, had contributed largely to his sister’s stores), it was not to be wondered at if she easily eclipsed all the brides of the season.