We learn that it was a former custom to cut the bride-cake into little squares or dice, small enough to be passed through the wedding-ring. A slice drawn through the ring thrice (some have it nine times), and afterward put under the pillow, will make an unmarried man or woman dream of his or her future wife or husband. This is another of those old customs of which trial is so often made “just for the fun of the thing, you know!”
The Charivari, or mock serenade, is another custom still much affected in many places, notably so in our rural districts, though to our own mind “more honored in the breach than in the observance.” The averred object is to make “night hideous,” and is usually completely successful. In the wee sma’ hours, while sleeping peacefully in their beds, the newly wedded pair are suddenly awakened by a most infernal din under their windows, caused by the blowing of tin horns, the thumping of tin pans, ringing of cowbells, and like instruments of torture. To get rid of his tormentors the bridegroom is expected to hold an impromptu reception, or, in other words, “to treat the crowd,” which is more often the real object of this silly affair, to which we fail to discover one redeeming feature.
The custom of wearing the wedding ring upon the left hand originated, so we are told, in the common belief that the left hand lay nearest to the heart.
As is well known, the Puritans tried to abolish the use of the ring in marriage. According to Butler in “Hudibras”:—
“Others were for abolishing
That tool of matrimony—a ring
With which the unsatisfied bridegroom
Is married only to a thumb.”
The times have indeed changed since in the early days of New England no Puritan maiden would have been married with a ring for worlds. When Edward Winslow was cited before the Lord’s Commissioners of Plantations, upon the complaint of Thomas Morton, he was asked among other things about the marriage customs practised in the colony. He answered frankly that the ceremony was performed by magistrates. Morton, his accuser, declares that the people of New England held the use of a ring in marriage to be “a relic of popery, a diabolical circle for the Devell to daunce in.”
The first marriage in Plymouth Colony, that of the same Edward Winslow to Susannah White, was performed by a magistrate, as being a civil rather than a religious contract. From this time to 1680, marriages were solemnized by a magistrate, or by persons specially appointed for that purpose, who were restricted to particular towns or districts. Governor Hutchinson, in his history of Massachusetts, says he believes “there was no instance of marriage by a clergyman during their first charter.” If a minister happened to be present, he was desired to pray. It is difficult to assign the reason why clergymen were excluded from performing this ceremony. In new settlements, it must have been solemnized by persons not always the most proper for that purpose, considering of what importance it is to society, that a sense of this ordinance, at least in some degree sacred, should be maintained and preserved.
The first marriage solemnized at Guilford, Connecticut, took place in the minister’s house. It is not learned whether he performed the ceremony or not. The marriage feast consisted wholly of pork and beans. As time wore on, marriages became occasions of much more ceremony than they were fifty or sixty years ago. During the Revolutionary period, and even later, the bride was visited daily for four successive weeks.
A gold wedding-ring is accounted a sure cure for sties.
If the youngest daughter of the family should be married before her older sisters, they must all dance at her wedding in their stockings-feet, if they wish to have husbands.