Sidney Heath
Portland Cottages
An old-time Portland wedding was an amusing ceremony. The bride and bridegroom always walked to church, followed by their friends in couples. After the wedding-feast the whole party perambulated the island, calling at their friends’ houses en route. The well-to-do kept up festivities perhaps for two or three days. It was the proud boast of an old lady of the last century that she had had more couples follow her at her wedding in 1809 than had ever been known in the island, and that her wedding had been kept up longer than any other. She had been followed by nearly seventy couples, and the wedding festivities had been celebrated for a week afterwards.
An island funeral was a peculiarly mournful sight, the coffin being carried by relays of bearers, followed by a long procession of mourners, walking slowly two by two, clad in garments of the deepest woe. If, however, the deceased were an infant or very young child, the bearers would consist of young girls dressed completely in white.
The fourteenth of May, when the cows were turned into the Common, was kept as a gala day. Girls dressed in white, and club-walking, and general rejoicing took place. There was also a very old custom of keeping the household fires going from November to May, and not permitting them to be lit again (except for necessary cooking) from May till November. An old Portlander who died about 1830 was the last to adhere rigidly to this rule.
Superstition of all kinds was rife, and so akin were some of the old beliefs to those of Devon and Cornwall as to betray a common origin. Numerous and varied were the healing remedies employed by the old people; whilst, coupled with many cooking recipes, which would be regarded to-day with feelings akin to disgust, are some which can still be appreciated, such as Royal Pudding, roast Portland lamb, and the most approved method of cooking wheat-ears—all dishes beloved by King George III., and prepared for him at the old “Portland Arms,” when His Most Gracious Majesty visited the Island.
THE ISLE OF PURBECK
By A. D. Moullin
ORTH of the irregular coast-line of Dorset, from Lulworth on the west to Handfast Point and Old Harry Rocks on the east (a distance of twelve miles), and extending inland for some five to eight miles, lies a district of about a hundred square miles in area, known as the Isle of Purbeck. It is an island only in the same sense as Thanet. It is bounded on the north by Poole Harbour and the river Frome; on the west, partly by Luckford Lake, a tributary of the Frome; and an imaginary line running southward to the rugged coast-line forms its southern and eastern boundary.