There is an article of dress which often plays a part at weddings, for old shoes are usually thrown after the newly-married pair, while boots, with a hole in them, filled with rice, are hung from the backs of carriages, and satin slippers have on occasion been fastened to the carriage door handle of the railway train which speeds the pair on their honeymoon.
We all know that the throwing of old slippers is intended to bring luck to the bride and bridegroom, but it is not apparent what particular form it is intended that the blessing should take, and the origin of the custom is difficult to determine. Mr. James E. Crombie,[24] after carefully considering the various superstitions connected with weddings and shoes, has come to the conclusion that the intention is to ensure that the young couple shall be blessed with children, and that old shoes are thrown because of the idea that the essence or life of the individual that wore them remains in them, and makes them powerful talismans.
In this connection it may be well to consider the importance which shoes have assumed at various times in connection with weddings and otherwise. So long ago as the year 1291, a law in Hamburg ordered that the bridegroom should give his bride a pair of shoes, and it is still a custom in Transylvania for the bridegroom to make a similar present on his wedding morning. In Greece the best man puts a new pair of boots, supplied by the bridegroom, on to the feet of the bride when she leaves her father’s house. In Bulgaria, a money present which the bridegroom makes to the relatives of the bride is called shoe money, and with it the father of the family buys shoes for it. This money is said to be a relic of the price that was paid to the clan from which a wife was taken.
Shoes have figured as part of wages, and they were thrown over the heads of the O’Neils by the O’Cahans when the former were chosen chiefs. This was done to symbolize the superiority of the throwers. In Russia, the wives as part of the wedding festivities remove their husband’s boots in order to show their subjection to him, though while the bride dutifully takes off her lord and master’s boots as a sign of subserviency, she always hits him on the head with one of them to show that she is not one whit inferior to him. It is said that the Hebrew word for shoe and wife are identical, and a Bedouin form of divorce is “She is my slipper, I have cast her off.” The casting of a shoe over land, as mentioned in the Bible, was symbolical of conquering it.
As regards fruitfulness, the Eskimo women carry a piece of an old shoe which has once been worn by European sailors, to make them prolific mothers. Women who are blessed with families in China present shoes to the “Mother goddess,” and those who wish for children borrow these shoes and vow that if the desired result is effected they will present another one to the divinity when the borrowed shoe is returned.
Mr. Crombie gives a number of instances to show that there is still a belief that the soul of persons may live in their shoes. In the Museum of Northern Antiquities at Copenhagen is a mummified corpse of a woman who was intentionally drowned in a bog, and from her body, after the murder, a shoe had been removed. During the Arran murder case at Edinburgh, in 1889, it transpired that the boots of the murdered man had been removed by the local constable, who had buried them on the seashore between high and low water marks. No explanation was forthcoming, though the man admitted that it was by the orders of his senior officer that he put them out of sight. There is no doubt but that the idea underlying the action was that of preventing the ghost of the murdered man from walking.
It must not be forgotten that shoes used to be thrown after anybody when he or she was starting on a journey, which in old days was a risky business, and Ben Jonson wrote, “Would I had Kemp’s shoes to throw after you.” This has been interpreted as meaning that Kemp was a lucky individual, and that something of him and his good fortune remained in his shoes. Summing up his remarks, Mr. Crombie says with regard to throwing shoes at weddings that by doing so “we should be doing for the young couple, in a more pleasant way, exactly the same as the relatives of the Galla bride did for her when they anointed her from top to toe with bullock’s blood. We should be doing for them with shoes what our Aryan ancestors did for their cattle with the sacred parna rod, and what the herdsmen of Sweden and The Mark do to this day, when on the 1st of May they watch on which branch of the mountain ash the sun first strikes, and then, cutting it down, beat the yearling heifers with it on the loins and haunches, repeating at each stroke a verse in which they pray that as sap comes into the birch so may milk fill the cow’s udder. We should be doing with shoes what the Romans did in ancient Rome at the festival of the Lupercalia, when the boys, armed with strips of the skin of the slaughtered goats, used to rush through the city striking all they met, and where women, particularly those who desired to be made fruitful, placed themselves naked in the way, and received the blows of the Luperci on their palms.”
At a wedding sometimes the priest’s vestments play a part. It is customary in some continental countries for the priest to wrap the hands of the bride and bridegroom in his stole, and even in some of our English churches the contracting parties are instructed to take hold of the stole by the officiating clergyman. We might mention that in many countries the bridal dresses are very beautiful, and are often survivals of very old-fashioned costumes. The Norwegian bridal dress is an instance of this. The wearing of a bridal crown is also a custom in Scandinavia, where it is said that every parish possesses its special crown which is the property of the church, but the use of it is only sanctioned when the bride bears an irreproachable character.
The wearing of orange blossom has apparently the same meaning, and it may be mentioned that on funeral monuments or brasses the wearing of a garland by the effigy of a girl means that she died a virgin.