Kissing the Bride.
he parents of a bride in humble circumstances rarely attend the marriage ceremony at the church. The father’s place is usually filled by one of the bridegroom’s friends. He, in some parts of the North of England, claims the privilege of first kissing the newly-made wife, in right of his temporary paternity. Some of the old-fashioned clergy regarded the prerogative as theirs, and were by no means slow in exercising it. As soon as the ceremony was completed they never failed to quickly kiss the bride. Even a shy and retiring vicar would not neglect the pleasant duty. The Rev. Thomas Ebdon, vicar of Merrington, who was deemed the most bashful of men, always kissed the women he married.
It is related of a priest, who was a stranger to the manners and customs of the Yorkshire folk, that, after marrying a couple, he was surprised to see the party still standing as if something more was expected. He at last asked why they were waiting. “Please, sir,” said the bridegroom, “ye’ve no kissed Molly.”
Mr. William Henderson, in his “Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties,” a work drawn upon for these statements, says that he can “testify that, within the last ten years, a fair lady, from the county of Durham, who was married in the south of England, so undoubtedly reckoned upon the clerical salute that, after waiting in vain, she boldly took the initiative, and bestowed a kiss on the much-amazed south-country vicar.” Mr. Henderson’s work was published in 1879.
According to the “Folk-Lore of the West of Scotland,” by James Napier, published in 1879, the kissing custom was practised in that country. “As soon as the ceremony was concluded,” says Mr. Napier, “there was a rush on the part of young men to get the first kiss of the newly-made wife. This was frequently taken by the clergyman himself, a survival of an old custom said to have been practised in the middle ages.” In an old song, the bridegroom thus addresses the minister:
“It’s no very decent for you to be kissing,
It does not look well wi’ the black coat ava’,
’Twould hae set you far better tae gi’en us your blessing,
Than thus by such tricks to be breaking the law.
Dear Watty, quo’ Robin, it’s just an auld custom,
And the thing that is common should ne’er be ill taen,
For where ye are wrong, if ye hadna a wished him,
You should have been first. It’s yoursel it’s to blame.”
This custom appears to have been very general in past times, and Mr. Henderson suggests that “it may possibly be a dim memorial of the osculum pacis, or the presentation of the Pax to the newly-married pair.”