A book of folk-lore by Sabine Baring-Gould

"Hey derry! Hey derry! Hey derry dan!

But for--

"The indictment is, of course, made as ludicrous as possible, and intermixed with coarse jests and mockery."

Not many years ago the bride of a medical man in Yorkshire, thinking that her husband was too warmly attached to a servant maid who had been some time in his service, ran away to her father's house. Popular feeling was on her side, and the stang was ridden for some nights before the surgeon's door. The end was that he had to dismiss the servant, whereupon the wife returned to him.

In France the Charivari is much of the same character. In Devonshire it takes a different form, and always occurs on the wedding night of a couple who have caused some talk--but not by any means always justly. It is called the Stag Hunt, and notice is given of its coming off a few days before. I copied one of these:--

This is to give Notice,

That on Saturday evening next, at 8 o'clock p.m., The Red Hunter will assemble

his hounds at the Cross, and there will be a famous Stag Hunt.

On such an occasion a man personates the stag, having horns attached to his head and a bladder full of blood under his chin. The huntsman wears a scarlet coat and blows a horn, and the pack is made up of yelping, barking boys. The hunt goes on up and down the road with incredible noise, till at last the stag is brought to bay on the doorstep of the newly-married pair, when the huntsman stands astride over the fallen stag, blows a furious blast, and proceeds to slit the bladder with his knife and pour the blood over the stone and threshold.

This has happened in my own immediate neighbourhood at least seven times in the last twenty years.

It is supposed to be the expression of outraged moral opinion; but it has degenerated into a performance on the occasion of any marriage; and young people, if they can possibly afford it, manage to flee the village for a couple of days or more--not always successfully, for the performance, if they be at all unpopular, is organised to salute them on their return.

In Devonshire, as a bride leaves the church an old woman presents her with a little bag containing hazel nuts. These have the same signification as rice, and betoken fruitfulness--the rice is undoubtedly a late substitution for hazel nuts. And now we have confetti of paper as substitute for rice, itself a substitute for nuts. Catullus tells us that among the ancient Romans newly--married people were given nuts. Among the Germans "to go a-nutting" is a euphemism for love-making; and the saying goes that a year in which are plenty of nuts will also be one in which many children will be born.

The hazel nut would seem to have been a symbol of life. In a Celtic grave opened near Tuttlingen, in WUrtemberg, in 1846, was found a body in a coffin made of a scooped--out tree with iron sword and bow, and a pile of fifteen hazel nuts. Another had in its hand a cherry stone, and between its feet thirty-two nuts.

On the wedding day the Romans cast nuts. Catullus refers to this usage. So does Virgil--

Sparge, marite, nuces; tibi descrit Hesperus Octam. Bucol. viii. v. 30

At Gaillac, in France, they do not wait the completion of the ceremony; for whilst the young couple are still kneeling at the foot of the altar, a rain of nuts is poured over their heads and down their backs. In the Gex, at the ball which the bride is expected to give on the day when her banns are published for the first time, all the guests arrive with nuts in both their hands wherewith to salute her. In Poitou the floor of the room where the wedding breakfast is to be held is strewn with nuts. In the department of Hautes-Alpes the bride, as she goes through the village, is made to eat sugar plums made in the shape of hazel nuts.

Wright, in his Collection of Medieval Latin Stories, has this: "I have seen in many places, when women get married, and are leaving the church and returning home, that corn is thrown in their faces with cries of 'Abudantia! Abudantia!' that in French is Plente, plente; and yet very often before the year is out they have remained poor and beggars, and deficient in abundance of all good things."

In the Jura, acorns are scattered in place of nuts or corn.

The casting of the old shoe signifies the surrender of authority by the father to the husband of his daughter. In some French provinces, when the bride is about to go to church, all her old shoes have been hidden away. In Roussillon it is always the nearest relative to the bridegroom who puts on her shoes, and these are new. The meaning comes out clearer in Berry, where all the assistants try to put the bride's shoes on, but fail, and it is only the bridegroom who succeeds. It was also a custom in Germany for the old shoes to be left behind, and new shoes given by the bridegroom to be assumed. A harsher way in Germany was for him to tread hard on the bride's foot, to show that he would be master.

In Scandinavia, if a man desired to adopt a son he slaughtered an ox, had the hide taken off from the right leg, and a shoe made out of it. This shoe the man first drew on, and then passed it on to his adopted son, who also put his foot into it. This indicated that he has passed under the authority of the father. When in the Psalm the expression occurs, "Over Edom have I cast out My shoe," the meaning is that Jehovah extended His authority over Edom. And when we say that a man has stepped into his father's shoes, we mean that the authority, position and consequence of the parent has been transferred to his son.

When Ruth's kinsman refused to marry her, and resigned all authority and rights over her, "as it was the custom in Israel concerning redeeming and concerning changing, a man plucked off his shoe and delivered it to his neighbour" (Ruth iv. 7, 8).

In Yorkshire. in some Darts it is the custom to pour a kettleful of boiling water over the doorstep just after the bride has left her old home; and they say that before it dries up another marriage is sure to be agreed on. But I have seen in Devonshire the doorstep well scrubbed with water and soap directly the bride has left; and this was to wash away the impress of her foot, and show that the old home was to be no more a home to her, as she had chosen another.

Another symbolical act indicative of a change of life is the placing of a bench or stool at the church door, over which the bride and bridegroom are constrained to leap.

I have several times in Yorkshire seen at a wedding a race for a ribbon. Properly speaking, it should be the bride's garter which is claimed. She stands at the winning-post, and the lads race to see who can reach her first and get the ribbon and a kiss. But the ribbon is a substitute for the garter, provided by the bridegroom; the usage dates back to a remote and particularly barbarous antiquity. The girl belonged to her tribe, and the bridegroom could not obtain her as his wife without resistance from the youths of the tribe, and buying them off. In France and in Flanders it existed, and exists still. It was even forbidden by a Council held at Milan as late as 1586. In France the girl who married out of her village, on leaving its confines, flung back at the pursuing youths a ball of wool containing a piece of silver money, and whilst they struggled and fought for its possession she made her escape. At the present day a ribbon is extended across her path, and she pays a fee to have it lowered and let her go her way. Formerly the struggle to obtain the bride's garter took place directly after the nuptial benediction, and Brand, in his Popular Antiquities, gives an account of it. But the bride usually gave it away herself, and it was cut into small pieces.

Mr Henderson gives an account of some wild proceedings that take place at a wedding in the North of England. He says, "I am informed by the Rev. J. Barmby that a wedding in the Dales of Yorkshire is indeed a thing to see; that nothing can be imagined comparable to it in wildness and obstreperous mirth. The bride and bridegroom may possibly be a little subdued, but their friends are like men bereft of reason. They career round the bridal party like Arabs of the desert, galloping over ground on which, in cooler moments, they would hesitate even to walk a horse--shouting all the time, and firing volleys from the guns they carry with them... In the higher parts of Northumberland, as well as on the other side of the Border, the scene is, if possible, still more wild."

The custom of firing guns when accompanying the bride is very widely distributed, and I have seen the same in the Pyrenees and in Bavaria.

This is a relic of a very arl usage, when the bride was carried away by alover; and very often among savage tribes the attempt at bride-capture was made when she was being about to be given away to one of her own stock.

[a] Strange Survivals. Methuen & Co.