Since today is THE day for love and for some, marriage, I thought I would share a now defunct wedding tradition. This comes from my Forgotten English desk calendar:
Sir Charles Igglesden's Those Superstitions (1931) mentioned a defunct wedding tradition in which a groom's livelihood was displayed in the ceremony: "It is recorded how the carpenter's journey from the church door to the roadway was strewn with wooden chips. Along the coast it was customary for the fisherman and his bride to walk over nets. The path of the blacksmith bridegroom was strewn with horseshoes and pieces of old iron, and in the villages of hop-growing counties hops were placed along the footpath of a hop-grower as he left the church with his bride. One can visualize the awkward emblems of other callings, such as the butcher and his bride stepping over roast beef and mutton chops, or an ironmonger painfully escaping from nails turned upwards. And there was the fishmonger bridegroom treading over slippery fish which had been affected by the heat of the sun. A baker went so far as to wade through flour. A tanner passed over the skins of oxen and sheep-cured, let us hope".
Some traditions are best forgotten!!
Sir Charles Igglesden's Those Superstitions (1931) mentioned a defunct wedding tradition in which a groom's livelihood was displayed in the ceremony: "It is recorded how the carpenter's journey from the church door to the roadway was strewn with wooden chips. Along the coast it was customary for the fisherman and his bride to walk over nets. The path of the blacksmith bridegroom was strewn with horseshoes and pieces of old iron, and in the villages of hop-growing counties hops were placed along the footpath of a hop-grower as he left the church with his bride. One can visualize the awkward emblems of other callings, such as the butcher and his bride stepping over roast beef and mutton chops, or an ironmonger painfully escaping from nails turned upwards. And there was the fishmonger bridegroom treading over slippery fish which had been affected by the heat of the sun. A baker went so far as to wade through flour. A tanner passed over the skins of oxen and sheep-cured, let us hope".
Some traditions are best forgotten!!
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