Rensselaer Union, Volume 3, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 June 1871 — WEDDING-DAY SUPERSTITIONS. [ARTICLE]

WEDDING-DAY SUPERSTITIONS.

In olden days, June was held the most propitious month in the twelve for marriage, a happy result being rendered doubly certain if the ceremony was timed so as to take place at the full moom, or when the sun and moon were in conjunction. May is in these later days a favorite marrying month, so that one’s matrimonial superstition has gone tho way all such fancies are doomed, sooner or later, to go; for May used to be as much avoided by persons about to marry as June was favored, that merry month being supposed to be specially under the influence of malignant spirits delighting in domestic discord. “ The girls arc all stark naught that wed in May," is the verdict of one old saw ; declares—- * “From the marriages In May All tho bairns die aud decay.” a third pronounces, “Who marries be tween the sickle and the seytho will never thrive;” while a poet complimenting tho month at the expense of what should be the ruling passion in marriage-minded folks, sings— May never was tbe month of Love, For May Is full of flowers; But rather April, wet by kind, For Love Is lull of showers I But if old sayings rule the world, there would be no martying at all, for a very old one avers that no man enters the holy state without repenting his rashness before the year is out; unless, indeed, everybody determined like the old Norfolk farm*, to cheat the adage by wedding on the 31st of December. It was considered improper to marry upon Innocents’ Day, because it commemorated the slaughter of the children by Herod; and it was equally wrong to wed upon St. Joscdli’s Day. In fact, the whole season of Lent was declared sacred from the intrusion of Hymen’s devotees. “ Marry in Lent, and you’ll repent !”> and there are good people among us still who, if they do not believe that bit-of proverbial wisdom to be prophetic, undoubtedly think Lenten wedders deserve to lind it so. * We may possibly be doing a service to some of our readers by informing them (on the authority or a manuscript of the fifteenth century, quoted in “The Book of Days,’’) there arc just thirty two days in the year upon which it is uuadvisable to enter into matrimony—namely, seven in January, three each in February, March, May and December, two each in April, June, July, August, September and November; and one in October, the best month for committing matrimony; the actual unlucky days being these : January Ist, 2d, 4th, flth, 7tfl, 10th, 15tli; February (ith, 7th, 18th; March Ist, 6th, Bth ; April 6th, 11th: May sth, 6th, 7th; June 7tli, ■ls; July 6th, 19th; August 15th, 19th; Septenroer 6th, 7th; October 6th; November 15th, 16th, and December 15th, 16th,JTth. As to which is the best day of vfieweek, why— Monday for wealth; Tuesday for health; Wadnosday tho host day of all. Thursday for crosses; Friday for losses; » Saturday no luck at all. Friday is generally considered an unlucky day in England; but in France the country lasses look upon the first Friday in the month as peculiarly favorable, if not for the actual ceremony, at least for determining who will be one of the principal actors in it. - - Young ladies should abstain from listening to any one, whose surname begins with the same letter as their own. To change tho name and not the letter, Is a change for the worse and not for the bettor, and they would do well to take the precaution of placing their initials in conjunction with those of any admirer they Incline to favor, aud ask, like Malvollo, “ What should that alphabetical position portend ?” for if, of the united initials, any word can be formed, they may lie certain the owners of them will never be happy together. It is an unhappy omen for a wedding to be put off when the day has once been fixed. In Sweden it is believed much harm will ensue if a bridegroom stands at the junction of cross roads, or besides closed gate, upon his wedding morn. It is a batrsigU if the bride fails to shed tears on the happy day, or if she indulges herself by taking a last admiring glance at the looking glass after her toilet i$ completed; but she may gratify her vanity without danger if she leaves one hand ungloved until beyond temptation. To meet a priest, dog, cat, lizard or serpent on tho way to church—to look back, or to mount many steps before gaining the church door, are alike ominous of future unhappi ness; and according to north •country notions, it is courting misfortune to marry in green, or while there is an open grave in the church yard, or to go in at one door and out at another. The weather, too, has a good or bad influence upon affairs; happy is the bride that the sun shines on, and, of course, tho converse is equally true. Where the Scottish custom is welcomed home by the mother meeting Ahem at the door, and the breaking of a currant bun over the head of the bride before her foot crosses the threshold, it is thought a very bad omen if the bun be by any mistake broken over any head but that to which the honor is duo. If a bridal party ventures off dry land, they must go up stream; should they be fool hardy enougivto go down the water, either the bride, the groom, or one of the bridesmaids will infallibly feed the fishes. Spite of the 1 faith in there being luck in odd numbers, it* is a belief in the North of Eng-

land that one of the wedding guests will die within a year, unless the party counts even. 1 The only omens we know of tending to encourage adventure in tho great lottery of life are the meeting of a wolf, spider on tho way to chureh, and a cat sneezing within the bride’s hearing on the day before the wedding; but, fortunately, there are many ways of insuring iiappy fortune. In the Highlands of Scotland, the malicious influences of warlock and witches used to be kept at bay by preventing auy unlucky dog passing between the couple on their road to church, and taking care ■the bridegroom’s shoe bore no latchet buckle. By using gray horses in the bridal carriage, the same good purpose is effected. Swedish bridegrooms sew garlic, olives and rosemary in their wedding garments, ta frustrate tlffc evil designs of the trolls aud sprites, and the attendants on the lady carry bouquets of the same herbs in their hahds, while the bride herself fills her pockets with bread, which she dispenses to any poor wayfarer she espies as she goes to church, every piece she gets rid of averting a misfortune. The gift, however, is of no use to the receiver, since, if he eats it, he thereby brings the misfortune upon his own head. Manxmen find a pocketful of salt equally efficacious. In China they have a curious ceremony, believed to be a never-failing means of making a, marriage turn out well for the lady. When she has taken her place in tho sedan in which she is to be carried to her future home, her father and mother, or other near relatives, hold a bed quilt up by its four corners in front of the bridal chair. Into this one of the bride’s female cronies tosses, one by one, four bread cakes (the gift of the bridegroom’s family,) sending them high'up in air; while the lady most concerned in the matter repeats without ceasing sentences invoking happiness upon herself and spouse, to which the company assembled respond with the Chinese equivalent for “ amen."

The Cornish well of St. Kcyno possesses The quality—that man and wife, Whose chance or choice attains. First of the sacred stroum to drink. Thereby tho mastery gains; but in Sweden the damsel, ambitious of ruling her lord as well as his house, can attain her wish by merely contriving to sec him on the bridal morning before he secs her; or, failing in this, she has yet another chance at the last moment, by putting her right foot before that of the man when they approach the altar. The lately revived custom of throwing shoes after a newly-wedded couple for luck, is a very old one. In the Isle of Man the shoe is thrown after the bride and bridegroom as they leave tiieir respective abodes; but the ceremony is generally performed elsewhere, upon the departure of the boro and heroine of tho day for the honey-moon trip. In some parts of Kent the shoe throwing does not take place until after they have gone, when the single ladies range themselves in one line, and the bachelors range themselves in another. An old shoe is thrown as far as the thrower’s strength periftits, and the ladies race after it, the winner being rewarded by the assurance that she will be married before any of her rivals. She then throws the shoe at the gentlemen, the one she hits laying the same pleasing unction to his heart. Something like this is practiced, too, in Yorkshire and Scotland. In Germany it used to be the rule for the bride, as she was being conducted to her chamber, to take off her shoe and throw it among the guests who battled for its possession, the successful he or she being held destined to be speedily married and settled. In some places the threshold is kept warm for another bride by pouring a kettleful of hot. water down the steps as soon as the bride and bridegroom have taken their departure ; the fancy being, that before the water dries up another match will be made up, or “flow on,” and that it will not be very long before another wedding couple passes over the same ground. In Prussia, the method adopted of invoking blessings on a newly-married pair used to be the more expensive one of smashing crockery against the door of the house in which they were domiciled. The breaking of a wedding ring is an omen that its wearer will soon be a widow. A correspondent of Notea and Queries found this fancy current in Essex a few years ago. A man had been murdered in that county, and his widow said, “ I thought I should soon lose him, for I brokc-niy wedding ring the other day ; and my sistqr^too, lost her husband after breaking her ring. It is a sure sign!” Such notions are far more prevalent than one would suppose, and the schoolmaster will have to work hard and, long before they are entirely eradicated in our land.— Chambers' JournpL

A writer in Harper's Weekly gives an amusing story of how a gentlem an waa treated who weut into tilt; office of the “ John Dull ’’.newspaper during Theodore Hook’s supposed connection with that sheet. He was evidently in a state of extreme exasperation, and was armed with a stout cudgel. His application to, see the editor was answered by a request to walk up to the second floor front room. The room was empty, but presently there entered to him a huge, tall, broad-shouldered fellow, who, in unmitigated brogue, asked .- “What do you plase to want, sur?” “ Want!” said the gentleman, “ I want the editor.” “ I’m the idditur, sur, at your service;” upon which the gentleman, seeing that no good could anse from an encounter with such an “ editor,* 1 ’ made his way down stairs and out of the house without a word. A writer in the St. Paul Pmt tells the following huge strawberry story.- He says he “ has seen sepres of miles of coun try a degree of latitude north of Fort Totten, which was an almost continuous growth of wild strawberries, growing, in many of the richer spaces, not on horizontal vines, but on bushes, many of them, three and four feet high, on which tho clusters of this delicious fruit attained a size rarely reached by assiduous cultivation. So profuse was this native production of strawberries on what is called the Pembina Mountains, that the cart-wheels, Crushing tho berries as they revolved, were perfectly red with the wild vintage of the plains, and left long crimson trails, as of blood, behind them. The little mining town of Auburn, California, has' a tantalizing mystery. During the last eighteen months various Chinamen have brought into the village and sold chunks of pure gold, varying in value from $26 to S2OO, which seems to have bocn roughly chopped off from a solid* mass. Where they come from np body knows; but their character indicates that the Chinamen have found somewhere a pretty considerable mans of pure material, from which they work off chunks like these from tune to time.