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Dinner over, the bride sticks her knife into the cheese, and all at table endeavour to seize it. He who succeeds without cutting his fingers in the struggle, thereby ensures happiness in his married life. The knife is called the best man's prize,' since commonly the best man' secures it. Should he fail to do so, he will indeed be unfortunate in his matrimonial views. The knife is, at any rate, a prize for male hands only; the maidens try to possess themselves of a 'shaping' of the wedding-dress, for use in certain divinations regarding their future husbands. And the bride herself should wear something borrowed-for what reason I am not informed.

It should perhaps have been mentioned sooner, that as the newly-married wife enters her new home on returning from kirk, one of the oldest inhabitants of the neighbourhood, who has been stationed on the threshold, throws a plateful of short-bread over her head, so that it falls outside. A scramble ensues, for it is deemed very fortunate to get a piece of the short-bread, and dreams of sweethearts attend its being placed under the pillow. A variation of this custom extends as far south as the East Riding of Yorkshire, where, on the bride's arrival at her father's door, a plate of cake is flung from an upper window upon the crowd below. An augury is then drawn from the fate which attends the plate; the more pieces it breaks into the better; if it reach the ground unbroken, the omen is very unfavourable.

The custom of passing bridecake through the weddingring, and placing it under the pillow, to dream upon, and that of throwing a shoe after the bride and bridegroom, are sometimes claimed as peculiarly northern. If so, they have travelled southwards very steadily, for

they now prevail in every county in England. This last observance is usually said to be for luck,' but a writer in Notes and Queries' (vol. vii. p. 411) suggests that it is rather a symbol of renunciation of all right in the bride by her father or guardian, and the transference of it to her husband. He quotes Ps. lx. 8, 'Over Edom have I cast out my shoe,' as meaning, 'I have wholly cast it off;' and further illustrates the idea by a reference to Ruth iv. 7, 8. Ruth's kinsman, it will be remembered, refused to marry her, and to redeem her inheritance; therefore, as it was the custom in Israel concerning redeeming and concerning changing, that a man plucked off his shoe and delivered it to his neighbour,' the kinsman plucked off his shoe, as a public renunciation of Ruth and of his own claim of premarriage.1

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The northern counties of England have, however, their own exclusively local wedding customs. I am informed, by the Rev. J. Barnby, 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 his 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

It may be enquired, however, whether there is any connexion between this custom and the usage of Swedish brides, to let a shoe slip off or drop a handkerchief, in the hope that the bridegroom, from politeness, will stoop to pick it up. If he does so it will be his lot to submit, i.e. to bend his back, all through his married life. A good deal of Swedish bridal folk lore points to the desire for mastery: e.g., the bride must endeavour to see her bridegroom before he sees her, to place her foot before his during the marriage ceremony, to sit down first in the bridal chair, and all that she may bear sway.-Thorpe's Mythology, vol. ii. p. 108.

to walk a horse-shouting all the time, and firing volleys from the guns they carry with them. Next they will dash along the road in advance of the party, carrying the whisky-bottle, and compelling everyone they meet to pledge the newly-married pair. One can guess,' he adds, what the Border mosstroopers were, by seeing the Dalesmen at a wedding.' In rural parts, too, of the county of Durham, the bridal party is escorted to church by men armed with guns, which they fire again and again close to the ears of bride and bridesmaids, terrifying them sometimes not a little. Guisborough, in Cleveland, I am told that these guns are fired over the heads of the newly-married couple all the way from church. There, too, it has been customary for the bridegroom to offer a handful of money together with the ring to the clergyman; out of this the fees were taken, and the overplus returned.

At

Through Cleveland, he who gives the bride away claims the first kiss in right of his temporary paternity. One clerical friend of mine, however, declares that it is the privilege of the parson who ties the knot; and though he cannot aver that he has ever availed himself of it, he knows an old north-country clergyman who was reported so to do. Another tells me that a brotherclergyman, a stranger in the country, after performing a marriage in a country village in Yorkshire, was surprised to see the party keep together, as if expecting something more. 'What are you waiting for?' he asked, at last. Please, sir,' was the bridegroom's answer, 'ye've no kissed Molly.' And my old friend, the late Dr. Raine, used to relate how the Rev. T. E., Sacrist of the Cathedral and Vicar of Merrington, invariably kept up the custom when he performed the marriage ceremony, and this plainly as a matter of

obligation, for he was one of the most shy and retiring of men. Nay, I 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 for it in vain, she boldly took the initiative, and bestowed. a kiss upon the much-amazed south-country vicar.

A singular local custom still exists in the village of Whitburn, near Sunderland-that of sending what are called hot pots to church, to meet the bride and bridegroom on coming out. A gentleman of that place thus describes what took place at his own marriage last year: 'After the vestry scene, the bridal party having formed in procession for leaving the church, we were stopped in the porch by a row of five or six women, ranged to our left hand, each holding a large mug with a cloth oyer it. These were in turn presented to me, and handed by me to my wife, who, after taking a sip, returned it to me. It was then passed to the next couple, and so on in the same form to all the party. The composition in these mugs was mostly, I am sorry to say, simply horrible; one or two were very fair, one very good. They are sent to the church by all classes, and are considered a great compliment. I have never heard of this custom elsewhere. Here it has existed within the memory of the oldest inhabitant, and an aged fisherwoman, who has been married some sixty-five years, tells me that at her wedding there were seventy hot pots.'

Another old wedding usage seems confined to Yorkshire. In remote parts of that county it is the custom to pour a kettle-full 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.

In many of the rural parts of Cumberland this curious

practice exists.

When the lover of a Cumbrian maiden proves unfaithful to her, she is, by way of consolation, rubbed with pease-straw by the neighbouring lads; and should a Cumbrian youth lose his sweetheart, through her marriage with his rival, the same sort of comfort is administered to him by the lasses of the village. This is illustrated by the following verse from an old Cumbrian ballad :—

For Jock the young Laird was new wedded,

His auld sweetheart Jennie linked wae,

While some were aw tittern and flyein

The lads rubbed her down wi' pease-straw.

This reminds me of a custom very common among the schoolboys in the neighbouring county of Durham, when, if a boy is so unlucky as to fall into trouble, and so weak as to show it by crying, he is quickly beset by his companions, who rub him down with their coatsleeves, and that in such rough style as to make him forget past troubles in present discomfort.

It is unlucky for a woman to marry a man whose surname begins with the same letter as her own, for:

If you change the name and not the letter,
You change for the worse and not for the better.

A Yorkshire wedding is, by rights, wound up by a race for a ribbon. In Cleveland this ribbon is given by the bridegroom, as he leaves the church, and all who choose run for it, in sight of the house where the wedding-feast is held. All the racers, winner and losers alike, are entitled to a glass of spirits each; and accordingly, as soon as the race is over, they present themselves at the house, and ask for their 'lowance without any particular invitation. At the village of Melsonby, near Darlington, and in the adjoining district,