FOLKMOOR – DEVONSHIRE WEDDINGS

Some years ago, when our daughter was in primary school, friends of ours got married. After leaving the church and posing for some of the obligatory photographs outside the building, the happy couple tried to leave the church grounds to go to the reception. But they could not. Our daughter was standing in the way of the gate, blocking the entire party from progressing on. In the end, it took a payment of five pounds from the groom to get her to move.

Fortunately, this was not our daughter being an annoying child, but rather was something pre-planned and requested by the bride and groom. It is an old wedding custom that is not generally seen these days. A garland of flowers forming a chain would be stretched across the road which the bride and groom would have to take to return home. Rather than being barred by our daughter or her equivalent, in the original custom all of the parish bachelors would be on duty guarding the chain. The groom would need to pay the toll to them to be able to pass.

Often in folklore, the use of money at a key time is a superstitious tradition which looks to invite wealth and prosperity. We see a few of these customs at New Year, for example. At weddings, we are familiar with rice or confetti being thrown, but we don’t often see coins. However, an old tradition of the ‘wedding scramble’ used to see the father of the bride or another member of the party tossing coins for the children attending to scramble to pick up. This is not unlike the coin scrambles which are historically traditional at a number of Devon fairs, such as those in Chulmleigh, Honiton or Kingsbridge.

An amalgamation of all of these elements was observed at a wedding in Lynton in North Devon and was recorded in 1900 by the Tiverton folklore collector Sarah Hewett. The bride was chained at the churchyard gates by a group of young men using pieces of rope and twisted hay which were adorned with flowers and ribbon. The toll to exit was paid by the bridegroom in the form of coins which he scattered on the ground, causing the men attending to scrabble for the money, giving time for the bride and groom to make their escape.

We have examined in this column before many divination customs which seek to show to a boy or a girl who they might be marrying in the year ahead. But once they reached the altar, there were a number of Devon customs which might be observed at a wedding ceremony and which, sadly, have all but died out these days.

Before many of our old churches were modified as various restoration works took place, it was not uncommon to see a small window in the partition between the nave and the belfry. During the wedding ceremony, a face might be spotted staring intently through this window at the proceedings. Were they waiting for the vicar to ask if anyone had any objections to the marriage, before rushing in? No: this face belonged to a member of the bellringing company. It was their job to watch for the moment that the ring was placed onto the finger of the bride. As soon as this took place, they would give the signal to the ringers who would begin a loud peal from the church tower, the act of which would make sure that the couple had good luck in their future life. Less fortunate was the vicar presiding over the service, who now had to reach the end of his pronouncements over the cacophony from above.

It was often the case in the West Country that the bride’s ring would not stay on the finger long once the ceremony was complete. This was because it was traditional, upon returning to the house, to pass any small bits of wedding cake that were remaining through the centre of the ring. Unmarried girls would then take these crumbs home and place them under their pillows, in order to dream of whom they would be marrying in the future.

In his ‘Book of Exmoor’ published in 1903, historian and writer Frederick John Snell recalls that he was told when visiting a farmhouse on Exmoor that the farmer’s son was going to soon be married. His sister was going to act as one of the bridesmaids as you might expect. She had been a bridesmaid before and this fact had caused other people present to make note that it was considered unlucky to be a bridesmaid three times.

There were various omens ascribed to the wedding day which would bring either good or bad luck. The bride would carry a small parcel of bread and cheese in her pocket which she should give to the first female that she saw when leaving the church to bring happiness. Presumably, wedding dresses were more replete with pockets than they are in modern times, because sprigs of rosemary and cloves of garlic should also be carried for luck.

Because witches, pixies or evil spirits were the harbingers of harm in our superstitious past, there was a whole list of animals whose sighting was said to be a bringer of bad luck. These included cats, dogs or hares passing between the couple, a raven hovering over them or a toad, frog or any other reptile being seen. This was because all of these animals were thought of as either creatures which malevolent parties could change into, or otherwise they were associated with them in the form of familiars.

Have any readers come across other unusual wedding customs still being enacted, outside of the usual tossing of the bouquet or shower of confetti? If so, we would love to hear about them. Please email your stories to thefolklorepodcast@gmail.com or write to ‘The Moorlander’.