THE VALUE OF YOUR GIFT

Shannon News, 27 July 1926, Page 1

THE VALUE OF YOUR GIFT

QUAINT UUIiOI'UAN CUSTOMS. Fancy going to a wedding reception and hearing the value of your gift, along with your name, called out by a groomsman with a voice like a megaphone! I have know that happen in Finland, where, in the country districts, it is usual for the bride to sit with a sieve covered with a rich silk shawl in her lap, into, which guests drop their gifts as they come up to offer their congratualtions (says a writer in an exchange). Time was when such gifts of cash went towards paying for the bride's outfit; nowadays they help to buy something needed in the bridal couple’s new home. But a Finnish peasant girl still goes to the altar in the heavy bridal crown of ancient workmanship that is the common property of the countryside, and, moreover, she wears it, with but little respite, throughout the whole of the four days’ celebrations. In Wales they have, or did have when I was a girl, a generation-old way of making pretty sure of wedding presents. This was the sending out of the ‘‘Bidding Letter,” a document which, dispatched by the respective parents of the bride and bridegroom-elect about three weeks before the ceremony, wound up with ■—‘‘and Avhatever donation you may be pleased to confer on us then will b e thankfully received, warmly acknowledged and cheerfully repaid whenever called for- on a similar occasion.” The best man, not the recipients, always made a precise record of the gifts for each family’s future reference and guidance.

Until quite recently s the peasant folk of Sweden had one custom in common with those of China, that of employing a matrimonial go-between. But whereas in China the girl’s parents take the first step in thus promoting a betrothal, in Delecarlia, that beau- • tiful province of Sweden where the maidens still go to church on Sundays, in striped petticoat and peaked bonnet, the would-be bridegroom is the one to engage the services of a go-between. Though the Swedish girl has more than an inkling of what is coming, there is never a flicker of interest on her face as she' sits with downcast eyes knitting, while her suitor’s prospects are being talked over with her parents. And she seems hardly less deaf and dumb when, the preliminaries settled by the go-between, the suitor himself comes to pay his for mal call. Only at the betrothal feast do her stolidity and his embarrass ment lessen as they exchange rings and he makes the traditional offering of a. silver goblet filled with coins, each wrapped separately in new white tissue paper. Armenian brides and bridegrooms remain outside the church door to be blessed by the priset before ho invites them to go to the altar for the marriage ceremony. Once there, a sealed green cord is slipped round the bride’s neck and a red cord round the groom’s, a custom no more awkward than the Russian one of the best man and a groomsman holding crowns above the heads of bride and bridegroom as they stand with lighted tapers in their hands. Once, in the Tyrol, I came across a curious custom introduced into the Alpine hamlet by nuns during the Middle Ages. There, on her wvedding morn, a girl is presented by her mother with a special handkerchief

embroidered with the words, “Tlifo Bridge of Tears.” On that morsel of linen and lace the bride is supposed to dry her teai'S whenever she quarrels with her husband, and also to treasure it, intact and unwashed, till life ends, so that there may be a fit covering for her face when, as the folklore puts it, she “leaves her home for eternity.”