Bridal Veils.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 436, 11 January 1890, Page 3

Bridal Veils.

In Poland the bride’s eyes are covered with a veil, and she is led blindfolded to all the doors of her new home. In days gone by, the Polish bride went to church preceded by her lady friends attired in long red veils. After the service, her mouth was anointed with honey, and her eyes blindfolded with her veil, and she was thus led to her home. In some parts of Russia, on the evening of the wedding-day, a feast celebrates the event, when the bride wears a veil, and is separated from her husband at the table by a curtain. In the Christian Church of Abyssinia, the wife has to wear a black veil as a covering for her face for six weeks. In modern Egypt, a woman is never seen by her future husbanduntilafter the marriage ceremony, and she is always veiled. A Jewish bride’s veil covers not only her face, but her whole body. Layard, in his ‘Nineveh and Babylon,’ describes a marriage ceremony near Nimroud, when the bride, covered from head to foot bv a thick veil, was escorted to the bridegroom’s house. On her arrival there she was placed behind a curtain in a darkened room for three days, while the guests feasted. After three days the bridegroom was allowed to approach her. In Turkey a bride is always veiled eight days before her marriage, and she is not to be seen otherwise even before the relations of herintended husband. In Greece, in the early part of this century, the bride wore a long transparent veil, which entirely concealed her features. Her Veil was taken oti when she arrived at the bridegroom’s house.