Scotland -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
There were a few instances of weddings among the Auld Lichts that did
not take place on Friday. Betsy Munn's brother thought to assert his two
coal-carts, about which he was sinfully puffed up, by getting married
early in the week; but he was a pragmatical feckless body, Jamie.
The foreigner from York that Finny's grieve after disappointing Jinny
Whamond took, sought to sow the seeds of strife by urging that Friday
was an unlucky day; and I remember how the minister, who was always
great in a crisis, nipped the bickering in the bud by adducing the
conclusive fact that he had been married on the sixth day of the
week himself. It was a judicious policy on Mr. Dishart's part to take
vigorous action at once and insist on the solemnization of the marriage
on a Friday or not at all, for he best kept superstition out of the
congregation by branding it as heresy. Perhaps the Auld Lichts were only
ignorant of the grieve's lass' theory because they had not thought of
it. Friday's claims, too, were incontrovertible; for the Saturday's
being a slack day gave the couple an opportunity to put their but and
ben in order, and on Sabbath they had a gay day of it--three times at
the kirk. The honeymoon over, the racket of the loom began again on the
Monday.
The natural politeness of the Allardice family gave me my invitation to
Tibbie's wedding. I was taking tea and cheese early one wintry afternoon
with the smith and his wife, when little Joey Todd in his Sabbath
clothes peered in at the passage, and then knocked primly at the door.
Andra forgot himself, and called out to him to come in by; but Jess
frowned him into silence, and, hastily donning her black mutch, received
Willie on the threshold. Both halves of the door were open, and the
visitor had looked us over carefully before knocking; but he had come
with the compliments of Tibbie's mother, requesting the pleasure of Jess
and her man that evening to the lassie's marriage with Sam'l Todd,
and the knocking at the door was part of the ceremony. Five minutes
afterward Joey returned to beg a moment of me in the passage; when I,
too, got my invitation. The lad had just received, with an expression of
polite surprise, though he knew he could claim it as his right, a
slice of crumbling shortbread, and taken his staid departure, when Jess
cleared the tea-things off the table, remarking simply that it was a
mercy we had not got beyond the first cup. We then retired to dress.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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