After the morning meal the young wife goes to church to be blessed by the priest, escorted by the two brideswomen, walking one on either side. While she is praying within, her husband meanwhile waits at the church-door, but no sooner does she reappear at the threshold than the young couple are surrounded by a group of masked figures, who playfully endeavor to separate the wife from her husband. If they succeed in so doing, then he must win her back in a hand-to-hand fight with his adversaries, or else give money as ransom. It is considered a bad omen for the married life of the young couple if they be separated on this occasion; therefore the young husband takes his stand close against the church-door, to be ready to clutch his wife as soon as she steps outside—for greater precaution, often holding her round the waist with both hands during the dance which immediately ensues in front of the church, and at which the newly married couple merely assist as spectators. As several couples are usually married at the same time, it is customary for each separate wedding-party to bring its own band of music, and dance thus independently of the others. On the occasion of a triple wedding I once witnessed, it was very amusing to watch the three wedding-parties coming down the street, each accelerating its pace till it came to be a sort of race between them up to the church-door, in order to secure the best dancing-place. The ground being rough and slanting, there was only one spot where anything like a flat dancing-floor could be obtained; and the winning party at once securing this enviable position, the others had to put up with an inclined plane, with a few hillocks obstructing their ball-room _parquet_. The eight to ten couples belonging to each wedding-party are enclosed in a ring of by-standers, each rival band of music playing away with heroic disregard for the scorched ears of the audience. “Walser!” calls out the first group; “Polka!” roars the second—for it is a point of honor that each party display a noble independence in taking its own line of action; and if, out of mere coincidence, two of the bands happen to strike up the self-same tune, one of them will be sure to change abruptly to something totally different, as soon as aware of the unfortunate mistake—the caterwauling effect produced by this system baffling all description. “This is nothing at all,” said the pastor, from whose garden I was overlooking the scene, laughing at the dismay with which I endeavored to stop my ears. “Sometimes we have eight or ten weddings at a time, each with its own fiddlers—that is something worth hearing indeed!” The rest of this second day is spent much in the same way as the former one, only this time it is at the house of the bridegroom’s parents.