severe penalties; and if any man, although a king, dared to marry, or act criminally with a Spanish sovereign, he was excluded from all Christian communion, and delivered over to perdition. An ancient Spanish ballad, entitled "The Cid's Wedding," thus refers to a very old marriage custom, not peculiar to Spain:

"All down the street the ears of wheat are round Ximena flying." Ximena was the bride.

In the last century the people of Minorca, an island of Spain, threw nuts and almonds at weddings, that boys might scramble for them. This was a Roman custom of great antiquity.

Swinburne, in his account of the gypsies in Calabria, says that "at their weddings they carry torches, and have paranymphs to give the bride away, with many other unusual rites."

CHAPTER VIII.

Irish Marriages.-Wife-seizing.-The Agreement Bottle.-Casting Darts.Horsing and Goaling.- Changing Wives.- Lending Wedding Rings.Scotch Marriages.-Gretna Green.-Banns Superstition.--Unlucky Wedding Days.--The Threshold.-Money and Shoe throwing.-Winning the Kail.-Creeling the Bridegroom.-The Deasuil.-Highland Weddings.Bedding the Bride.-Penny Weddings.-Wedding Presents.-Handfasting. Under the Apron String.- St. Andrew and Marriages.- Orcadian Marriages.-Manx Marriages.

N early times in Ireland no marriage ceremony was performed without the parties consulting the Druidess and her Purin. A certain divination was practised with small stones, which were thrown up and caught on the back of the hand. Upon the success of the cast by the sorceress depended the happiness of the proposed match.

The ancient custom of seizing wives and carrying them off by force was practised in Ireland, and even so late as 1767 an instance of this usage occurred in Kilkenny. A desperate lover, with a party of armed men, besieged the house of his rival, and in the contest one of the fathers-inlaw was shot dead, and several of the besiegers were mortally wounded. The attacking party was forced to retire without the maiden.

Sampson, writing in 1802 of weddings in the mountainous districts of Ireland, says: "However suitable the match, it is but a lame exploit, and even an affront, if the groom does not first run away with the bride. After a few days' carousal among the groom's friends, the weddingers move towards the bride's country, on which occasion not only

every relative, but every poor fellow who aspires to be the well-wisher of either party, doth bring with him a bottle of whiskey, or the price of a bottle, to the rendezvous. After this second edition of matrimonial hilarity, the bride and groom proceed quietly to their designed home, and, forgetting all at once their romantic frolic, settle quietly down to the ordinary occupations of life."

Piers, in his "Description of West Meath," about 1682, says that in Irish marriages," especially in those countries where cattle abound, the parents and friends on each side meet on the side of a hill, or, if the weather be cold, in some place of shelter, about midway between both dwellings. If agreement ensue, they drink the agreement bottle, as they call it, which is a bottle of good usquebaugh, and this goes merrily round. For payment of the portion, which is generally a determinate number of cows, little care is taken. The father or next of kin to the bride sends to his neighbors and friends sub mutua vicissitudinis obtentu, and every one gives his cow or heifer, which is all one in the case, and thus the portion is quickly paid. Nevertheless, caution is taken from the bridegroom on the day of delivery for restitution of the cattle, in case the bride die childless within a certain day limited by agreement; and, in this case, every man's own beast is restored. Thus, care is taken that no man shall grow rich by frequent marriages. On the day of bringing home, the bridegroom and his friends ride out and meet the bride and her friends at the place of meeting. Being come near each other, the custom was of old to cast short darts at the company that attended the bride, but at such distance that seldom any hurt ensued. Yet it is not out of the memory of man that the Lord of Hoath on such an occasion lost an eye. This custom of casting darts is now obsolete."

The following was an ancient custom in Ireland among

the poor people. The country folks settled among themselves that a certain young woman ought to be married, and they also agreed together that a particular young man ought to be her husband. This being determined, on some subsequent Sunday she was "horsed," that is, carried upon the backs of men, whom she had to provide with liquor. After she had been "horsed," a hurling match was played, in which her selected swain joined. If he happened to be the conqueror he married her, but if another man was the victor, she became his wife. These games were not always finished on the "horsing" Sunday, but were continued on two or three subsequent Sundays. The common expression in reference to the match was that the girl was "goaled.'

In former days marriages were very irregularly performed in Ireland, and the custom of men changing their wives with each other was very common. Separations were frequent, and easy effected. The Irish living in the mountains married their daughters at a very early age-generally at twelve or thirteen years. A usual gift from a woman to her betrothed husband was a pair of bracelets made of her own hair. It has been suggested that this custom arose from a superstition that a lock of hair had a peculiar charm, and also that the gift was a symbol of possession, or, as lawyers say, seizin. In the present century it is not an uncommon event for marriages to be solemnized within the ruined churches of Ireland.

The Irish peasantry have a general impression that a marriage without the use of a gold ring is not legal. At a town in the south-east of Ireland a person kept a few gold wedding rings for hire, and when parties who were too poor to purchase a ring of the necessary precious metal were about to be married, they obtained the loan of one, and paid a small fee for the same, the ring being returned to the owner immediately after the ceremony. In some places in

Ireland it is common for the same ring to be used for many marriage ceremonies, which ring remains in the custody of the priest. Among the fishermen inhabiting the Claddagh at Galway the wedding rings are of the old clasped-hands pattern, and are heir-looms in the family. They are regularly transferred from the mothers to the daughters who are first married, and from them the rings pass to their descendants. Many of the nuptial rings still worn on the western coast are very old, and show traces of still older design.

It was customary in Scotland for marriages to take place when the parties were at a very early age. An Act of Assembly in 1600 endeavored to stop untimely unions by interdicting men from marrying under the age of fourteen years, and women under the age of twelve years; but there are several recorded instances of marriage in Scotland, in the seventeenth century, by persons at the ages of eleven and thirteen years.

There are two forms of marriage in use in this country -one regular, the other irregular. The former is preceded by the publication of banns in the kirk of the parish where - one of the parties resides, and the union is afterwards registered in the kirk. The irregular marriage is contracted without any religious or other formalities, and simply by the parties acknowledging themselves to be husband and wife `before a witness, or by living together as such permanently. This latter kind of marriage was that performed by the celebrated blacksmith and other persons at Gretna, over the border, who assisted runaway couples into matrimony merely by witnessing their avowal that they were husband and wife. The necessity for witnesses in the case of irregular marriages is exemplified by an argument used in a Scotch court of law; namely, that if two persons came before the thirteen judges of the Session in Scotland, and acknowledged themselves to be husband and wife, and if, before they got down