28G 
MAllIlIAGE CEREMONIES. 
Serv’d but as tapers for to burne, 
And light my reliques to their urne. 
This epitaph, which here you see, 
Supplied the epithalamie.” 
Mmic at Weddings . — At the marriages of the Anglo-Saxons, the 
parties were attended to church by music. In the old history of 
John Newcombe, the wealthy chothier of Newbury, cited by Strutt, 
speaking of his marriage and the bride’s going to church, the writer 
observes, “ There was a noise of musicians that played all the way 
before her.” 
Dame Sibil Turfe, a character in Ben Jonson’s play of the Tale 
of a Tub, is introduced reproaching her husband as follows ; “ A 
clod you shall be called, to let no music go afore your child to 
church, to chear her heart up !” and Scriben, seconding the good 
old dame’s rebuke, adds, “ She’s ith’ right, sir : for your wedding din- 
ner is starved without music.” The rejoicing by ringing of bells at mar- 
riages of any consequence, is every where common. On the fifth 
bell at the church of Kendal, in Westmoreland, is the following 
inscription alluding to this usage : 
“ In wedlock bands. 
All ye who join with hands. 
Your hearts unite ; 
So shall our tunefull tongues combine. 
To laud the nuptial rite.”§ 
Bride Favours , — A knot, among the ancient northern nations seems 
to have been the symbol of love, faith, and friendship, pointing out 
the indissoluble tie of affection and duty. Thus the ancient Runic 
inscriptions, as we gather from Hicks’s Thesaurus, are in the form 
of a knot. Hence among the northern English and Scots, who still 
retain in a great measure the language and manners of the ancient 
Danes, that curious kind of knot, a mutual present between the 
lover and his mistress, which, being considered as the emblem of 
plighted fidelity, is therefore called a true-love knot; a name which 
is not derived, as one would naturally suppose it to be, from the words 
** true” and “ love,” but formed from the Danish verb, “TVwZq/a Jidem 
do, I plight my troth or faith. Thus we read, in the Islandic Gos- 
pel, the following passage in the first chapter of St. Matthew, which 
§ In Swinburne’s account of the gypsies, in his Journey through Cala- 
bria, is the following remark : “At their weddings they carry torches, 
and have paranymphs to give the bride away, with many other unusual 
rites.” Lamps and flambeaux are in use at present at Japanese wed- 
dings. “The nuptial iorcA,” (says the author of Hymen, &c, an 
account of marriage ceremonies of different nations,) “ used by the 
Greeks and Romans, has a striking conformity to the flambeaux of 
the Japanese. The most considerable difference is, that, amongst 
the Romans, this torch was carried before the bride by one of her 
virgin attendants ; and among the Greeks, that office was performed 
by the bride’s mother. In the Greek church, the bridegroom and 
bride enter the church with lighted wax tapers in their hands.” 
