January and May were considered unlucky months to marry in. In some localities there was a proverb—“A bride in May, is thriftless aye.” The day of the week on which the 14th of May fell, was held to be an unlucky wedding day throughout the remainder of the year. Highland marriages took place as a rule in the churches; in the Lowlands the ceremony was generally performed at the residence of the bride’s father; but often in later years at the minister’s manse. When two marriages were to take place at a church upon the same day, arrangements had to be made that one party should not meet the other going to or returning from church. During a marriage ceremony, great care had to be taken that no dogs passed between bride and bridegroom; and the bridegroom’s left shoe had been untied or unbuckled by his best man, to prevent witches casting uncanny spells over the young couple.

The wedding feast was held in the evening, generally at the house of the bride’s father. After supper, dancing began, the bridal pair being in the first reel; from their supposed bashfulness, it was called the shemit,—that is, shame-faced reel. Dancing and mirth were kept up until the small hours; but before then the young couple—usually escorted by some of the young folks—had slipped away to their own domicile; the best man and bridesmaid having preceded them, the latter with a cake of short-bread, ready to break over the bride’s head on her entering the doorway. The bride was not expected to be seen out about until the couple were “kirkit” on the following Sunday. A newly-made mother’s first public appearance was also in church going.

“Penny-weddings,” were large gatherings of self-invited guests, each of whom was expected to contribute towards the cost of the festivities; any balance which might be over, to go to help in the new house-keeping.

Prior to the Reformation, a loose practice in the relationship of the sexes, called hand-fasting, existed in Scotland. At the statutory fairs, young men and women made mutual selection as partners for a year; at the end of the year, they were free to marry, to live singly, or to enter into other partnerships! It was the duty of the itinerant friars to persuade the handfasts to marry, and by the end of the sixteenth century the Reformers had effectually rooted out the custom. At the Dundee Burgh Court on May 21st 1560, “Compearit John Ray, and oblist him to marry his wife on Sunday next. At the same time James Rollock has become surety that Robert Man sall complete the band of matrimony with Jonet Myln, or else incur the danger conteinit in the acts.”

Ceasing to be considered a sacrament, marriage in Scotland came to be looked upon as little other than a civil contract, hardly requiring clerical agency, or religious formalities. A man and woman going before a bailie or sheriff, and declaring themselves husband and wife, constituted a legal although an irregular marriage. And the celebrant—if so he could be called, who was really only a witness to the parties having married themselves—need not even be a civil official. Gretna Green had no special privilege in lay-marrying over any other portion of Scotland.

It appears from Burgh records that in the sixteenth century, a women holding property under a trusteeship, was not at any age free in her choice of a husband. Marrying without the consent of her procurators entailed the forfeiture of her property. A mother would retain her daughter’s tocher unless she married with the mother’s approval.

And apprentices were not allowed to marry without the official permission of their craft. We find from the Dundee Burgh records, that in 1534, David Ogilvy, an apprentice baker, did so marry, and he was expelled from his craft, and “tynt his freedom.” But David took the decree fighting! He appealed to the King, James the Fifth, for reinstatement, and the King gave an order, confirmed by the Lords of Council, charging the Provost and Bailies of Dundee to re-admit him to his freedom, and “cause the baxters receive him to their fellowship, notwithstanding that he be marryit within his prenticeship,” and decerning that he will suffer sufficient punishment if his term of apprenticeship be prolonged for the space of one month.

A bride was expected—even in such circumstances of life as made her a “tocherless lass”—to have ready against her marriage many articles of domestic economy. In his song “Woo’d and Married and a’,”—written a century and a half ago—Alexander Ross gives a graphic description of a family conference over the ways and means of an “ill-provided” bride:—