There is not probably, at the present day, a more social and
exhilarating convocation than a highland wedding among the lower orders.
The ancient hospitality and kindliness of character fills it with plenty
and good humour, and gathers from every side all who have the slightest
claim in the blood, name, and friendship of the bride or bridegroom.
That olden attachment, which formerly bound together the superiors and
their dependants, yet so far influences their character as to bring them
together at the same board upon this occasion. When a wedding is to take
place, the attendance of the chief, or laird, as well as that of the
higher tacksmen, is always solicited by the respective parties, and
there are few who would refuse this mark of consideration and good-will.
The clansmen are happy in the honour which they receive, and the
“Duinne-Uasal” is pleased with the regard and respect which renders the
countenance of his presence necessary to his people.
Upon the day of the wedding, the friends of the bridegroom and the bride
assemble at the house of their respective parents, with all the guns and
pistols which can be collected in the country. If the distance of the
two rendezvous is more than a day’s march, the bridegroom gathers his
friends as much sooner as is necessary to enable them to be with the
bride on the day and hour appointed. Both parties are exceedingly proud
of the numbers and of the rank which their influence enables them to
bring; they therefore spare no pains to render the gathering of their
friends as full and as respectable as possible. The company of each
party dines at the house of their respective parents. Every attainable
display of rustic sumptuousness and rustic gallantry is made to render
the festival worthy of an occasion which can happen but once in a life.
The labour and the care of months have been long providing the means
wherewith to furnish the feast with plenty, and the assistants with
gayety; and it is not unfrequent that the savings of a whole year are
expended to do honour to this single day.
When the house is small, and the company very numerous, the partitions
are frequently taken down, and the whole “biel” thrown into one space. A
large table, the entire length of the house, is formed of deal planks
laid upon tressels, and covered with a succession of table-cloths, white
though coarse. The quantity of the dinner is answerable to the space
which it is to cover: it generally consists of barley broth, or
cock-a-leeky, boiled fowls, roasted ducks, joints of meat, sheep’s
heads, oat and barley cakes, butter, and cheese; and in summer, frothed
buttermilk, and slam. In the glens where goats are kept, haunches of
these animals and roasted kids are also added to the feast. In the olden
time, venison and all kinds of game, from the cappercalich to the
grouse, were also furnished; but since the breach of the feudal system,
and its privileges, the highland lairds have become like other
proprietors in the regulation of their game, and have prohibited its
slaughter to their tenants upon pain of banishment.
Yet the cheer of the dinner is not so remarkable as the gear of the
guests. No stranger who looked along the board could recognise in their
“braws” the individuals whom the day before he had seen in the mill, the
field, or the “smiddie.” The men are generally dressed to the best of
their power in the lowland fashion. There are still a few who have the
spirit, and who take a pride, to appear in the noble dress of their
ancestors. These are always considered as an honour and an ornament to
the day. So far however has habit altered the custom of the people, even
against their own approbation, that notwithstanding the convenience and
respect attached to the tartans, they are generally laid aside. But
though the men are nothing deficient in the disposition to set
themselves off in the lowland fashions, from the superior expense of
cloth and other materials of a masculine dress, they are by no means so
gay as the lasses. Girls, who the yester even were seen bare-headed and
bare-footed, lightly dressed in a blue flannel petticoat and dark linen
jacket, are now busked in white frocks, riband sashes, cotton stockings
on their feet, and artificial flowers on their heads. The “merchant’s”
and the miller’s daughters frequently exhibit the last fashion from
Edinburgh, and are beautified and garnished with escalloped trimmings,
tabbed sleeves, tucks, lace, gathers, and French frills! As it has been
discovered that tartan is nothing esteemed in London, little or none is
to be seen, except in the red plaid or broached tunic of some old wife,
whose days of gayety are past, but who still loves that with which she
was gay in her youth. It is to be regretted that Dr. Samuel Johnson had
not lived to witness these dawnings of _reason_ and _improvement_; his
philosophical mind might have rejoiced in the symptoms of approaching
“_civilization_” among the highlanders.
The hour of dinner is generally about one o’clock; the guests are
assembling for two hours before, and each as he enters is presented with
a glass of “uisga” by way of welcome. When the company is seated, and
the grace has been said, the bottle makes a regular round, and each
empties a bumper as it passes. During the meal more than one circle is
completed in the same manner; and, at the conclusion, another
revolutionary libation is given as a finale. As soon after dinner as his
march will allow, the bridegroom arrives: his approach is announced at a
distance by a continual and running discharge of firearms from his
party. These signals are answered by the friends of the bride, and when
at length they meet, a general but irregular feu-de-joie announces the
arrival. The bridegroom and his escort are then regaled with whiskey,
and after they have taken some farther refreshment the two parties
combine, and proceed in a loose procession to the “clachan.”
Sometimes, and particularly if there happens to be a few old disbanded
sergeants among them, the whole “gathering” marches very uniformly in
pairs; and there is always a strict regulation in the support of the
bride, and the place of the bridegroom and his party. The escort of the
former takes precedency in the procession, and the head of the column is
generally formed of the most active and best armed of her friends, led
by their pipes. Immediately after this advanced guard, come the bride
and the females of her party, accompanied by their fathers, brothers,
and other friends. The bride is supported on one side by a bridesman,
and on the other by a bridesmaid; her arms are linked in theirs, and
from the right and left hand of the supporters is held a white scarf or
handkerchief, which depends in a festoon across the figure of the bride.
The privilege of supporting the bride is indispensably confined to the
bridesman and bridesmaid, and it would be an unacceptable piece of
politeness for any other persons, however high their rank, to offer to
supply their place. The bridegroom and his party, with their piper, form
the rear of the procession and the whole is closed by two young girls
who walk last at the array, bearing in a festoon between them a white
scarf, similar to that held before the bride. During the march the pipes
generally play the old Scots air, “Fye, lets a’ to the Bridal,” and the
parties of the bride and bridegroom endeavour to emulate each other in
the discharge of their fire-arms. In this order the bridal company
reaches the church, and each pipe as it passes the gate of the
surrounding cemetry becomes silent. In the old time the pipers played
round the outside of the clachan during the performance of the service,
but of later years this custom has been discontinued. The ritual of the
marriage is very simple: a prayer for the happiness and guidance of the
young couple who are about to enter upon the troubled tide of life; a
short exhortation upon the duties of the station which they are to
undertake, and a benediction by the imposition of the hands of the
minister, is all the ceremonial of the union, and announces to them that
they are “no longer two, but one flesh.”
In the short days of winter, and when the bridegroom has to come from a
distance, it is very frequent that the ceremony is not performed until
night. The different circumstances of the occasion are then doubly
picturesque and affecting: while the cavalcade is yet at a distance, the
plaintive pealing of the pipes approaching upon the stillness of the
night, the fire-arms flashing upon the darkness, and their reports
redoubled by the solitary echoes of the mountains, and when, at length,
the train draws near, the mingled tread of hasty feet, the full clamour
of the pipes, the mixed and confused visionry of the white figures of
the girls, and the dark shadows of the men, with here and there the
waving of a plaid and the glinting of a dirk, must be striking to a
stranger, but wake inexpressible emotions in the bosom of a Gaël, who
loves the people and the customs of his land.
The scene is still more impressive at the clachan. I have yet before me
the groups of the last wedding at which I was present in the highlands.
The church was dimly lighted for the occasion; beneath the pulpit stood
the minister, upon whose head eighty-five winters had left their trace:
his thinned hair, bleached like the “cana,” hung in ringlets on his
neck; and the light falling feebly from above, shed a silvery gleam
across his lofty forehead and pale features, as he lifted his look
towards heaven, and stretched his hands above the betrothed pair who
stood before him. The bridegroom, a hardy young highlander, the
fox-hunter of the district, was dressed in the full ’a tans; and the
bride, the daughter of a neighbouring shepherd, was simply attired in
white, with a bunch of white roses in her hair. The dark cheek and keen
eye of the hunter deepened its hue and its light as he held the hand
which had been placed in his, while the downcast face of the bride
scarcely showed distinctly more than her fair forehead and temples, and
seemed, as the light shone obliquely upon them, almost as pale as the
roses which she wore; her slim form bent upon the supporting arm of the
bridesmaid--the white frill about her neck throbbing with a light and
quick vibration.
After the ceremony of the marriage is concluded, it is the privilege of
the bridesman to salute the bride. As the party leave the church, the
pipes again strike up, and the whole company adjourns to the next inn,
or to the house of some relation of the bride’s; for it is considered
“_unlucky_” for her own to be the first which she enters. Before she
crosses the threshold, an oaten cake is broken over her head by the
bridesman and bridesmaid, and distributed to the company, and a glass of
whiskey passes round. The whole party then enter the house, and two or
three friends of the bridegroom, who act as masters of the ceremonies,
pass through the room with a bottle of whiskey, and pour out to each
individual a glass to the health of the bride, the bridegroom, and their
clans. Dancing then commences to the music of the pipes, and the
new-married couple lead off the first reel. It is a customary compliment
for the person of highest rank in the room to accompany her in the next.
During the dancing the whiskey-bottle makes a revolution at intervals;
and after the reels and strathspeys have been kept up for some time, the
company retires to supper. The fare of the supper differs little from
that of the dinner; and the rotation of the whiskey-bottle is as regular
as the sun which it follows.
[At highland festivals the bottle is always circulated sun-ways, an
observance which had its rise in the Druidical “deas’oil,” and once
regulated almost every action of the Celts.]
When the supper is announced, each man leads his partner or some female
friend to the table, and seating himself at her side, takes upon himself
her particular charge during the meal; and upon such occasions, as the
means of the bride and bridegroom do not permit them to bear the
expenses of the supper, he is expected to pay her share of the reckoning
as well as his own. After supper the dancing again commences, and is
occasionally inspired by the before-noticed circumvolutions of the
“Uisga na Baidh.” The bride and bridegroom, and such as choose repose
rather than merriment, retire to take a couple of hours’ rest before
dawn; but the majority keep up the dancing till day. Towards morning
many of the company begin to disperse; and when it is well light,
breakfast is given to all who remain. Tea, multitudes of eggs, cold
meat, a profusion of oat cakes, barley “scones,” and sometimes _wheat
bread_, brought, perhaps, a distance of thirty miles, constitute the
good cheer of this meal. When it is concluded, the bride takes leave of
the majority of her friends, and accompanied only by her particular
intimates and relations, sets off with the bridegroom and his party for
her future residence. She is accompanied by her neighbours to the march
of her father, or the tacksman under whom he lives, and at the burn-side
(for such is generally the boundary) they dance a parting reel: when it
is concluded, the bride kisses her friends, they return to their
dwellings, and she departs for her new home. When, however, the
circumstances of the bridegroom will permit, all those who were present
at the house of the bride, are generally invited to accompany her on her
way, and a renewal of the preceding festivities takes place at the
dwelling of the bridegroom.
Upon these occasions it is incredible the fatigue which the youngest
girls will undergo: of this one instance will give a sufficient proof.
At a wedding which happened at Cladich by Loch Awe side, there were
present as bridesmaids, two girls, not above fourteen years of age, who
had walked to the bridal from Inbherara, a distance of nine miles. They
attended the bride to the clachan of Inishail, and back to her father’s
house, which is four miles farther. During the night none were more
blithe in the dance, and in the morning after breakfast they accompanied
the rest of the party to the house of the bridegroom at Tighndrum; the
distance of this place is eighteen miles: and thus, when they had
finished their journey, the two young bridesmaids had walked, without
rest, and under the fatigue of dancing, a distance of thirty-one miles.
Such is the general outline of a highland wedding. In some districts, a
few other of the ancient customs are yet retained: the throwing of the
stocking is sometimes practised; but the blessing of the bridal couch
disappeared with the religion of the popes.[79]
* * * * *