Page:A book of folk-lore (1913).djvu/257

254 At Gaillac, in France, they do not wait the completion of the ceremony; for whilst the young couple are still kneeling at the foot of the altar, a rain of nuts is poured over their heads and down their backs. In the Gex, at the ball which the bride is expected to give on the day when her banns are published for the first time, all the guests arrive with nuts in both their hands wherewith to salute her. In Poitou the floor of the room where the wedding breakfast is to be held is strewn with nuts. In the department of Hautes-Alpes the bride, as she goes through the village, is made to eat sugar plums made in the shape of hazel nuts.

Wright, in his Collection of Mediæval Latin Stories, has this: ‘I have seen in many places, when women get married, and are leaving the church and returning home, that corn is thrown in their faces with cries of “Abundantia! Abundantia!” that in French is Plente, plente; and yet very often before the year is out they have remained poor and beggars, and deficient in abundance of all good things.’

In the Jura, acorns are scattered in place of nuts or corn.

The casting of the old shoe signifies the surrender of authority by the father to the