Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/58

36 It should perhaps have been mentioned sooner, that, as the newly-married wife enters her new home on returning from kirk, one of the oldest inhabitants of the neighbourhood, who has been stationed on the threshold, throws a plateful of short-bread over her head, so that it falls outside. A scramble ensues, for it is deemed very fortunate to get a piece of the short-bread, and dreams of sweethearts attend its being placed under the pillow. A variation of this custom extends as far south as the East Riding of Yorkshire, where, on the bride’s arrival at her father’s door, a plate of cake is flung from an upper window upon the crowd below. An augury is then drawn from the fate which attends the plate; the more pieces it breaks into the better; if it reach the ground unbroken the omen is very unfavourable.

On this matter a clerical friend writes thus: “In my own case, on bringing my wife to her home in Scotland, the short-bread was thrown over her head, and a scramble ensued on the new carpet, which was thereby ruined. A soup ladle was put into my hands, together with the door-key, to imply that I was to be at once the master of the house and the bread-winner. My wife was required to hold the kitchen tongs and a bunch of keys, to indicate that her proper sphere was the fireside and her duties within doors.

The custom of passing bridecake through the wedding-ring, and placing it under the pillow, to dream upon, and that of throwing a shoe after the bride and bridegroom, are sometimes claimed as peculiarly northern. If so, they have travelled southwards very steadily, for they now prevail in every county in England. This last observance is usually said to be “for luck,” but a writer in Notes and Queries (vol. vii. p. 411) suggests that it is rather a symbol of renunciation of all right in the bride by her father or guardian, and the transference of it to her husband. He quotes Ps. lx. 8, “Over Edom have I cast out my shoe,” as meaning, “I have wholly cast it off;” and further illustrates the idea by a reference to Ruth iv. 7, 8. Ruth’s kinsman, it will be remembered, refused to marry her, and to redeem her inheritance; therefore, “as it was the custom in Israel concerning redeeming and concerning changing that a man plucked off his