‘It is the parting-stool, and is always used here;’ but nothing appeared to be known about the origin or meaning of the ceremony.”
Throughout Cleveland, he who gives the bride away claims the first kiss in right of his temporary paternity. One clerical friend of mine, however, declares that it is the privilege of the parson who ties the knot; and, though he will not aver that he has ever availed himself of it, he knows an old north-country clergyman who was reported so to do. Another tells me that a brother-priest, a stranger in the neighbourhood, after performing a marriage in a Yorkshire village, was surprised to see the party keep together as if expecting something more. “What are you waiting for?” he asked, at last. “Please, Sir,” was the bride-groom’s answer, “ye’ve no kissed Molly.” And my old friend, the late Dr. Raine, used to relate how the Rev. Thomas Ebdon, Sacrist of the Cathedral and Vicar of Merrington, invariably kept up the custom when he performed the marriage ceremony, and this plainly as a matter of obligation, for he was one of the most shy and retiring of men. Nay, I can testify that within the last ten years, a fair lady from the county of Durham, who was married in the South of England, so undoubtedly reckoned upon the clerical salute, that, after waiting for it in vain, she boldly took the initiative and bestowed a kiss on the much-amazed South-country vicar.
In a certain old song, the bridegroom thus addresses the minister—
It’s no very decent for you to be kissing,
It does not look weel wi’ the black coat ava,
’Twould hae set you far better tae hae gi’en us your blessing
Than thus by such tricks to be breaking the law.
Dear Wattie, quo’ Robin, it’s just an old custom,
An the thing that is common should ne’er be ill ta’en,
For where ye are wrong, if ye had na a wished him
You should ha’ been first. It’s yoursel is to blame.[1]
The custom has, however, been very general, and it may possibly be a dim memorial of the osculum pacis, or the pre-
- ↑ Napier’s Folk-Lore of West Scotland, p. 48.
