home.  The young wife, assisted by her female friends, undressed and got to bed, then the young man was sent into bed by his friends, and then all the marriage party entered the bedroom, when the young wife took one of her stockings, which had been put in bed with her, and threw it among the company.  The person who got this was to be the first married.  The best man then handed round the glass, and when all had again drank to the young couple, the company retired.  This custom was termed the bedding, and was regarded as a ceremony necessary to the completion of the marriage; and there can be little doubt that it is a survival of a very ancient ceremony of the same family as the old Grecian custom of removing the bride’s coronet and putting her to bed.  This particular form of ceremony was also found in Scotland, and continued to comparatively modern times.  Young Scotch maidens formerly wore a snood, a sort of coronet, open at the top, called the virgin snood, and before being put to bed on the marriage night this snood was removed by the young women of the party.  This custom is referred to in an ancient ballad.

   “They’ve ta’en the bride to the bridal bed,
    To loose her snood nae mind they had. 
      ‘I’ll loose it,’ quo John.”

On the morning after some of the married women of the neighbourhood met in the young wife’s house and put on her the curtch or closs cap (mutch), a token of the marriage state.  In my young days unmarried women went with the head uncovered; but after marriage, never were seen without a cap.  On the morning after marriage the best man and maid breakfasted with the young couple, after which they spent the day in the country, or if they lived in the country, they went to town for a change.  Weddings were invariably celebrated on a Friday,—­the reason for this preference being, as is supposed, that Friday was the day dedicated by the Norsemen to the goddess, Friga, the bestower of joy and happiness.  The wedding day being Friday, the walking-day was a Saturday; and on Sunday the young couple, with their best man and best maid, attended church in the forenoon, and took a walk in the afternoon, then spent the evening in the house of one of their parents, the meeting there being closed by family worship, and a pious advice to the young couple to practise this in their own house.

If the bride had been courted by other sweethearts than he who was now her husband, there was a fear that those discarded suitors might entertain unkindly feelings towards her, and that their evil wishes might supernaturally influence her, and affect her first-born.  This evil result was sought to be averted by the bride wearing a sixpence in her left shoe till she was kirked; but should the bride have made a vow to any other, and broken it, this wearing of the sixpence did not prevent the evil consequences from falling upon her first-born.  Many instances were currently quoted