Ovid says--
"Pause while we keep these rites, ye widowed dames,
The marriage time a purer season claims;
Pause, ye fond mothers, braid not yet her hair,
Nor the ripe virgin for her lord prepare.
O, light not, Hymen, now your joyous fires,
Another torch nor yours the tomb requires!
Close all the temples on these mourning days,
And dim each altar's spicy, steaming blaze;
For now around us roams a spectred brood,
Craving and keen, and snuffing mortal food:
They feast and revel, nor depart again,
Till to the month but ten days more remain."
Superstitions of this sort linger much longer in the country than in
towns, and the larger the town the more speedily do they die out; but,
judging from the statistics of late years, this superstition has still a
firm hold of the inhabitants of Glasgow, the second city of the Empire.
During the year 1874 the marriages in May were only 204, against 703 in
June; but as the removal term occurs at the end of May, that must
materially affect the relations, in this respect, between May and June,
and accounts, in part, for the great excess of marriages in June.
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