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 among the people of first-born children, under
such circumstances, having been born of such unnatural shapes and
natures that, with the sanction of the minister and the relations, the
monster birth was put to death.
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