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Customs and Traditions
Piping in the
bride
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oathing stone
Handfasting
Scottish Style
Sharing the Quaich
Sashing
the bride
Music
Choosing and using
a piper
Readings & Blessings
Scottish readings
Scottish blessings
What
to wear
Choosing
your
Tartan
What if you
aren't
Scottish?
Attire for the
Groom
Attire for the Bride
It started in Scotland
Scottish Origins of General
Wedding
Customs & Practices
© Jennifer
Cram 2007-2008
All rights reserved
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Scottish blessings
18th
Century Gaelic
Blessing
written by the Reverend Donald MacLeod,
Minister of Duirinish, Skye Scotland
Mìle fàilte
dhuit le d'bhréid,
Fad do ré gun robh thu slàn.
Móran làithean dhuit is sìth,
Le d'mhaitheas is le d'nì bhi fàs.
Translation:
A thousand welcomes to you with your marriage kerchief,
may you be healthy all your days.
May you be blessed with long life and peace,
may you grow old with goodness and with riches.
Scottish
readings
There are many fine works of
Scottish poetry which, because they are still protected by copyright,
cannot be posted on this website. Consider the works of Sorley Maclean,
the greatest Gaelic poet of the 20th Century, either in the original or
in translation; the heart-warming poems of Aonghas MacNeacail,
Maureen Sangster, Iain Crichton-Smith and Gael Turnbull, or the
tongue-in-cheek poetry of Diana Hendry,
The Confirmation
by Edwin Muir (1887-1959)
who was born in Orkney
Yes, yours, my love, is the right human
face.
l in my mind had waited for this long,
Seeing the false and searching for the
true,
Then found you as a traveller finds a
place
Of welcome suddenly amid the wrong
Valleys and rocks and twisting roads. But
you,
What shall I call you? A fountain in a
waste,
A well of water in a country dry,
Or anything that's honest and good, an eye
That makes the whole world bright. Your
open heart,
Simple with giving, gives the primal deed,
The first good world, the blossom, the
blowing seed,
The hearth, the steadfast land, the
wandering sea,
Not beautiful or rare in every part,
But like yourself, as they were meant to
be.
1 Corinthians 13 from The
New Testament in Scots
by
William Laughton Lorimer
Luve is patientful; luve is couthie an
kind;
luve
is jane jailous; nane sprosie;
nane bowdent wi pride;
nane mislaired;
nane
hame-drauchit; nane toustie.
Luve keeps nae nickstick
o the wrangs it drees;
find
nae pleisure i the ill wark o ithers;
is ey liftit up whan
truith dings lies;
kens
ey tae keep a caum souch;
ie ey sweired tae
misdout;
ey
howps the best; ey bides the warst.
there is three things
bides for eye:
faith, howp, luve
But the grytest of the
three is luve.
The Piper
My Love was Warm by Robert Louis Stevenson
My love was warm; for that I crossed
The mountains and the
sea,
Nor counted that
endeavour lost
That gave my love to me.
If that indeed were love
at all,
As still, my love, I
trow,
By what dear name am I
to call
The bond that holds me
now
The
Piper by Robert Louis Stevenson
Again I hear you piping, for I know the
tune so well, -
You rouse the heart to wander
and be free,
Tho' where you learned your
music, not the God of song can tell,
For you pipe the open highway
and the sea.
O piper, lightly footing,
lightly piping on your way,
Tho' your music thrills and
pierces far and near,
I tell you you had better pipe
to someone else to-day,
For you cannot pipe my fancy
from my dear.
You sound the note of
travel through the hamlet and the town;
You would lure the holy angels
from on high;
And not a man can hear you, but
he throws the hammer down
And is off to see the countries
ere he die.
But now no more I wander, now
unchanging here I stay;
By my love, you find me safely
sitting here:
And pipe you ne'er so sweetly,
till you pipe the hills away,
You can never pipe my fancy
from my dear.
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