Dutch Weddings, 1902
From Dutch Life in Town and Country by P. M. Hough, 1902.
From: 1902 C.E. To: 1902 C.E.
Location: The Netherlands
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From Dutch Life in Town and Country by P. M. Hough, 1902.
Besides the customs in vogue at such festive seasons as Whitsuntide, Easter, and Christmas, there are yet others of more everyday occurrence which are well worth the knowing. In Overyssel, for instance, we find a very sensible one indeed.
It is usual there, when a family moves to another part of the village, or when they settle elsewhere, for the people living in the neighbourhood to bring them presents to help furnish their new house. Sometimes these presents include poultry or even a pig, which, though they do not so much furnish the house as the table, prove nevertheless very acceptable. As soon as all the moving is over and they are comfortably installed in their new home, the next thing to do is to invite all the neighbours to a party.
This is a very important social duty and ought on no account to be omitted, as it entitles host and hostess to the help of all their guests in the event of illness or adversity taking place in their family. If, however, they do not conform to this social obligation, their neighbours and friends stand aloof and do not so much as move a finger to help them.
Should one of the family fall ill, the four nearest male neighbours are called in. These men fetch the doctor, and do all the nursing. They will even watch by the invalid at night, and so long as the illness lasts they undertake all the farm-work. Sometimes they will go on working the farm for years, and when a widow is left with young children in straitened circumstances, these noodburen (neighbours in need) will help her in all possible ways and take all the business and worry off her hands.
In case of a marriage, too, the neighbours do the greater part of the preparations. They invite the relations and friends to come to the wedding, and make ready the feast. The invitations are always given by word of mouth, and two young men closely related to the bride and bridegroom are appointed to go round from house to house to bid the people come.
They are dressed for this purpose in their best Sunday clothes, and wear artificial flowers and six peacock's feathers in their caps. The invitation is made in poetry, in which the assurance is conveyed that there will be plenty to eat and plenty of gin and beer to drink, and that whatever they may have omitted to say will be told by the bride and bridegroom at the feast. This verse in the native patois is very curious:
"Goën Dag!
"Daor stao'k op minen staf,
En weet niet wat ik zeggen mag;
Nou hek me weer bedach
En weet ik wat ik zeggen mag:
Hier stürt ons Gart yan Vente als brügom
En Mientje Elschot as de brüd,
Ende' nöget uwder üt
Margen vrog om tien ür
Op en tonne bier tiene twalevenne,
Op en anker win, vif, zesse
En en wanne vol rozinen.
De' zült by Venterboer verschinen
Met de hüsgezeten
En nüms vergeten,
Vrog kommen en late bliven
Anders kün wy 't nie 't op krigen.
Lüstig ezongen, vrolik esprongen,
Springen met de deide beene,
En wat ik nog hebbe vergeten
Zult ow de briigom ende brüd verbeten.
Hej my elk nuw wal verstaan
Dan laot de ties üm de taofel gaon.""Good Day!
["I rest here on my stick,
I don't know what to say;
Now I have thought of it
And know what I may say:
Here sent us Gart van Vente, the bridegroom,
And Mientje Elschot, the bride,
To invite you
To-morrow morning at ten o'clock
To empty ten or twelve barrels of beer,
Five or six hogsheads of wine,
And a basket full of dried grapes.
You will come to the house of Venterboer
With all your inmates
And forget nobody.
Come early and remain late,
Else we can't swallow it all down.
Then sing cheerfully, leap joyfully,
Leap with both your legs.
And, what I have yet forgotten,
Think of the bridegroom and bride.
If you have understood me well
Let pass the bottle round the table."]
The day before the wedding is to take place the bridegroom and some of his friends arrive at the bride's house in a cart, drawn by four horses, to bring away the bride and her belongings. These latter are a motley collection, for they consist not only of her clothes, bed, and bed-curtains, but her spinning-wheel, linen-press full of linen, and also a cow. After everything has been loaded upon the cart, and the young men have refreshed themselves with rystebrij (rice boiled with sweet milk), they drive away in state, singing as they go.
The following day the bride is married from the house of her parents-in-law, and, as it often happens that the young couple live with the bridegroom's people, it is only natural that they like to have the house in proper order before the arrival of the wedding-guests, who begin to appear as soon as eight o'clock in the morning.
When all the invited guests are assembled and have partaken of hot gin mixed with currants, handed round in two-handled pewter cups, kept especially for these occasions, the whole party goes about eleven o'clock to the Stadhuis, or Town Hall, where the couple are married before the Burgomaster, and afterwards to the church, where the blessing is given upon their union.
On returning home the mid-day meal is ready, which, on this festive occasion, consists of ham, potatoes, and salt fish, and the clergyman is also honoured with an invitation to the gathering. The rest of the day is spent in rejoicings, in which eating and drinking take the chief part. The bride changes her outer apparel about four times during the day, always in public, standing before her linen-press. The day is wound up with a dance, for which the village fiddler provides the music, the bride opening the ball with one of the young men who invited the guests, and she then presents him with a fine linen handkerchief as a reward for his invaluable services on the occasion.
In Friesland a curious old custom still exists, called the Joen-piezl, which furnishes the clue to an odd incident in Mrs. Schreiner's Story of an African Farm. When a man and girl are about to be married, they must first sit up for a whole night in the kitchen with a burning candle on the table between them. By the time the candle is burnt low in its socket, they must have found out whether they really are fond of each other.
The marriage customs in North and South Holland are very different to the former. As soon as a couple are aangeteekend, i.e., when the banns are published for the first time (which does not happen in church, but takes the form of a notice put up at the Town Hall), and have returned from the Stadhuis, they drive about and take a bag of sweets (bruidsuikers) to all their friends.
On the wedding-day, after the ceremony is over, the bride and bridegroom again drive out together in a "chaise"—a high carriage on very big wheels, with room for but two persons. The horse's head, the whip, and the reins are all decorated with flowers and coloured ribbons. The wedding-guests drive in couples behind the bride and bridegroom's "chaise," and the progress is called Speuleryden.
Sometimes they drive for miles across country, stopping at every cafe to drink brandy and sugar, and when they pass children on the road these call out to them: Bruid, bruid, strooi je suikers uit ("Bride, bride, strew your sugars about"). Handfuls of sweets will thereupon be seen flying through the air and rolling about the ground, while the children tumble over each other in their eager haste to collect as many of these sweets as they can. Sometimes as much as twenty-five pounds of sweets are thus scattered upon the roadside for the village children.
Such a wedding is quite an event in the lives of these little ones, and they will talk for weeks to come about the amount of sweets they were able to procure.
At Ryswyk, a little village near The Hague, and in most villages in Westland, South Holland, the bride and bridegroom present to the Burgomaster and Wethouders, and also to the Ambtenaar van den Burgerlyken Stand, who marries them at the Stadhuis, a bag of these sweets, while one bearing the inscription, "Compliments of bride and bridegroom," is given to the officiating clergyman immediately after the ceremony in church.
On their way home all along the road they strew suikers out of the carriage windows for the gaping crowds. Some of the less well-to-do farmers, and those who live near large towns, give their wedding-parties at a cafe or uitspanning. This word means literally a place where the horse is taken out of the shafts, but it is also a restaurant with a garden attached to it, in which there are swings and seesaws, upon which the guests disport themselves during the afternoon, while in the evening a large hall in the building is arranged for the ball, for that is the conclusion of every boeren-bruiloft.
Very often the ball lasts till the cock-crowing, and then, if the Bruiloft-honers are Roman Catholics, it is not uncommon practice first to go to church and "count their beads" before they disperse on their separate ways to begin the duties of a new day.
Hough, P. M. Dutch Life in Town and Country. G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1902.
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