Girdles: their origin and development, particularly with regard to their use as charms in medicine, marriage, and midwifery / [Walter J. Dilling].

  • Dilling, Walter J. (Walter James), 1886-1950.
Date:
1913-14
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Girdles: their origin and development, particularly with regard to their use as charms in medicine, marriage, and midwifery / [Walter J. Dilling]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    31/64 (page 357)
    I have not found any direct mention of the girdle in the Scottish marriage ceremony, but customs more or less similar existed; thus, in the “Statistical Account of Scotland,” 1793, the minister of Logierait, Perthshire, says— “ Immediately before the celebration of the marriage ceremony every knot about the bride and bridegroom (garters, shoe-strings, strings of petticoats, etc.) is carefully loosened. After leaving the church, the whole company walk round it, keeping the church walls always upon the right hand. The bridegroom, however, first retires one way with some young men to tie the knots that were loosened about him, while the young married woman in the same manner retires somewhere else to adjust the disorder of her dress.” 1 Finally, in connection with marriage, we get the girdle custom cropping up in Melanesia, where a native girl of German New Guinea, on attaining a marriageable age, has a girdle placed round her hips, and, with her hair curled and twisted, she sits in the open village to be admired by eligible bachelors.2 I do not propose to do more than merely mention the “ Ceinture de Chastete ”—the girdle which the crusaders sometimes locked on their ladies before leaving them for long periods. They were made of iron, and possessed a perineal band or pad which was locked in position. ] J- Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” London, 1900, 381. Customs of the World,” edited by W. Hutchinson, London, art. Melanesia,” by K. W. Williamson, pp. 26-7. 1912, [To be continued.)