Tea at Trianon: Ball Games at Weddings

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, June 11, 2012

Ball Games at Weddings

I never heard of this custom but Gio has researched it.

What have ball games got to do with weddings, I hear you ask? Well, in some parts of North England, Scotland and France there was a tradition dictating that the bridegroom had to contribute either a football, or money to buy one, to the local youths or community. It sure sounds like a weird way to celebrate a wedding, doesn't it? But there's a reason for it. This custom seems to have derived from the traditions of "paying the footing", which dictated that someone joining a community (or removing someone from the community, as is the case in some weddings) had to make a donation to it. In this case, the ball was the donation required by the bridegroom to the community. Sometimes, it was the bride to give the ball to youths. (Read entire post.)