Weddings also preserve various
traditions.
The songs are performed by musicians
and even by the wedding guests themselves. A varied melody, sometimes even
with a varied text, is "A miresei" (To the bride), sung either at the solemn
moment when the bride takes leave of her parents and her home, or when
she changes her maiden head-gear for that of a wife. Her leave-taking of
her former life, the description of her life in her parents' house in comparison
with that in her parents-in-law's, the change from appeal to the sun a
to lengthen the day, the sorrow of the mother's who loses her daughter,
and the joy of the mother-in-law who acquires her as daughter-in-law, the
comparison of the maidens with apples on a branch: when they ripen their
number lessens; these are the topics most often encountered in the songs
for the bride.
Three times round the table is
a dance. This dance was formerly meant to drive away evil from the house
of the young couple. A humorous addition to the traditional ritual cries-
among other jocular ones- gives a quite different meaning:
Three times round the table
For the evil to go out
For the good to come in
For the young couple to live...
Like cat and dog!
On account of the profoundly
worldly content of the marriage ceremony, folk customs connected with weddings
are particularly subject to transformations and borrowings from outside.