>Don't I seem to remember about the Wife of Bath something to the effect that
>'marriage at church door she had had five'?
>Yes - here it is 'Housbondes at chirche dore I have had fyve' _Canterbury
>Tales_ 'Wife of Bath's Prologue' III(D)6.
>
>Quite a lot of English village churches have lintel gates, Gothicky gates
>with roofs over them, at which these marriages were said to take place, many
>built by Victorians! They are just on the threshold of the graveyard
>surrounding the churches, on the path going in. The graveyard had to be
>fenced in because inside were grown yew trees for the English longbows, and
>which are poisonous to cattle. Terrified my American sons that they had to
>walk past graves to get to church. On the Continent, because of Napoleon,
>this is now forbidden in Catholic countries as unhygienic, but it still
>holds in Protestant England, the sense that the dead must lie in hallowed,
>conscrated ground around the church. When the Wife keeps showing up for yet
>another marriage, the number of graves of her previous ones keeps increasing.
>
>
>
>____
>Julia Bolton Holloway, [log in to unmask]
>Hermit of the Holy Family
>via del Partigiano 16, Montebeni, 50014 FIESOLE, ITALY
>http://members.aol.com/juliansite/Juliansite.htm
>
>He said not, 'Thou shalt not be tempested, thou shalt not be travailed, thou
>shalt not be diseased.' But he said, 'Thou shalt not be overcome'.
>Julian of Norwich
The detail of the WB is also in the General Prologue, l.460; cf also
Merchant's Tale, IV 1700-1708. According to what I understand, the legally
binding pledge occurred at the church door, with witnesses, followed by a
nuptial mass in the church. Since the incidence of widowhood seems to have
been more frequent in the M. Ages (men wore out faster!) one point of the
witnessed ceremony was for the woman to be legally endowed by her husband
so as to afford financial protection if/when he died.
With all respect, I think you'll find that the gates you refer to as
entrances to churchyards are known as *lych-gates*, from Old English *lic*
= the body. This is where a funeral procession paused for the first part of
the burial service, symbolising the gate of death and the transition to
"God's acre". Few surviving examples antedate the 17th century (the
Victorian ones are often replacements of earlier ones, though some were
undoubtedly erected out of antiquarian zeal; a few were even built as Great
War memorials), but the name points to an earlier tradition resulting in a
fossilised word. It is perhaps not surprising that medieval examples of
such exposed structures do not survive.
I hope this proves of interest.
Brian Donaghey
Brian Donaghey - Dept of English Language & Linguistics - Tel. 0114 22 20213
...nec bibliothecae potius comptos ebore ac vitro parietes quam tuae mentis
sedem requiro, in qua non libros, sed id quod libris pretium facit,
librorum quondam meorum sententias, collocavi.--Boethius I pr.5
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