11/02/2025
Of all the special touches that people ask for in a wedding ceremony, Handfasting is the one that most people choose.
This history behind handfasting, described here is fascinating, and show that it's not one fixed set of words or actions.
There are many ways to make a couple handfast, some more simple, some more involved, and different ways you can call it too. Whatever way you chose, it is always full of meaning, an intimate moment of holding hands and bonding.
Handfasting 💙🏴 wedding ceremony
In February 1539 Marie Pieris, a French lady-in-waiting to Mary of Guise, the consort of James V of Scotland, was married by handfasting to Lord Seton at Falkland Palace. This ceremony was recorded in the royal accounts for the payment to an apothecary for his work on the day of "Lord Seytounis handfasting".
The Scottish Hebrides, particularly in the Isle of Skye, show some records of a 'Handfast" or "left-handed" marriage taking in the late 1600s, when the Gaelic scholar Martin Martin noted, "It was an ancient custom in the Isles that a man take a maid as his wife and keep her for the space of a year without marrying her; and if she pleased him all the while, he married her at the end of the year and legitimatised her children; but if he did not love her, he returned her to her parents."
The most disastrous war fought between the MacLeods and MacDonalds of Skye, culminating in the Battle of Coire Na Creiche, "when Donald Gorm Mor who handfasted [for a year and a day] with Margaret MacLeod, a sister of Rory Mor of Dunvegan, expelled his mistress so ignominiously from Duntulm. It is, indeed, not improbable that it was as a result of this war that Lord Ochiltree's Committee, that formed the Statutes of Iona in 1609 and the Regulations for the Chiefs in 1616, was induced to insert a clause in the Statutes of Iona by which 'marriages contracted for several [archaic definition "single"] years' were prohibited; and any who might disregard this regulation were to be 'punished as fornicators'".
By the 18th century, the Kirk of Scotland no longer recognised marriages formed by mutual consent and subsequent sexual in*******se, even though the Scottish civil authorities did. To minimise any resulting legal actions, the ceremony was to be performed in public. This situation persisted until 1939, when Scottish marriage laws were reformed by the Marriage (Scotland) Act 1939 and handfasting was no longer recognised.
In the 18th century, well after the term handfasting had passed out of usage, there arose a popular myth that it referred to a sort of "trial marriage." A. E. Anton, in Handfasting in Scotland (1958), finds that the first reference to such a "trial marriage" is by Thomas Pennant in his 1790 Tour in Scotland. This report had been taken at face value throughout the 19th century, and was perpetuated in Walter Scott's 1820 novel The Monastery.
Other scholars of the Hebrides and inhabitants of the region do not consider this a myth, as there are sufficient records in both the oral tradition and the written compilation of those records that predate both Pennant and Anton by a century or more that preserve the history of this tradition. Contrary to Anton's assertions, the Pennant claim in 1790 was not the first time this had been discussed or put to print, as the Martin Martin texts predate Pennant by almost 100 years. Additionally, the Statutes of Iona were promulgated in 1609 to force an end to the Clan warfare between the MacLeods of Dunvegan and the MacDonalds of Eigg and Sleat as well as to create a more receptive path for Reformation and Protestantism by forcing the Chiefs of the Clans to encourage its spread and to finance the provisioning of Protestant ministers in their lands.
