Take the word 'bridal', for example. Did you know that it comes from combining two words: 'bride' and 'ale'. Early English churches brewed special ales, called Easter-ale and Whitsun-ale, to be served and sold to raise money for the church at Easter and Pentecost celebrations.
The success of their fund-raising caused the practice to grow to include other feasts and occasions, adding Church-ale, bride-ale, midsummer-ale, etc. Although the practice was discontinued in 1603, the word for the bride’s toast traditionally drunk at the time lived on in the modern word 'bridal', a word which has come to describe the nuptials.
Be careful not to insult the bridegroom by calling him the groom. The bride’s new husband was called the 'brydguma', meaning 'bride’s man', in Old English. But at some point in the sixteenth century, when spelling was haphazard to say the least, the Middle English 'bridegome' became bridegroom, making the 'bride’s man' into the 'bride’s man-servant'.
We may laugh, but we must also recognize that we are no more accurate than those sixteenth-century spellers, if we call the 'bridegroom' the 'groom'. By doing so, we demote him to the stable or barn, as the 'horse keeper'.
When we consider the word 'wedding', we have to wonder if our English ancestors had a jaundiced view of matrimony as a gamble. The word 'wed' originally was used to mean 'to wager' or 'to bet'. In Old English time, a man would 'weddian' his money on a horse race and would 'weddian' a woman “for fairer, for fouler” in the matrimonial ceremony.
If he put an item in 'wed', he pawned it. The word evolved in Middle English to mean a 'pledge'. The bride’s wedding ring is thus a pledge of the man’s fidelity.
As for 'romance', it comes from the word 'Roma', the capital city of the Roman Empire. A 'romance' was a song or story told in the common language of the people of the time. These oral songs and stories were often set in verse and frequently told of a hero and his fair maiden. Through time the poetry was lost, but the stories survive in the romances of modern prose form.
As you crochet a winsome bride doll gown, or sit waiting for the bride to start down the aisle with her father at the next wedding you attend, think about the words you will use to describe the occasion. Indeed, those words may have a romance of their own. One source for a Bride Doll Gown pattern can be ordered from www.anniesattic.com.
Have fun crocheting a beautiful Gown for a Bride Doll from a Crochet Pattern.
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