Bride ales and penny weddings : recreations, reciprocity, and regions in Britain from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century / R.A. Houston.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Houston, R. A. (Robert Allan), 1954- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Marriage customs and rites--Great Britain--History.

Marriage customs and rites.

History.

Great Britain.

Physical Description:

xviii, 239 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2014.

Summary:

Some of the poorest regions of historic Britain had some of its most vibrant festivities. Between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, the people of northern England, Lowland Scotland, and Wales used extensive celebrations at events such as marriage, along with receiprocal exchange of gifts, to emote a sense of belonging to their locality. Bride Ales and Penny Weddings looks at regionally distinctive practices of giving and receiving wedding gifts in order to understand social network and community attitudes. Examining a wide variety of sources over four centuries, the volume examines contributory weddings, where guests paid for their own entertainment and gave money to the couple, to suggest a new view of the societies of 'middle Britain', and re-interpret social and cultural change across Britain. These regions were not old fashioned, as is commonly assumed, but differently fashioned, possessing social priorities that set them apart both from the south of England and from 'the Celtic fringe'. This volume is about informal communities of people whose aim was maintaining and enhancing social cohesion through sociability and reciprocity. Communities relied on negotiation, compromise, and agreement to create and re-create consensus around more or less shared values, expressed in traditions of hospitality and generosity. Ranging across issues of trust and neighbourliness, recreation and leisure, eating and drinking, order and authority, personal lives and public attitudes, R. A. Houston explores many areas of interest not only to social historians, but also literary scholars of the British Isles. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction: Marriage and Recreation, Historians and Social Scientists 1

Part I Ales and Bridals: Public and private sociabilities

1 Communal Drinkings in England and Wales, c. 1400-1600 21

2 Religious Change and the Demise of English Church Ales 26

3 Public and Private Festivities: the Geography of Church and Other Ales 43

Part II Weddding Celebrations in Early Modern Britain

4 Weddings in South-East England 59

5 Recreations, Religion, and Bridals in Post-Reformation Scotland 66

6 Who Held Contributory Weddings and Why? 77

7 The Costs and Benefits of Bridals 92

8 Country, Town, and the Commercial Element in Hospitality 109

9 The Social Universes of Contributory Weddings 121

10 Numbers 136

Part III Coercion and the Limitis of Voluntarism

11 Loverdargs, Boon Days, and Boon Works 143

12 Thigging 151

13 Cymorthau 156

Part IV Contexts and Comparisons

14 Contemporary Explanations of Cultural Change 171

15 Regional Social and Economic Contexts 176

16 Cultural Patterns and the 'Celtic Fringe' 196

17 Cultural Patterns and Continental Parallels 205

18 The Decline of Reciprocity 211.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780199680870

0199680876

OCLC:

866619918