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Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 2,204
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 2,204 |
as in T Hardy's Mayor of Casterbridge?
Sort of, Helen: mostly, the arrangement was totaly amicable, with both parties agreeing to the split. As I say, sometimes the woman had formed an attachment ot someone else, so the auction would be "fixed" - with the collusion of everyone present. It was more a ritual to formally announce that the arrangement between a pair of people had been renounced, and another arrangement sturck.
The husband would then, of course, be free to "jump the broomstick" with someone else.
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Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 3,467
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 3,467 |
Reminds me of the story of the fellow who came home from a poker game at 3 AM and shook his wife. "Wake up, wake up, you have to pack your bags."
"Why? asked his wife a tad groggily.
The fellow responded, "I lost you in a poker game!"
The wife was fully awake now. "How the hell did you do that?"
"It wasn't easy," the man replied, "I had to fold a full house."
TEd
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
I can't vouch for the vercity of this site (and certainly won't for the spelling [rimshot]), but here's a pertinent quote:
Broomsticks were long associated wth Witches because they figured in pagan rituals, marriages and births and the Mysteries of Woman. In Rome the broom was symbol of Hecate's priestess-mid-wife, who swept the threshold of a house after each birth to remove evil spirits that might harm the child. As Hecate was also the Triple Goddess presiding over marriage, her broomstick signifies sexual union.
Old Wedding customs included jumping the broomstick, possibly to represent impregnation. Gypsy weddings always included the same ritual, though gypsies now state they don't know what it means. Oddly enough, the same broom-jumping ritual marked churchless weddings of black slaves in the nineteenth-century America. From: http://www.geocities.com/littlepurplewitch/broomstick.html
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