Content deleted Content added
BillyPreset (talk | contribs) →Early modern Scotland: various Tags: Mobile edit Mobile web edit Advanced mobile edit |
BillyPreset (talk | contribs) Tags: Mobile edit Mobile web edit Advanced mobile edit |
||
| (One intermediate revision by the same user not shown) | |||
Line 35:
The [[Scottish Hebrides]], particularly in the [[Isle of Skye]], show some records of 'Handfast" or "left-handed" marriage occurring 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."<ref name=Martin1693>{{cite book |title=A Description of the Western Islands of Scotland |first=Martin |last=Martin |publisher=London Hamilton, Adams |date=1693 |edition=1st |page=114 }} (2nd ed., 1716)</ref>
The most disastrous war fought between the MacLeods and MacDonalds of Skye culminated 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 [[Roderick Macleod of Macleod|Rory Mor]] of [[Dunvegan Castle|Dunvegan]], ignominiously expelled his mistress from Duntulm. It is
By the 18th century, the [[Kirk of Scotland]] no longer recognised marriages formed by mutual consent and subsequent sexual intercourse, even though the Scottish civil authorities did.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Andrews |first=William |title=Bygone Church Life in Scotland |publisher=Hull Press |year=1899 |pages=210–212 |url={{google books|tvYOAAAAQAAJ|plainurl=yes}} |via=Google Books }}</ref> To minimise any resulting legal actions, the ceremony was to be performed in public.<ref>{{Cite book | last=Macfarlane | first=Leslie J. | editor-last=MacDonald | editor-first=Alasdair A. | editor2-last=Lynch | editor2-first=Michael | contribution=William Elphinstone's Library Revisited | title=The Renaissance in Scotland: Studies in Literature, Religion, History, and Culture |publisher=E.J. Brill |year=1994 |location=Leiden | page=75 |url={{google books|Yl71m3YBVGwC|plainurl=yes}} |via=Google Books | isbn=978-90-04-10097-8 }}</ref> This situation persisted until 1939, when Scottish marriage laws were reformed by the [[Marriage (Scotland) Act 1939]] and handfasting was no longer recognised.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Rackwitz |first=Martin |title=Travels to Terra Incognita: The Scottish Highlands and Hebrides in Early Modern Travellers' Accounts c. 1600 to 1900 |publisher=Waxmann Verlag GmbH |year=2007 |page=497, note 199 |url={{google books|GZWpQi7vY0QC|plainurl=yes}} |via=Google Books |isbn=978-3-8309-1699-4}}</ref>
| |||