One of his best-known works, it describes an utterly chaotic wedding at a venue where soldiers mixed up with musicians and the wedding-party; the chimney catches fire, and even the priest robs the collection.

[1] The composition has been contrasted with the wedding at Cana, part of Bellman's use of Biblical allusions for comic effect.

[6] The epistles, written and performed in different styles, from drinking songs and laments to pastorales, paint a complex picture of the life of the city during the 18th century.

A frequent theme is the demimonde, with Fredman's cheerfully drunk Order of Bacchus,[7] a loose company of ragged men who favour strong drink and prostitutes.

At the same time as depicting this realist side of life, Bellman creates a rococo picture, full of classical allusion, following the French post-Baroque poets.

The women, including the beautiful Ulla Winblad, are "nymphs", while Neptune's festive troop of followers and sea-creatures sport in Stockholm's waters.

Meanwhile, the chimney catches fire; the preacher gives a fire-and-brimstone sermon on St. Paul, David, Saul, and original sin; music plays; soldiers drink; the bride's white gloves split; the bridegroom swears and bursts into tears; a bridesmaid curtsies; and the preacher collapses in a corner.

Korsgeväret Sätt för porten; Slån i lorten, Om han käftar mot.

[1] The scholar of literature Lars Lönnroth comments that we hear a crowd of heated wedding-guests shouting at one another in a "crazy comic furioso"[13] in which it is impossible to discern who is saying what.

[12] Like his contemporaries, Bellman wrote drinking songs that parody preaching and quote from the Bible and the book of Psalms, with Fredman as the opposite of a preacher; and he treats a wide range of ceremonies from weddings, baptisms, funerals, balls, society chapter rituals, and trials to military parades with parody and burlesque.

[12] Lönnroth states that a frequent pattern in the Epistles is for a serious ceremony gradually to disintegrate into pure farce.

He notes for instance that this is seen not only in Epistle 40's descent into a brawl and wild rioting but also in Epistle 54, "Never an Iris": at the end of a sad and solemn funeral "at Corporal Boman's grave in St Katrina churchyard", Fredman "tactlessly" advises the widow to "choose a new Corporal [by sitting] on a folding bench [with another man]".

[14] The Bellman Society wrote of the composition that "The catastrophic wedding at Bensvarvars, a pub in Södermalm, is a tumult that is developed at breakneck tempo.

It starts with a chimney fire and ends with a resounding brawl where the officiating priest helps himself to the collection for a hospital.

"[15] Göran Hassler states in his annotated selection of Bellman's work that the Epistle has been recorded in interestingly different interpretations by Sven-Bertil Taube on his 1963 album Carl Michael Bellman, Volume 2 (HMV),[16] and by Cornelis Vreeswijk on his 1971 album Spring mot Ulla, spring!