Handfasting

It is also used, apparently ahistorically, to refer to an alleged pre-Christian practice of symbolically fastening or wrapping the hands of a couple together during the wedding ceremony.

The term was presumably loaned into English from Old Norse handfesta "to strike a bargain by joining hands"; there are also comparanda from the Ingvaeonic languages: Old Frisian hondfestinge and Middle Low German hantvestinge.

In the sixteenth century, the Council of Trent legislated more specific requirements, such as the presence of a priest and two witnesses, as well as promulgation of the marriage announcement thirty days prior to the ceremony.

The sponsalia de futuro form was less binding, as the couple took hands only to declare their intention to marry each other at some future date.

[9][page needed] In some circumstances handfasting was open to abuse, with persons who had undergone "troth-plight" occasionally refusing to proceed to a church wedding, creating ambiguity about their former betrothed's marital status.

Historians speculate that his own marriage to Anne Hathaway was so conducted when he was a young man in 1582, as the practice still had credence in Warwickshire at the time.

[4][10] After the beginning of the 17th century, gradual changes in English law meant the presence of an officiating priest or magistrate became necessary for a marriage to be legal.

[13] 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.

[15][16] 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.

In the article, he asserted that the first reference to such a practice is by Thomas Pennant in his 1790 Tour in Scotland,[20] that this report had been taken at face value throughout the 19th century, and was perpetuated in Walter Scott's 1820 novel The Monastery.

[14] The term "handfasting" or "hand-fasting" was appropriated into modern Celtic neopaganism and Wicca for wedding ceremonies from at least the late 1960s, apparently first used in print by Hans Holzer.

[23] Evidence that the term "handfasting" had been re-interpreted as describing this ceremony specifically is found in the later 2000s, e.g. "handfasting—the blessed marriage rite in which the hands of you and your beloved are wrapped in ribbon as you 'tie the knot'.