"Something old" is the first line of a traditional rhyme that details what a bride should wear at her wedding for good luck: Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue, and a [silver] sixpence in her shoe.
An 1898 compilation of English folklore recounted that: In this country an old couplet directs that the bride shall wear:—"Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue."
[1]The earliest recorded version of the first two lines is in 1871 in the short story, "Marriage Superstitions, and the Miseries of a Bride Elect" in St James' Magazine, when the female narrator states, "On the wedding day I must 'wear something new, something borrowed, something blue.
"[3][4] Another compilation of the era frames this poem as "a Lancashire version", as contrast against a Leicestershire recitation that "a bride on her wedding day should wear—'Something new, Something blue, Something borrowed'...", and so omits the "something old".
[4] In 1894, the saying was recorded in Ireland, in the Annual Report and Proceedings of the Belfast Naturalists' Field Club, where it was attributed to County Monaghan folklore.