Publishing the Banns

Grace: Anyway they used to have to publish the banns one time. The Minister’d come and he’d have church, see and when he was having the church, he’d say we got to publish the banns, I’ll say for instance now Earl and Grace, they want to get married on such a time. Then he’d say this is the first publishing of the banns. So the next time he’d come, perhaps it’d be a month or a couple of months, he’d say again you know that and then he’d say that this is the second time the banns have been published. And then the third time he’d come, he’d say, now this is the third and final time of the publishing of the banns for Earl and Grace we’ll say, and they are to be married on such a day whatever day it was. So I don’t know, now this wedding I’m going to tell you about, I don’t know if they had any banns published or not because it’s kind of funny.

Anyway the two people that was getting married, they had everything arranged and got in the church and got married and had their bridesgirls and bridesboys. I don’t know if they had two bridesgirls and two bridesboys but they had bridesgirls and bridesboys. So they went and got up to the altar and [in front of] all the crowd in the church and the minister, said Yes and they got married, he married them. So he pronounced that they were married and all that. So then this two stepped away from in front of the minister, we’ll say, and the bridesgirl and the bridesboy, stepped up in front of the minister. So he started marrying them, so everybody was in awe, “Why, how come?”. So I don’t know if they had any banns published or not but the two of them got married.

And when the church was over, and stuff like that, the two that got married, the man didn’t like it very well because he said “Now that was our wedding and how come they stood up and got married, too.” So he went home, strode up over the ice, it was froze up from Brookside right up to Boat Hr, right up through, he decided to go home, he was taking off up over the ice and the bride behind him saying “Come back, come back”.

But anyway, I think they come back anyway and enjoyed their feast because you know they had the tea and the cakes and  all all that but the other two that stepped up and got married, that nobody knew was getting married at all, well they served the tables all night because that’s what the bridesgirls and bridesboys done. So I don’t know what kind of a social they had.  But anyway after it was all over and done with the people were saying “How come that they got married as quick as that?  You know, there must be something going on”.

Somebody said, I don’t know if it’s right or not, that the fellow, he come to Brookside teaching, a teacher, see, so this girl, was going with another man when the teacher come. But the teacher was staying anyway, with Mrs. Smith, we’ll say, and she always used to take the teacher, and that was the girl’s mother. So the moral of the story is that people can’t …  they had to get married like that because there was another fellow interested in the girl and he said if she ever goes to get married to this fellow, this teacher, that [he] was going to put a stop the wedding. So that’s how come they got married like that without anybody knowing [married on the sly] he couldn’t stop it then, once they were already married, that was it.  No publishing of the banns for them, I wouldn’t say, unless that was done in secret, too.