Tying the Knot

Only relatively recently has the Church and the State become involved in marriage: the Council of Trent (1564) decreeing that a marriage was only valid if it was conducted by a priest, and the State registration of such marriages commencing in the 19th Century.

But people have lived on these islands for the best part of 30,000 years, forming couples and raising children. The folk tradition of marriage here is called handfasting. For thousands of years, a couple would come to a special ceremonial place where their hands would be joined through a portal and then bound together with rope. This is the origin of the expression 'tying the knot'.

At the handfasting ceremony the couple vowed to stay together for a year and a day. At the end of that year they had a choice: to renew their vows permanently, to renew their vows for another year or to part. Under the latter option, the responsibilities of each as regards any children and the property they had held in common would be specified.

The word handfasting derives from Old Norse and refers to the making of a contract by joining hands. It is believed that handfasting was used to formalise the exchange of all manner of goods and property.

Handfasting ceremonies took place at special sites with a portal through which the hands of the couple were joined and bound. Some of these sites had special standing stones with a natural hole, or a hole bored through - such as the Holestone (see below) near Doagh, Co Antrim. Many portals were made of wood, perhaps the trunk of an old tree, and thus have not survived to the present.

At Lughnasa there were special fairs where young men and women from different tribal groups would meet and could become handfasted. One of the main sites in Ireland for this was at Teltown in Co Meath.

Handfasting remained a legal basis for marriage in Scotland until 1939. To this day, couples who have been married in church also come to the Holestone for a handfasting ceremony.