Wedding practices in different cultures

Saturday 26 August 2017

Blackening (Scotland)

Blackening (Scotland)



You need to have a sense of humour to partake in the Scottish pre-wedding tradition of the Blackening which involves being covered in mud, muck and/or soot the day before your wedding. The tradition is thought to have originated in Scotland’s Orkney Islands, and involves both the bride and groom being smothered in a mixture of tar and feathers (but it could also be flour, eggs or curdled milk), then either tied to a tree or paraded through the town’s streets in humiliation. This rather messy tradition is meant to give the bride or groom a ‘taster’ of the humiliation that married life may bring.

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