There are many couples who think they are bucking superstition by marrying on Friday the 13th, but, according to old sources, May was the worst month for marriage.
Don’t Marry in May
Maid or Widow Married This Month Must Expect Ill Luck
There is an awful lot of superstition in the world after all. If you don’t believe it, just watch the marriage license market for the remainder of the month of May, and compare it with the month ending April 30th, or measure its thirty-one days of permits to double up “for better or for worse” with those that are issued during June, and you will be surprised at the figures, says The Philadelphia Press. It will bring you face to face with the fact that Old World superstition has not died out, even from the centers of the nineteenth century life and civilization. This prejudice against marrying in May is as old as recorded history.
The deep-rooted superstition has lasted through all ages and is known in all climes, permeating all conditions of society, and gives excellent promise of hanging on as long as there are people left to marry.
Where was the superstition born? Under the shadow of the Dark Ages, it would seem, for nobody can go so far back that some mention of May’s baleful influence over marital unhappiness is not made, says a writer in The Washington Star. Of course, the gods and goddesses had a lot to do with it. They are responsible for many superstitions about love and marriages.. True, we know that gods and goddesses are myths, but we go on believing in them just the same. The Catholic Church in the early years of its existence forbade, under ban if its eternal displeasure, marriage in May.
Plutarch tried to fix up a reason for this most unreasonable superstition, saying that “it is probable that May is regarded as unlucky because it comes between April and June, the months respectively of Venus and Juno, the tutelary goddesses of marriage. Or, perhaps, it is because May is the month of the feast of Lemurs, the souls of the dead.”
The Scotch have a deep-rooted prejudice to marriages contracted in May. Sir Walter Scott says of this prejudice: “The Scottish people, even of the better classes and rank, avoid marriage in the month of may, which general season of flowers and breezes might in other respects appear so peculiarly favorable for that purpose.” It was especially objected to the marriage of Mary Queen of Scots with the profligate Earl of Bothwell that it was solemnized within the interdicted month. For once, perhaps the moral properly pointed at the superstition. This prejudice got to be so ridiculous among the Scots that in 1684 a lot of enthusiasts, known as the Gibbites, who had set themselves to tear superstition out by the roots, dallied with Friday and thirteen and May marriages in a perfectly frightful way, and like to have got themselves mobbed for their blasphemy.
The Pagans had a myth that “only bad women marry in May.” They had another that if the marriage did take place the couple would live most unhappily, and children born of the marriage – if it was not hopelessly rendered barren by thus slapping the fates in the face – would be deformed or imbecile. With prizes like that in prospect, it is not much wonder that the ignorant and superstitious taboo May marriages, but there is no excuse yet for this idiosyncrasy of thinking people – at least, no sensible one. Ovid was a firm believer in the superstition, and said that no widow or young girl would marry in May unless she wished to invite the displeasure of the gods, and that the imprudent woman who braved their wrath would fill an early grave. Ovid pinned his faith to rosy June, the birth month of June, and when he got ready to launch his daughter on the matrimonial sea he studied the stars and all the superstitions to make sure that he would not run upon Scylla in steering off Chayrbdis.
Resolved to match the girl, he tried to find
What days unprosperous were; what moons were kind.
After June’s sacred Ides his fancy strayed-
Good to the man and happy to the maid.
The Italians look upon the month of May as an unlucky wedding month. “The month of flowers is a month of tears,” they say. And they cite the fact that many of noble blood who have striven to set aside the ancient superstition have gone early to their graves.
May seems to have a baleful influence on a good many things. Kittens and babies born in the month of May will be sick a great deal, and are very apt to be drowned – the kittens, of course – and who dares controvert that statement? There are natural causes for sickness of babies in their first summer, but that doesn’t count alongside of a full-grown superstition.
While not a good month in which to marry, May is the month par excellence for making love, and the crop of tenderness sown then bears fruit in June in a larger number of marriages than during any other month of the year. And therein lies more superstition for you. June is the month sacred to Juno, the venerable ox-eyes “Hera” of Homeric renown. Her very name signifies the “yokemaker,” and she was a kind of female providence, protecting her sex from the cradle to the grave. The Romans thought her to be the guardian of the National finances, and erected a temple to her on the Capitoline, in which they placed the mint. She was the goddess of chastity, and no Magdalen dared touch her altar. Her month, June, was considered especially propitious for marriage, and along down the ages the sweet myth has come, that rose-crowned June will bring to brides all the happiness there is to know.
Source: Daily public ledger. (Maysville, Ky.), 27 May 1895.
