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The motif Wedding is a part of: Ritual

Keywords:

Ritual, love, marriage

Description of this motif: Weddings are based on the church's wedding ritual, which unites two people in the sacred bonds of marriage. In Andersen's tales weddings usually are described as in a traditional folk tale: the hero gets the princess in the end, and they live happpily ever after.

Example :

The boy was still only six years old, but already he knew parts of the Bible and the pious old hymns; many an evening while seated on his little cane stool, he had heard his father read Gellert's Fables and the poem about Messiah; hot tears had come into the boy's eyes, and his sister had cried at hearing of Him who had suffered death on the cross of Golgotha, that He might save us.

(...) but there were new graves in the churchyard; and there, down in the grass, close by the wall, lay the old church bell, fallen from its high position. It had developed a flaw and could ring no longer, and a new one had been put up in its place.

The mother and son had entered the churchyard and stood still before the old bell, while she told the little boy how this bell had performed its duty for centuries; it had pealed at baptisms, and joyful weddings, and funerals.