Sean Coyle

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Sean Coyle: "Why do we tie the knot?"

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Wedding rings

"Why do we tie the knot?"

BBC Radio Foyle - Sean Coyle, "Why do we tie the knot?"

Sean draws a blank on the expression, 'tie the knot'. 

Sean wonders why it is that we say that we 'tie the knot' when we marry. 

"Why is it that we say that we 'tie the knot' when we marry?" Sean asks.

"Way back if there was no priest or pastor," says a text messager, "you would be hand-tied. The couple would be tied together. The head of the girl's family would tie a piece of cloth around the man and wife's hands. That meant they were married."

"Och," Sean says. "I don't like that. Girls do you like that?"

Emma doesn't like it. Janet never heard. She was talking on the phone.

"I saw a wedding in Cyprus," says Ron in Belfast, "The bride and the groom had floral garlands on their hands with ribbons hanging down, and the priest tied ribbons around the couple. So thinking about that, maybe, they did actually tie a knot to tie them together."

"No, I don't like that either. I'm not married to either of those."

But he considers Bláithín's suggestion a bit more favourably.

"I was at a druid wedding," says Bláithín, "and they tied the knot with their two hands, and they have to take it off, without removing the knot. Then they put it in a box so that the knot will never be undone, and if it does get untied, that's the end of the marriage."

With music from Hal Ketchum, Chuck Berry, Bill Haley and the Comets, Carlene Carter, Tom Petty, and more. 


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