Title: No Looking in the Mirror on the Day of the Wedding
General Information about Item:
- Customary Folklore: Superstition
- Italian, English
- Italy
Informant Data:
- Nancy Canepa has been an Italian professor at Dartmouth College since 1989. She is descended from Italian immigrants on her father’s side. Her paternal grandmother is from the Lombardy region of Italy, and her paternal grandfather is from the Liguria coast. She has attended two Italian weddings. Her husband is from the Apulia region of Italy.
Contextual Data:
- Social/Cultural Context: Most weddings in Italy are held in a Catholic church. The bride usually spends a long time getting ready for the wedding at home before leaving for the ceremony at the church. However, superstition prohibits her from looking in the mirror during the whole time she is getting ready for the wedding. This superstition is common throughout all regions of Italy.
Item:
- If the bride sees even a glimpse of herself in a mirror before she arrives at her wedding ceremony, then she has to immediately take off an earring or a glove so that there will not be bad luck at her wedding.
Associated File (audio):
Transcript of Associated File:
- “The bride cannot look at herself in a mirror with her dress on uh before she leaves to go to uh the church – weddings in Italy are… traditional weddings are always Catholic weddings held in church. Um if she does happen to catch a glimpse of herself in the mirror, she has to immediately take off uh an earring, or a glove, or something else that I can’t remember to kind of counteract her seeing herself the mirror.”
Informant’s Comments:
- The informant believed the act of looking in the mirror would somehow bring bad luck to the bride, either by affecting the happiness of her marriage or the prosperity of the new couple. Therefore, it is important that the bride immediately removes a glove or an earring to counteract the bad luck.
Collector’s Comments:
- Looking in the mirror signifies vanity. The custom of avoiding mirrors is important because a display of vanity might make the Christian God angry, which could create misfortune for the couple. The effect of the superstition that the informant mentioned also follows the magical logic of “If I do action A, bad effect B will happen unless I do action C” – If you look in the mirror, then something bad will happen unless you remove a glove or an earring.
Collector’s Name: Peter Loomis
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