The more the guests ate and drank the better, pecuniarily, for their hosts.

The charge for admission to the penny wedding (practically to the feast that followed it) varied in different districts, but with us it was generally a shilling.

Perhaps the penny extra to the fiddler accounts for the name penny wedding.

The ceremony having been gone through in the bride's house, there was an adjournment to a barn or other convenient place of meeting, where was held the nuptial feast; long white boards from Rob Angus's sawmill, supported on trestles, stood in lieu of tables; and those of the company who could not find a seat waited patiently against the wall for a vacancy.

The shilling gave every guest the free run of the groaning board, but though fowls were plentiful, and even white bread too, little had been spent on them.