Handfasting

Handfasting (in Old English, merely 'betrothal'; A.S. handfastan, 'to pledge one's hand') was a custom at one time prevalent in Scotland, by which a man and a woman entered into conjugal relations on the strength simply of a verbal contract of marriage. Persons so handfasted were bound to each other for a twelvemonth and a day, after which they could either separate or be formally united in marriage. The custom had its great evils in society, and the clergy, both of the pre-Reformation and the post-Reformation churches, directed many injunctions against it. See MORGANATIC MARRIAGE.