Modern rites

Peter Mullen on the virtues of The Book of Common Prayer over Common Worship or , worst of all, vows written by the couples themselves.

But there's no limit to the banality and paucity of imagination of those who devise new marriage services. I mean, consider this. For hundreds of years the bridegroom said,

With this ring I thee wed.

Those words go back to the time of Chaucer when they were spoken at the church door. I have heard them at weddings for thirty years and I can't think of a more moving utterance: six words of one syllable which exactly fit the movement of the placing of the ring on the bride's finger. This is lucid, numinous poetry of great beauty. So what have the revisers done? Replaced those six enchanted words with eleven in the tedious, tin-eared phrase,

I give you this ring as a sign of our marriage.

The revision is an act of cultural vandalism and sacrilege. Besides, it's a piece of sheer nonsense. I mean, you don't have to be Wittgenstein to see that, if he has to tell her that the ring is a sign, it means the sign isn't working.