Handfasting

“All along there was some Invisible string Tying you to me?”

Uncle Jerry traces the European tradition of handfasting as a parallel cultural practice to the Asian red thread folk tale. In handfasting ceremonies, couples would have a cord or string tied around their joined hands to symbolise their bond. Uncle Jerry follows the tradition through its suppression by Pope Innocent III at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, its continuation through the eighteenth century, and through Fleet marriages in London. The string-as-binding-of-two-people register in the song echoes both the Asian thread tradition and the European handfasting practice, giving the invisible string metaphor roots in world folklore rather than a single cultural source.