Marry in Lent

The same East Anglian correspondent gave Chambers two sayings about choosing when and whom to wed. It was commonly said that anyone who married in Lent would live to repent it. It was also thought unlucky for a woman to marry a man whose surname began with the same letter as her own. He compared the Scottish proverb that it is better to marry over the midden than over the moor, meaning a wife from close at hand, and noted that whole East Anglian parishes had intermarried in just that way.