No, Sir Priest or Sir Preacher, Catherine is not my wife— […] she is not my wife, but she is handfasted with me, and that makes her as honest a woman. [...] When we are handfasted, as we term it, we are man and wife for a year and a day—that space gone by, each may chuse another mate, or, at their pleasure, may call the priest to marry them for life—and this we call handfasting.
1820 March, [Walter Scott], chapter XI, in The Monastery. A Romance. […], volume II, Edinburgh: […] Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and for Archibald Constable and Co., and John Ballantyne, […], pages 311–312