Lover's necklace

The Lover's necklace is a very popular piece of jewelry among the Nomads of Kariaas well as their sedentarized relatives, who have mantained many of their old traditions. It is expected that every woman, specially recently married girls to carry one of this necklaces.

Description

Lover's necklace are necklaces made of beads in whose central part there is a container, like a kind of casket, sometimes cylindrical or other times square or rectangular. These casket contain one or more hairs from the husband, or sometimes from both spouses, although the former is usually the case. These caskets are usually highly decorated with religious inscriptions or vegetal or animal decorations. The necklace can also be decorated with precious stones or small round plates made of silver or gold. Some of the beads that made up these necklace are made of cristal, amber, bone and other materials. Each culture, each nomadic or nomadic descendant group has it's own design for this item and sometimes people belonging to these ethnic groups can tell the ethnicity or origin of the person wearing it just by the design of the necklaces.
In case of marriages between two people of different ethnicities, the newly married wives usually have two necklaces, one with the design of their tribe or town and the other with the design of the town or tribe of their husbands.

Meaning and Symbolism

Lover's necklace, at its name suggests is related with ... well... love. These items are conceived as examples of love between both partners. They symbolize their union and their love, as an old saying in Karia says:

Wearing this casket near your heart reminds you of your loved ones, of your other half, and whatever you go, you know that this part of your lover (in this case his hair) is always with you!.

Tradition dictates that it's the husband who cuts a bit of his hair and then gives it to her bride to place it inside the casket. When he gives his hair to the bride he pronounces these words:

Take this as part of me and my soul, so that you know that I'll always be with you and I'll always love you , no matter how far away you are if you are in another town or just in another room.

Some wives decide to continue wearing it even after their spouses have departed this world, as a sign of their eternal love and also as a way to say that their husband's soul continues to accompany them every day.