Dark's Dominion (In the Wedding Band)

... whereas marriage is from the overt social point of view a happy and amicable affair uniting two people who wish to be united and establishing a new bond between two kindreds, myth and ritual are at one in proclaiming the converse of this view. Peaceful and friendly on the surface, marriage symbolizes the victory of a principle from an upper realm over the sinister powers of a lower one, a victory won on the conditions set by those powers themselves. The price is the emancipation from that lower relam of the opposite prinicple and the consummate union of the two.

-- Rees and Rees, Celtic Heritage

Outside the ritual the deeds of mythical heroes cannot be repeated by mortal men ... As events in ordinary life they are, as often as not, fantastic, anti-social, immoral and catastrophic. Yet ... it is one of the great paradoxes of human life that it derives its deepest meaning from a mytholigical realm the inhabitants of which conduct themselves in a way that is antithetical to what is normal in every-day behaviour and experience.

-- Rees & Rees, ibid