life. Girls whilst unmarried are at the disposal of their parents. Should a woman lack the courage and initiative to set forth on that search after fortune service in America or elsewhere may offer, life holds but sorry prospect for her when marriage is not her destiny—in other words, if no marriage portion can be secured her. This, in very many cases, is provided by the portion brought into the family by the son's wife. Nor is it only the peasants who have suffered from this cause. Many an estate has been drained to ruination by the heavy charges made upon it for the support of dependent members of the owner's kin, to an extent I believe quite unknown in England. A man in popular phrase is a "boy," whatever his age, if unmarried. The distinction even penetrated into military and civil organisations. The Dublin bachelors were under the Captaincy or guardianship of an annually elected "Mayor of the Bull Ring," who held authority to punish them for any moral lapse. "When any bachelor citizen," wrote Warburton, quoting from Harris' Hist, of the City of Dublin, pp. 152-3, "happened to marry, the custom was for the mayor of the bull ring and his attendants to conduct the bridegroom, upon his return from church, to the ring, and there with a solemn kiss receive his homage and last farewell: from whence the new married man took the mayor and sheriffs of the bull ring home to dinner with him, unless he were poor; in which case the mayor and his bachelors made a collection for him, which they gave to him at the ring, upon receiving his homage. But this office seems to have been ludicrous, and established merely by custom, without any foundation of authority."[1] In the same city the local military forces were mustered annually on Easter Monday, May Day, Midsummer Eve, and St. Peter's Eve. "The charges of these musters were defrayed by fines levied on such freemen as had been married the foregoing year. The mayor and principal citizens sat at these musters under a
- ↑ Hist. of Dublin, i. 112-3.
S
