i.e. 1806. This is correct, for I do not find them in almanacks after 1807, which is probably a heedless repetition from the previous year. Wilde, whose local knowledge of tradition covers, and evidently precedes slightly, the same period as O’Donovan’s, says the marriages had been stopped in 1770.
The “fair” of Oristown was held on May 1st (Belltaine) in 1678,[1] but on May 13th and Oct. 11th, once as late as Oct. 14th, in the eighteenth century, through which I have traced it from the reign of George II. A pattern (without, however, a patron saint) was held in Martry, just over the stream near Telltown, on Aug. 1st, the actual Lugnasad, as O’Donovan was told.[2] Perhaps the marriages were held the same day at Oristown and not at the time of the statutory fair. Wilde, as I said, with personal local knowledge, accepts the tradition of 1836, which he published in 1849; he often witnessed sports in Meath when a boy, but only adds to O’Donovan’s accounts that the man took the woman by the little finger. He, however, places the marriages in the fosse of the great Ring (as Eugene Conwell heard in 1864 and as the modern name implies), the couples walking south. After the great famine of 1845 Leinster tradition died out or got confused, so later versions carry but little, if any, weight, either as told to Conwell or, still more, in my time.
Now O’Donovan’s difficulty as to the connivance of the Church will carry little weight with students of folk custom. Undoubted pagan rites and rhymes, obscene games and acts,[3] handfasting, necromancy and such-like have never been suppressed. Public opinion easily condones old
- ↑ The Letters Patent, “Commission of Grace,” Roll 15, Dublin.
- ↑ “Ordnance Survey Letters,” p. 31, “the sports were transferred to Martry.”
- ↑ Like the “Droghedy Dance” and “the raising of the mast” or “rigging of the ship,” as I heard it called by one who had heard it described (some fifty years ago) by a former participant in the sport.
