School: Denbawn
- Location:
- Dennbane, Co. Cavan
- Teacher: T. Ó Cionnaigh
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0978, Page 313
Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.
See copyright details.
DownloadOpen data
Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
- XML School: Denbawn
- XML Page 313
- XML “Local Marriage Customs”
Note: We will soon deprecate our XML Application Programming Interface and a new, comprehensive JSON API will be made available. Keep an eye on our website for further details.
On this page
- Marriages occur more frequently in this locality during the period between Christmas and Shrove Tuesday, and many marriages often occur on Shrove Tuesday.
Shrove Tuesday night is called pancake night and it was customary to have a feast in every house as it was the last night for holding such events until after Lent.
A ring and a match used to be put in each pancake and this was the cause of much merriment during the feast to see who would get the ring and match. It is said that whoever gets the ring will be married and whoever gets the match will be a bachelor or an old - maid.
Matches are still made and the same customs prevail now in this locality as they used to formerly with some exceptions.
This is how matches are made. The man who is looking for a wife tells this to some neighbour or friend on whom he can rely.(continues on next page)
- Collector
- Rosetta Galligan
- Gender
- Female
- Address
- Dennbane, Co. Cavan
- Informant
- James Galligan
- Gender
- Male
- Address
- Dennbane, Co. Cavan
