School: Clochar na Toirbhirte, Cill Áirne
- Location:
- Killarney, Co. Kerry
- Teachers: An tSr. M. Déaglán An tSr. Marie Thérèse
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0456, Page 220
Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.
See copyright details.
DownloadOpen data
Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
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
- In the olden days, a girl about to get married usually wore a cape-cloak a year before her wedding. In that way everybody knew the number of girls who wished to to get married during "Shrove". The "match" was usually made in the girl's home or in a local public-house in the town or village, by the fathers of the intended couple. The latter had little or nothing to say in the making of the match except to say whether they liked each other or not. It sometimes happened that they had never before met or even seen each other until that day.
If the two parties were satisfied, they spent some time merry-making and then they would arrange the day for the marriage. On the day of he marriage, the boy wore a trousers reaching to the knees, a swallow-tailed frieze coat, a hard hat, long stockings and buckled shoes. The girl wore her cape cloak.
In the very olden days, horses were the only means of conveyance, the boy rode to the Church on horseback while the girl was perched up behind him on a saddle which was known as the "chulóg". An old shoe was generally thrown after them to bring them good luck and fortune. In later years however when horses and cars were plentiful people had a "drag" on the wedding morning, The "drag" consisted of the cars that accompanied the couple to and from the Church. The greater the "drag" the more well to-do was the couple.(continues on next page)
- Informant
- Máire Ní Lineacháin
- Gender
- Female
- Address
- Laharan, Co. Kerry
