School: Bellurgan, Baile Sheinicín (roll number 16249)

Location:
Bellurgan, Co. Louth
Teacher:
S. Mac Duinnshléibhe
Browse
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0660, Page 163

Archival Reference

The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0660, Page 163

Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.

See copyright details.

Download

Open data

Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

  1. XML School: Bellurgan, Baile Sheinicín
  2. XML Page 163
  3. XML “Local Marriage Customs”
  4. 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

  1. Local Marriage Customs.
    1.
    When two people wanted to get married against the will of their parents long ago they usually ran away in the middle of the night. They would go to the house of a neighbour where they would have everything ready beforehand. Some of the neighbours who were let into the secret were supposed to be gathered in the house with bottles of whiskey and they were then to drink the health of the runaways. The next morning the runaways would be married by the priest and only those who drunk their health the night before could attend they wedding. When the parents got to know about the runaways and consented to bring them home again, the father or brother of the bride would bring them home and that was called the "Drag Home ". Otherwise if the parents did not consent to bring them home the runaways would have to work and make a living for themselves.
    Nora Dawe obtained the story from John Murphy Esq, Bellurgan, Dundalk.
    Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.