School: High St. (C.), Belmont

Location:
Belmont, Co. Offaly
Teacher:
Annie Phelan
Browse
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0813, Page 067

Archival Reference

The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0813, Page 067

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: High St. (C.), Belmont
  2. XML Page 067
  3. 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
    The custom now when people get married is to go away to Dublin or some such city for a week or a fortnight.
    In the olden times the married couple went to the bride's home and had a great night of singing, dancing and all kinds of entertainment with their invited friends.
    During the festival "straw-boys" would visit the house; they would sing and dance and then they would be entertained. These "straw-boys" would be dressed in straw and old hats on their heads and visors on their faces so that no one would know who they were. When people were not allowed to get married in Lent many couples would get married on Shrove Tuesday.
    There is an old proverb pertaining to marriages -
    Monday for health,
    Tuesday for wealth,
    Wednesday the best day of all,
    Thursday for losses,
    Friday for crosses,
    And Saturday is no say at all".
    Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.
    Topics
    1. activities
      1. social activities (~7)
        1. rites of passage (~573)
          1. marriage (~4,283)
    Language
    English
    Collector
    Kathleen Brazil
    Gender
    Female
    Informant
    John Brazil
    Relation
    Parent
    Gender
    Male
    Address
    Belmont, Co. Offaly