School: Banahoe
- Location:
- Banagher, Co. Cavan
- Teacher: A. Mac an Bháird
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0978, Page 055
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: Banahoe
- XML Page 055
- XML “The Flitten”
- XML “Matchmaking”
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
- When a pair are married a flitten is taken from the bride's old home to her new one. In olden times when a flitten was being moved a red cover, usually a red quilt, was thrown over it for the people feared it would be over-looked on the way if this precaution was not taken. A man and his wife had to accompany the flitten and they had to be the parents of a family and also a friend of the brides or else the flitten would not be considered lucky.
- It was a custom long ago, and is in some parts yet, for the boy who intended to get married to take another man with him and go to the girl's house to ask for her hand in marriage off the mother or father. The boy would purchase a bottle of whiskey and the other man would take it to the bride's home. There the borrowed man would intercede for the younger man telling of the great place he had and the hard worker he was and so on. Then they would state fortune expected. The transaction was called "Match making".
