Marriage

Marriage was traditionally seen as the most important social ritual in Ireland. At one time, unmarried people in Ireland were subject to ridicule. As a woman was seen as coming of age when she got married, a fifty year old unmarried woman in Ireland was often still called a girl, and treated as a lesser member of the community than, for instance, her married niece.

This socially sanctioned bullying of the unmarried reached a peak at Shrovetide (Pancake Tuesday). As the Catholic Church banned marriage during Lent, people’s unmarried status stood out more than ever at this time of year when they would have to wait until the end of Lent before they could marry. In Munster and Leinster, the first Sunday in Lent became known as “Chalk Sunday”, when the unmarried had chalk smeared on their backs on the way to and from church as a way of highlighting their unmarried status.

The National Folklore Collection also records how in south and west Munster, “Sceilig lists” – lists of unmarried people – were compiled. This tradition goes back to when monks lived on the Sceiligs off the coast of Co Kerry. An anomaly with the calendar meant that Lent fell later on the Sceiligs, so marriages could take place there some time into the Lenten period. Young men and women compiled these “Skellig lists” in the area and went about in search of those older, unmarried people who appeared on the list. They seized them and dragged them through the streets in a cart to a public cacophony of cheers, jeers, and cat-calls, all the while telling them they would be sent to the Skelligs to get married. Those who submitted to the humiliating ordeal with good grace were treated better than those who fought back who might be dumped miles from home or have water thrown over them. Other tricks played on the unmarried around Lent, similar to today’s Halloween pranks, included stuffing their chimneys, letting their livestock loose and taking their gates off the hinges.

In “The Long Garden”, celebrated Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh refers to a custom expressing disapproval of an older man marrying a young woman. Younger people would loudly boo, blow horns or bang metal outside the house on the wedding night. It’s a custom recalled by Ann Porter, an 85-year-old woman living in Rathdrum, Co. Wicklow, who, as a girl, took part in “bottle blowing” who involved knocking the end out of a bottle and blowing through it to make a loud noise outside the home of a newly married couple.