Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/106

78 Irish peasant he is warm-hearted and highly sentimental, but this does not prevent money, or its equivalent, being the deciding item in the selection of his future wife. A man never thinks of a girl who has not sufficient money to be his equal; in cases, therefore, where the families of the bride and bridegroom are not intimate, so that the young man's farm is not known to the girl's father, as a first step the latter is invited to come and inspect the property of the possible son-in-law. If the holding is not well stocked, the holder of it will often borrow a few cattle and sheep from a neighbour for the occasion, so as to create a favourable impression to the parental eye. After due inspection, if the father be satisfied, he will proceed to do all he can by way of finding the expected equivalent of the "dot" for his daughter's marriage.

The favourite time for arranging matrimonial alliances is a month before Lent, for in Lent no priest will readily consent to celebrate a wedding; hence the very Irish characteristic of putting off the inevitable to the last moment. Consequently, when a young man, about February or March, is seen whitewashing and thatching his cabin, he is suspected at once and his movements are henceforth watched with keen neighbourly interest.

Presuming that arrangements have satisfactorily developed so that the marriage ceremony only remains, the amount of the fee is carefully fixed by the priest according to the amount of the dower given with the bride. For example, supposing the maiden's father is providing £40 and a cow, the priest requires at least a £4 or £5 fee before consenting to perform the ceremony. Thus marriages constitute a fine harvest for the priest, and if he has many marriages in his parish they prove one of his chief sources of income.

After these preliminary settlements, there follows now the most curious part of these Irish marriage customs. The intending bridegroom never himself proposes either to the young woman or her parents. Everything is done with the utmost secrecy. In order to ensure this condition, he starts off at midnight to his intended's abode—most probably in some neighbouring village—accompanied by a friend and a bottle of whisky. As