Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/294

 266 Some Characteristics of Irish Folkloi'e.

them, or did quite recently, in the South. The Skellig list, being entirely Irish in origin and observance, demands more than casual mention, though the Skellig pilgrimages, from whence came the name, have been dealt with by more than one writer.-^ The list at its simplest summarises the names of couples who, in the opinion of their neighbours, should be engaged. A man from Macroom described more elabo- rate proceedings to me, and told how bands of youths ducked the unmarried in the river. A party would sally forth to catch unwary — or too wary ! — bachelors, boys who,, the village considered, should have settled down as respect- able Benedicts. Say that one Paddy Leary had dallied unduly before taking his mate : the party, holding a rope, would watch for his approach, and then divide, and half would go one way, the rest on the other side round their victim, to wind him in the rope. Meanwhile a song would be improvised, to the effect that " Paddy Leary is an old man and ought to be married," setting forth the merits and demerits of the accused, his worldly possessions, and the reasons why he ought to marry. This in rough rhyme would be chanted, and the doggerel sent round to the neighbours that they might sing and laugh him into matri- mony. Satire has not lost its age-old influence in Erin.-*^

There may be penance about the Skellig list of to-day, but there is little solemnity, yet the name comes from the old custom of solemn penitential pilgrimages to the Skellig Rocks off the coast of Kerry, where no bird had power to fly over the ancient chapels, but must first alight and " walk gently over and then take wing." ^^ When the matri- monial element intruded on what Lecky calls these "perilous

"^^J.C.H.A.S., 8l ; Wilde, etc.

-* O'Curry notes, " from the remotest limes down to our own its power was dreaded in Erin. ... Of the antiquity of satire in Erin and the belief in its venomous power, we have the very important authority of Cormac's Glossary." (Vol. i. p. 217.)

■•"Smith, Kerry (1756), pp. 113-7.