Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/298

270 pavilion or tent erected on the top of a butt; and every person so married, being below the estate of paying a fine in money, presented the mayor with an orange, as an acknowledgment for the fine, which by the constitution and custom of the city he was liable to."

I would draw attention to the gift of an orange, and to the occurrence in Irish folklore of wreaths and balls in connection with matrimonial observances. Unfortunately, so far as I have ascertained, these interesting rites de passage have been but little noticed. But Colonel Vallancey informs us that on May 3rd, "each bride married within the year makes up a large ball covered with gold or silver tissue (in resemblance of the Deity), and presents it to the young unmarried men of the neighbourhood, who, having previously made a circular garland of hoops, &c. (to represent the zodiac), come to the bride's house to fetch this representation of that planet. To such a pitch is this superstitious ceremony carried, I have known in the county of Waterford a ball to have cost a poor peasant two guineas." Lady Wilde tells of hoop and balls carried by the dancers round the May bush; the Halls describe how a decorated tree and ball was taken to a bride the first May Day after her wedding; and Crofton Croker mentions the gift of a goaling ball on May Day. In this connection it will be remembered that Arthur Young in his Travels in Ireland, after an account of the well-known custom of "horsing the bride," proceeds to tell of an annual hurling match, when a girl was given as prize to the winner. Lecky quotes Young's note of this occurrence at Londonderry in a paragraph dealing with "a form of crime which was once inveterate in the national life, but which has been so completely extirpated that its very memory and tradition have