Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/85

Rh attract the disease communicated to it by the one who left it near the holy well. So it is highly desirable that the distinction between the ofiferings and the accursed things should be observed, at any rate in writing of holy wells in the Isle of Man. How far the same distinction is to be found elsewhere I am unable to say ; but the question is one which deserves attention. From the less known saints Baltane and Santane I wish to pass to the mention of a more famous one, namely, St. Catherine, and this because of a fair called after her, and held on the 6th day of December at the village of Colby in the south of the Island. When I heard of this fair in 1888, it was in temporary abeyance on account of a lawsuit respecting the plot of ground on which the fair is wont to be held ; but I was told that it usually began with a procession, in which a live hen is carried about : this is called St. Catherine's hen. The next day the hen is carried about dead and plucked, and a rhyme pronounced at a certain point in the proceeding contemplates the burial of the hen, but whether that ever took place I know not. It runs thus : "Kiark Catrina marroo : Gows yn kione as goyms ny cassyn, As ver mayd ee fo'n thalloo."

"Cathrine's hen is dead : The head take thou and I the feet, And we shall put her under ground." A man who is found to be not wholly sober after the fair is locally said to have plucked a feather from the hen (T'eh er goaill fedjag ass y chiark) ; so it would seem that there must be such a scramble to get at the hen, and to take part in the plucking, that it requires a certain amount of drink to allay the thirst of the over-zealous devotees of St. Catherine. But why should this ceremony be associated with St. Catherine? and what were the