Up until a couple of generations ago Shrovetide, which begins after Old Christmas, 6 January, and continues until Shrove Tuesday – 1 March in 2022, was the traditional time for marriages in Ireland. In those days the responsibilities of farm-work prevented many from marrying during the spring or the harvest seasons. While Advent and Lent, which fall respectively directly before and after Shrovetide, were both periods of devotional abstinence when the Catholic Church forbid the laity from taking vows of holy matrimony. Aside from the above-mentioned restrictions many people thought that it was unlucky to marry at any other time of the year, with some months even having sayings that discouraged marriage, an example of which is ‘marry in May rue the day.’ So strong was the belief of ill-fortune would accompany a marriage at any time of year outside that, according to an account from the late nineteenth century,* the people on Tory Island would get half-married; if the seas were too wild or rough to bring the priest across during Shrovetide, he would perform a half-marrying ceremony from the mainland with the islanders standing opposite to him on the east shore of the Tory, and once the storm abated he would go ‘to the island and did whatever more was necessary to render the marriages valid in the eye of the law and of the Church.’
In some areas the Shrovetide season would be regularly punctuated with weddings. For example, in The Islandman, the first of the Great Blasket autobiographies, Tómas Ó Crohan noted that ‘Some years the whole island gets married, and for seven years after that, there won’t be a single wedding.’ Ó Crohan continues ‘I refer to this year (1878) of which I’m talking – for not a single boy or girl was unmarried by the time Shrove was over.’ Ó Crohan’s account of Shrovetide traditions is unusual in that it is one of the few accounts that I’ve come across that seems to suggest that marriages were performed throughout the Shrovetide season rather than on the last day of Shrovetide – Shrove Tuesday.
For some Shrovetide seems to have been treated and considered as a period for marriage preparation rather than for weddings; Timothy Buckley remarked in The Tailor and Antsy that during Shrovetide ‘there would be ‘matches’ and talk of ‘matches’, while The man from Cape Clear Conchúr Ó Síocháin made the following statement; ‘As you know there is a season for everything, and Shrovetide is the time for matches.’ The lengthy negotiations of match-making may have encouraged people, if not the Church, that Shrovetide was a time for bargaining, and that Shrove Tuesday, as it is the end of the season, is the best time to marry. Another probable factor for clusters of marriages falling on Shrove Tuesday was its position as a feast day which falls directly before the fast of Lent. Feasting was usual on Shrove Tuesday in our ancestors’ times, with the tradition of eating pancakes a survival of the feasting that was formerly undertaken to clear the larder in preparation for the Lenten fast, while special treats including meat, which was only eaten by many people three days a year, often features in older accounts of feasting on Shrove Tuesday .
Shrovetide was a particularly difficult time to be wilfully single, as marriage, in the past, gave a person significantly more status than it does today. Terms like boy or lad could be applied to any male who failed to get married, and unmarried females were often referred to as spinsters at any age past 21. Whereas a married individual was often considered and treated as an adult. Marriage did provide opportunities, and doweries from the bride’s family often trumped love in those days. However, financial stability was seldom the only factor in choosing to marry. As I have outlined in previous posts on Skellig Night and Chalk Sunday, social pressure and the threat of being humiliated seems to have played a significant part in encouraging marital unions. I’ll leave you with the following example of a scalding the famous Irish playwright John Millington Synge, who couldn’t have finished his twenties and was probably far away from turning thirty, received from a group of local women on Inishmann]; ‘The women were over-excited, and when I tried to talk to them they crowded round me and began jeering and shrieking at me because I am not married. A dozen screamed at a time, and so rapidly that I could not understand all they were saying, yet I was able to make out that they were taking advantage of the absence of their husbands to give me the full volume of their contempt.’
Sources
Cross, Eric, The Tailor and Ansty. Cork 1942.
Kennedy, Patrick. Banks of the Boro. Dublin, 1867.
Le Fanu, William Richard. Seventy Years of Life in Ireland, London, 1893.
Mason, William Shaw. A Statistical Account or Parochial Survey of Ireland. Dublin, London and Edinburgh, 1814-19.
Ó Crohan, Tomás. The Islandman. Translated by Robin Flower. Dublin, 1929; 1937.
Synge, J. M. The Aran Islands. London, 1907.
Illustration by Harry Clarke, 1924.
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