Pegg's yank, the man in the red shirt, he came home on a trip. A lot of them that time used to
come home on a trip. Well, he came home at Shroff time, which was very handy, and there was a match
made for him with Pegg. Pegg was a lady monitor, teaching in the school, what we used to call a
junior assistant mistress. So the yank had jam and jam open it. Well, a lot of those young people
going to America in those days, they regarded New York as a place or state of punishment where
some people suffered for a time before they came home and bought a pub, or a farmland, or married
into land, or business like Pegg's yank. And a great many succeeded. Over 40 years ago, walking
through the Irish countryside, every second house you'd call into, either the man or his wife had
been to America. Lots of young girls,
used to come home too. Well, they wouldn't be so young then after 15 years in New York,
but they'd be young enough. And a match might be made for one of them with a farmer,
and that young girl, she'd bring the farmer maybe $500. And if that farmer had an idle sister in
the house, and by idle, they are now, I don't mean out of work. If the farmer had an idle sister in
the house, that $500 would be her dowry, her fortune.
And it would enable her to marry another farmer of the man of her fancy. And if that man had another
idle sister, well, the $500 would be her dowry, and so on, and so on, and so on. The same $500
earned hard running up and down the steps of high stoop houses in New York City could be the means
of bringing anything up to a dozen women under the blankets at home in Ireland. And all pure legal.
There was no knowing,
the amount of people who would get married at that time between Chalk Sunday, that was the first
Sunday after Christmas, and Shrove Tuesday. But queer times, as the cat said when the clock fell
in him, no one would get married during Lent if you weren't married in those days before Shrove
Tuesday night you could throw your hat with it. You'd be idle for another year unless you went
out to Skellig's Rock.
That's where the
monks kept the old time, Gregory time. And on Ash Wednesday morning, a document used to be pushed
in under the door as it was called, the Skellig's List. Oh, a broadsheet, scoreless verse, lampooning
all those bachelors who should have but didn't get married during Shrove time. There might be a verse
like this. There's Mary the bridge and Johnny her boyfriend. They're walking out now for a drink.
There are twenty-one springs. There's no ditchner nor dyke that they haven't rolled in. She must know by now
the nature of things. Oh, Johnny, says she, do you think we should marry? And put an end for all time
to this fooster and fuss. You're a Mary, says he. You must be near doting. Who do you think
could marry either of us?