MARRIAGE IN IRELAND.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 13048, 13 December 1905, Page 1 (Supplement)

MARRIAGE IN IRELAND.

SINGULAR ARRANGEMENTS. The matrimonial arrangements of Irish farmers in Kerry may sound queer to an English render, but are the outcome of an innate, though unwritten, Jaw that (.lie whole family have ft vested interest in the affair.' For example, when the family is growing up, the farm is handed over to thr, eldest son, who gives the parents a small allowance during their live.', while the fortune that 1 c gets, with his wife goes, not to himself, but to provide for his younger brothers and sisters. Hence if the eldest son were to marrv the Venus.do Medici with ten pounds less dowry than he could get with the ugliest wall-eyed female in the neighbourhood, lie would to considered as an enemy to all his family. A tenant of a neighbour'of mine actually got married to a woman .without a penny, a thing unparalleled in my experience in Kerry, and his. sister presently came to my wife for some assistance.. My wife, asked her: — "Why. does not your brother support you?" ' * And she answered: — '_"' How could he support anyone after bringing an empty woman to the house?" There was a. tenant of mine, paying about £25 a year rent, who died, and his son came to mc to have his name inscribed in the rent, account. I asked him what will his father had made. Ho replied that he had left him the farm and its stock. "What's to become of your' brother and sister?" says I. "They are to get whatever I draw," says he. " That means whatever you get with your wife?" "That is so." " Well, suppose you marry a girl with only £20. what, would happen then?" "Thar would not do at all," very gravely. "Is there- no limit put on the"worth of your wife?" "Oh," says he, "I was valued at £160." I found out afterwards he had £170 with his wife. A tenant on the Callinafercy estate got married, and the-mother-in-law and the daughter-in-law did not agree. So the elder came to complain to the landlord of the girl's conduct, and after copiously describing various delinquencies with the assistance of many invocations of the saints, she wound up with ; — . | " And the worst of all, Mr. Marshall. Is that she gives herself all the airs of a £o';0 girl, and she had but £150."'Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent," Samuel M. Hussey.