352 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



" straw-boys " go round with long straw masks on, and if they do not 

 get either money or liquor will threaten to break the windows and' 

 furniture of the house. The women marry very young, from fifteen 

 years upwards ; and, if not settled in life by twenty or so, they usually 

 emigrate. 



Infants are given butter immediately after birth, and are carefully^ 

 watched, lest they should be "taken away" or changed. For some 

 similar reason a parturient woman has a string tied round the wrist or- 

 one of the fingers. All the wood in a house is carefully put outside if 

 the death of one of the inmates is thought to be imminent ; and if it 

 should occur the neighbours dread to give wood to make the coffin, as 

 they believe that the person who does so will be the next to die ; and 

 if the plank of which the coffin is to be made is not taken down from 

 the loft where it generally is, before the person dies, no inducement 

 can make them use it for the purpose. The people never bury their 

 dead on a Monday, nor on the day of the week in which the Peasts 

 of the Holy Innocents has fallen for that year. They have a great 

 horror of suicides, and believe that if one were to be buried in the 

 graveyard it would cause the other corpses to turn over on their faces. 



A wake is held the night before the funeral, on those who have 

 died abroad or been lost at sea, when the news arrives ; but owing to 

 the influence brought to bear on the people by the clergy in this 

 matter, it is now only attended by relatives of the deceased, and the 

 character of the ceremony is much altered, most of the old games, the 

 mock marriage, &c., being altogether obsolete, while the insobriety, 

 formerly common, is now a thing of the past. At the funeral the coffin 

 is carried out the back door, and is followed by the mourners. On 

 reaching the graveyard it is carried thrice round the old church in the 

 direction of the sun, and as soon as the grave is reached all those 

 attending the funeral scatter and go to pray at the graves of their own 

 relatives, which, having done, they raise the keen, begianing at the 

 person farthest from the open grave. 



TheHev. E. O'Growney, who has generously placed at my disposal 

 a number of notes taken during a visit to these islands, thus describes a 

 funeral he witnessed in Inishbofin : — "The old Irish funeral caoine 

 is still used in its full perfection. I happened to be engaged in the 

 church of St. Colman, deciphering a peculiar Latin inscription there, 

 when a large number of people, chiefly women, brought the body of an 

 infant for interment. While the body was being interred the women 

 scattered about the churchyard, each going to the grave of her own 

 friends. Those farthest from the newly-made grave began a low 



