Bkowne — The Ethnography of Garumna and LeilermuIIen. 253 



walk a hundred yards up the road after sunset even with a cousin. 

 Marriages are arranged by the parents, and there is, as a rule, no previous 

 courtship. The fortune is seldom or never money, but consists of two 

 or three cattle, or a couple of sheep, but considerations as to suitability 

 of families, &c., are often taken into account as well as the dowry. 

 Sometimes marriages are occasions of festivity, but in many cases they 

 occur without any social rejoicings, and the young couple go home 

 quietly after the ceremony. The people marry early, the age in the 

 case of men being from eighteen to thirty years, and for girls from 

 sixteen upwards. 



After the marriage ceremony the bride and bridegroom go out of 

 the church door together, as it is believed that, if one went out before 

 the other, the first to go out would be the first to die. 



The small holdings are constantly subdivided when the young men 

 of a family marry, new houses being raised on the smaller subdivisions 

 in the cases of the elder sons. The youngest son brings his wife home 

 to live with the old people, as a rule, and inherits the father's holding. 

 In these cases the house is often divided by a party wall, and the young- 

 couple live in one of the divisions thus formed. 



Infants are carefully watched before baptism and at special times, 

 as when about to be vaccinated, lest they should be changed by the 

 fairies or come under any other evil influence. It is customary to put 

 little crosses made of straw into children's clothing when they are taken 

 to be vaccinated. AYomen frequently cany their infants slung in a 

 shawl on their backs, thus leaving the hands free to knit or do other 

 work. Delivery is, in normal cases, usually effected in the kneeling 

 posture. TJnbaptised and stillborn infants who die are not interred in the 

 regular grave-yards, but are buried in the m earing between two hold- 

 ings. Many old customs and ceremonies relating to deaths and funerals 

 still persist. It is believed that if a person is dying he will expire at 

 half -tide, but that if he lives beyond that he will linger until the next 

 tide. When anyone is dying of phthisis, all the relatives are cleared 

 out of the house lest they might catch the disease as the person dies. 

 After a death the body is usually kept two days before burial. Wakes 

 are still held, but they ai"e shorn of many of the old customs. N'ow 

 the people merely sit and drink and tell stories. The coffin is always 

 borne to the grave on men's shoulders, as there is no road to the grave- 

 yard, and fences and walls have to be crossed. Cairns are raised at 

 spots where a funeral has stopped on the way to the grave-yard, and 

 the people never pass these without a prayer for the repose of the soul 

 of the person on whose account the cairn was built. It was from the 



