Scabby Friday
Folklorists have been fascinated by Erris, in their search for ‘material hitherto unknown’ (Rita O’Donoghue 2016, ‘Fios na mban. The role of women in death and burial customs in Erris in post-famine Ireland: evidence from the archive of the Irish Folklore Commission’, PhD thesis, University of Galway, 48). Besides many other topics, the Folklore Commission was investigating the survival of the feast of Lúnasa, in many areas called ‘Garland Sunday’ or ‘Garlic Sunday’.
That traditional rituals and celebrations had survived was of great interest to folklorists, because religious practice had changed dramatically after the Famine. The anthropologist Hugh Turpin has described this shift:
‘As the rural peasantry died or emigrated in large numbers after the Famine struck in 1845, their unorthodox folk Catholicism came to be replaced by centralized control, Roman devotions, regular practice, sexual abstinence, and intense clerical supervision. This was facilitated by the rapid development of Church infrastructure and clerical discipline over the course of the nineteenth century’ (Hugh Turpin, 2022, Unholy Catholic Ireland: Religious Hypocrisy, Secular Morality, and Irish Irreligion, Stanford, 19).
Before the Famine, church attendance was significantly lower than it was to be by 1900. Many people simply lived too far from church buildings and clergy, which were moreover too small (or too few in the case of the priesthood) for a growing population. O’Donoghue’s analysis of the National Folklore Collection shows, for example, that priests in Erris did not always attend funerals. A Micheál Mac a tSaoir reported that ‘ní bhíodh sagart i láthair chor ar bith ag an reilg’, while a Pádhraig Mac Aindriú of Sraith reported:
‘If the bereaved is rich the priest will be there offering prayers, and there will be a Requiem Mass the following day and a large funeral from the church to the graveyard. The priests and the rich people attend the funerals of the rich, but only the poor attend the funerals of the poor’ (O’Donoghue 2016, 247–8, O’Donoghue’s own translation).
While it’s tempting to think that unchurched rural people cleaving to the old ways were ‘happy pagans’, it’s more accurate to think of folk religion as just differently punitive. The sociologist Michael Carroll explained:
‘The core ritual associated with holy wells was making rounds… [namely] walking around the small stone structure that enclosed the well in a clockwise direction for a specified number of times while saying certain prayers. Traditionally, these prayers included some specified number of Our Fathers, Hail Marys, Creeds, and Glorias. It was common to gather up a number of pebbles and to ‘count off rounds by depositing a pebble in a pile somewhere on or near the well as each round (and the associated prayers) was completed. A well site was only one type of “station” that might be the focus of a rounding ritual. Others included stone piles, stone “altars,” stone slabs (often with indentations or basins), or “coffins” made of flat stones… When several stations existed at a given location (a well site combined with one or more saint’s beds is a typical example), there was usually an agreed-upon order in which they had to be visited and rounded’ (Michael P. Carroll, 1995, ‘Rethinking Popular Catholicism in Pre-Famine Ireland’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 34/3, 354–365, 362).
Besides this, there was an emphasis on physical pain, by making the rounds barefoot or on their knees, often causing bleeding. Folk religion was strongly penitential: suffering was at its heart. Carroll also highlights the importance of the landscape, and that male saints were much more common than female saints — it was a tougher, harsher religious culture than we might think. There was also a clear absence of figurative representation such as statues or other imagery, unlike in Italy. By the nineteenth century, Irish travellers to Europe and European travellers to Ireland each noticed that Irish churches simply looked very different in rejecting statuary.
Carroll’s work built on that of the historian David Miller, whose study of government statistics on church attendance — gathered by the Commissioners of Public Instruction in 1834 — revealed that Catholic practice before the Famine was significantly less frequent than in the twentieth century. About 40 percent attending mass on a given Sunday. Moreover, church attendance rates were much higher in towns, and in the east rather than in the west (David Miller, 1975, ‘Irish Catholicism and the Great Famine’, Journal of Social History, IX, 81–98).
This challenged assumptions that Irish religiosity was high across society and unchanging over the nineteenth century, affirming Emmet Larkin’s argument that a ‘Devotional Revolution’ had taken place after the Famine, a revolution as dramatic in transforming Ireland as the secularisation taking place in other European countries (Emmet Larkin, 1972, ‘The Devotional Revolution in Ireland, 1850–75’, American Historical Review, LXXVU, 625–652; S.J. Connolly, 2004, ‘The Moving Statue and the Turtle Dove: Approaches to the History of Irish Religion’, Economic and Social History, 31, 1–22, 4).
This was not to say that private religiosity was relaxed. In fact, there is a lot of evidence that it was demanding. Miller’s argument was that popular religiosity changed after the Famine to become more conventional because faith in traditional supernatural protection, secured by following the stations and patterns marking the agricultural year, had collapsed. Sean Connolly however reminds us that religious change is sometimes caused by the internal logic of a particular religion, rather than external social or economic forces (Connolly 2004, 14).
Indeed, some traditional practices still survive: the climbing of Croagh Patrick and celebration of mass at Downpatrick Head on the last Sunday in July are well-known examples.
In 1932, De Valera climbed the Reek, overtaken by our cousin Katie Moran (1909-2004), later Cafferkey. 60 years later, she remembered climbing ‘like a mountain goat’ and that Dev was dressed all wrong for the climb. She happened to mention that there was a photograph in the papers. Indeed, it was published on the front page of the Irish Press.
Regardless of Connolly’s point that sometimes ‘religion is just religion’, Garland Sunday seems to have had important practical functions for the rural poor. It heralded the point when potatoes could be dug up before it was ‘too soon’, and marked the end of hungry July, a month when the previous harvest had long been eaten.
Garland Sunday therefore provided a clear end-date to the hunger, so that families could maintain self-control. Often, the day was one of celebration. Historian Marion McGarry has noted that there were gatherings at holy sites, but also other gatherings: ‘sport and fairs, with stalls full of harvest treats’ (Marion McGarry, 2022, ‘Why the last Sunday in July was celebrated in Ireland of old’, RTE Brainstorm, 15 July 2022). The Folklore Collection returns suggest that sports, fairs and dancing were often held in the holy places after the religious rituals — so that the prayer and often riotous celebration, sometimes marked with faction fights, were more fused than the clergy liked.
The Folklore Commission ethnographers — Máire MacNéill, Séamus Ó Duilearga and Seán Ó Suilleabháin — were therefore curious to see what had survived into the 1940s. They issued a questionnaire, ‘Domhnach Crom Dubh’ or ‘Garland Sunday’.
The preamble begins: ‘There is evidence that our ancestors celebrated an important festival at the commencement of Autumn, just as they did at the beginning of the other three seasons, at Samhain, St. Brigid’s Eve, and Bealtaine. Survivals of this festival are still to be found in many parts of Ireland. It is known in different localities by different names, of which Domhnach Chrom Dubh and Garland Sunday are the best known, but the following also occur: Lammas Sunday, Garlic Sunday, Bilberry Sunday, Fraughan Sunday, Domhnach na bhFear, Domhnach Mhám Éan, Domhnach Lughnasa, and there may be others. Our information about it is scanty, and the little help there is to be got from ancient records and printed works can be supplemented only be recourse to oral tradition. We would be grateful, therefore, if you would make enquiries about it from the old people in your district’ (Irish Folklore Commission, July 1942, Garland Sunday questionnaire, National Folklore Collection, volume 889).
Returns are bound into four volumes in the National Folklore Collection.
In response, Anne McAndrew, née Rowland (1872–1962), described this feast day in 1942 as celebrated in the locality. Anne was happy to relate its less glamorous cousin.
‘Scabby Friday.
‘The Friday before Garland Sunday was the day when people started to dig the new potatoes in former times. They dug them on Garland Sunday also. If potatoes were not dug on Scabby Friday, it was believed that the scab would come on them.
‘Mrs. McAndrew (Snr) of Altnabrocaí’.
This was not the only reference to Scabby Friday in the National Folklore Collection, however. In the Schools Collection, amassed in the 1930s, Eibhlís Ní Ceallachán of Knockbrack, a pupil at Killacorraun National School, mentioned ‘Scabby Friday’ in an account of lucky and unlucky days, though in this case saying it would be unlucky not to dig a few potatoes before the big day:
‘Scabby Friday:- It is right to have some of the potatoes dug before scabby Friday or the[y] would be covered with scabs’ (Schools’ Collection, Volume 152, page 371).
But returning to Altnabrocky:
‘Brigid Moran (Mrs. McAndrew Jnr) heard in Sidheán, Ballycroy, that the potatoes shd. be dug on Garland Sunday.
‘If Garland Sunday should be wet bad weather will continue “for a good start” (Mrs. McAndrew).
‘Visits to Holy Wells.
‘On Trustia [sic] mountain, at the foot of Néifinn Mhór, visits are still paid on the morning (& now during the day also) of Garland Sunday. These wells are: St Patrick’s Well, and the Blessed Virgin’s Well, close by — “it is the one station”.
‘People come to do this station from places ten or twelve miles distant — they come from Dooleeg, Gabhlán, Leitir Treasc, Leitir Bric, Keenagh (“Cuíonoch”) Doire, Tiobruid etc. They walk usually from these places to the wells on Trustia above-mentioned.
‘Cures have often been made by pilgrims to these wells: in particular restoration or improvement of eye-sight.
‘Mrs McAndrew performed the station once for a sister of hers in America, who recovered her sight as a result.
‘In case of jealousy between husband & wife — in which (so far as I cld. discover) the wife was the injured partner of whom the husband was jealous — rounds at wells proved efficacious. A woman did the rounds there once for this intention (to restore her husband’s affection): “all at station thought the hill would come down on them with the great noise”. Result: husband cured of his jealousy.
‘The people used to go the wells in groups on the Saturday night & wait up all night performing the stations, usually on their bare knees. Many young people went there to perform rounds. Once a boy made the stations on Trustia, in shoes, and mocked at people in bare feet. Inside a year he was dead.
‘Mrs McAndrew has not performed the rounds on Trustia for 50 years.
‘People now visit the wells on Trustia after mass on Garland Sunday. The wells (by the way) are on the side of the hill. The priest insisted on people hearing mass first. Informant never heard of clergy visiting the holy wells on Trustia.
‘“Garland Sunday” aliter “Reek Sunday” is usually wet.
‘On 15 August visits are paid to holy wells on Cleggan and Bun Mór in Ballycroy parish, Co. Mayo, and also at Carne holy well near Belmullet’.
Ó Duilearga completed his notes on this particular interview as follows:
‘The above notes I recorded from Mrs Michael McAndrew (70) of Altnabrocaí, par. Bangor-Erris, at the foot of Corrshliabh, bar. of Erris, but a native of Doire close by which is in Tyrawley, and where her family (Rowland) has been located time out of mind. July 1942. S. Ó Duilearga’.
Anne McAndrew’s response is interesting because of the contrast between the ritual detail and the evidence of her own behaviour. She describes a young boy mocking the ritual, who died soon afterwards — the implication being this was divine punishment.
But, while she had herself performed the station, she had not completed the full rounds since she had come to adulthood. So, this was a practice she had ceased some years before she married in 1901.
