SCALLIGE NIGHT Cyril Kelly
I’m sure that what finished up being called Scallige Night in North Kerry actually began life as Óiche na Sceillige in Corca Dhuibhne. But when a word or phrase gets restless and decides to migrate from the parish where it was spawned and reared ó glún go glún, it faces discolourations and distortions, even the deliberate misrepresentations caused by the use of the tally stick. The tally stick was tied about children’s necks to register the number of Irish words spoken and for which they would be duly flogged at the end of the school day. At any rate, I’m sure that by the time Óiche na Sceillige had crossed a few ditches, braved vertigo on Connor Pass, skirted Gleann na nGealt, crossed the bridge at Blennerville and left Corca Dhuibhne behind, it had undergone some semantic slurs, some etymological refinements, and by the time it reached Listowel, it was going about its business under the assumed name of Scallige Night.
Óiche na Sceillige was a custom that took place in Corca Dhuibne on the night of Shrove Tuesday. Spirited young lads, under the cloak of darkness, would run around banging loudly on the doors of local bachelors and spinsters, warning them that, in case they had any notion of getting married, time had not run out. The monks on Sceillig Mhichíl followed a different calendar, one that lagged about two weeks behind the Gregorian calendar which was used on the mainland. So, as of Shrove Tuesday, any bachelor and spinster who had been surreptitiously eyeing each other up and calculating pecuniary plus land prospects, once they had the dowry sorted and she had given her consent to be buried with his people and had, in turn, received assurance that she would reign as bean a’ tí as soon as the old woman passed on, once all of these delicate protocols had been hammered out and spat upon, the happy couple still had two weeks grace when they could hop into a naomhóg, row the nine miles of spring tides and get hitched on Sceillig Mhichíl.
In Listowel, on the night of Shrove Tuesday, the Skallige Night custom consisted of young lads, maybe ten or eleven years old, getting lengths of rope and chasing young girls around the streets, twining the rope around any who were caught. On this particular Shrove Tuesday night, a group of us altar boys was crossing The Square on our way home having served at benediction. The choir girls were ahead of us, chatting and giggling to their hearts’ content, apparently oblivious to our presence. Don’t ask me which one of us angelic spirits thought of the notion, but suddenly we were all crouching behind the wall of the Protestant Church, struggling into black soutans to enjoy our version of Scallige Night. Girls being girls, they had eyes in the backs of their heads and no sooner had we begun to give chase than they set up an unmerciful cacophony of screeches which was most un-choirgirl-like and began to run like hell. Up through The Small Square, into Church Street, with us in hot pursuit. Amazingly, well amazingly at the time, but maybe not so in the hard earned male wisdom of retrospect, they turned into Bunyan’s back-way, their screams magnified by the archway.
At the top of the lane they swerved left, racing in the pitch darkness behind the houses on Church St. heading for the exiting arch at The Bon Tons. I was in the leading group of chasers, gaining on the girls all the time. Until, behind Pat Kenny’s butcher shop, I ran slap-slurry-bang into a mound of cow dung. There is nothing like the odour of ordure to cool your ardour.
Slinking in our halldoor, I hung the altar bag, containing the stinking soutane, in its usual place on the coat rack in the hall. Apart from a remark that I was a little later than usual, there was no other comment passed that night. My father was a smoker, so his sense of smell wasn’t great but my mother was blessed with a twitchy nose that would have made a bloodhound jealous. Not alone had she finely calibrated olfactory faculties, she could get the scent of a lie at forty paces. So next morning, under maternal inquisition, I squirmed and procrastinated before eventually having to admit the truth. By the time she finished a diatribe which was Jesuitically sprinkled with the Litany of Our Lady, Morning Star, Mother most pure, Mystical Rose, I would gladly have swopped our house for seven penitential weeks in a clochán perched on a vertical cliff on Sceillig Mhichíl where I might hopefully be comforted by the sirens of the sea singing, as T. S. Eliot said, each to each and then, just when I might be in danger of getting a purpose of amendment, those singing sirens might remind me of the lovely choir girls in Listowel.
