[{"node":{"title":"Hanna177","Collections":"Part Two","Contributor":"Linen Hall Library","Coverage":"1951","Creator":"Linen Hall Library","Date":"Thursday, April 7, 2016","Format":"TIFF","Identifier":"Hanna177","Item Description":"Manuscript","Keywords":"Fergus, Communal","Language":"English","Path":"https://www.niliteraryarchive.com/content/hanna177","Publisher":"Linen Hall Library","Relation":"Linen Hall Library","Rights":"Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike CC BY-NC-SA","Scanned image":{"src":"https://www.niliteraryarchive.com/sites/default/files/Hanna177_0.jpg","alt":""},"Source":"LHL Archive","Transcript":"\ufeff171\n\nChapter Seventeen\n\nThe soiree of which Fergus had spoken was really the\n'treat' and sports that followed the yearly religious\nexamination of the Presbyterian children of the townlands.\nBut the event had, over many years, acquired a much greater\nsignificance than that. It was now known in the countryside\nas Ravara Fete to which the young men and women of all\nreligious persuasions came. The afternoon was given up to\nthe children with their scriptural examinations and 'treat.'\nAt the treat great quantities of strong tea, currant bread,\nbarmbrack and coarse wholesome cakes were consumed. Children\nof tender years had been known to drink four or five pints\nof dark scalding tea as well as gorging them selves with\nbaker's breed. But relief was gained by a run round the\nfield to 'joggle up their guts' and the surfiet of tea and\ncurrant-bread was ejected in a brown liquid stream, then a\nhandful of sourleek was chewed to sweeten the mouth. After\nthat the feaster, with a steady head and a clear eye, was\nready lor the games and trials of skill.\n\nLater in the day, as the air grew cool, the young men\nand women dressed in their finery arrived, and the wearied\nchildren left them the field and wandered homeward. It was\nnow that the took on its fuller significacance as a communal\ngathering and a puritan propitiation to amorous merrymaking.\nAs the treble voices of the children dwindled, the clamour\nfrom the gathering became deeper, taking on an excited passion-\nate note. Everything gesture and word seemed heightened and\nintensified. The foot races round the great tree in the\nfield were fought out with clenched teeth, streaming hair,\npounding bare feet, and vicious elbows. The games, taken\nover from the children, remained the same in name, but their\nnature changed to the pursuit of one sex by the other.\n","Type":"Text"}}]