Historical References
- In August 1402, the Gathering Day festival had to be postponed till September when King Henry faced a threat of invasion of the North from the Duke of Albany and the Earl of Douglas with a large army of Scots.
- It is believed that till 1917 the town of Killorglin in Kerry followed the tradition of the puck or he-goat which was collected by the youth of the town, coronated as king, put on display for three days and then paraded in the town. The goat's reputation as a randy creature may hint at the licentious behavior common during this festival. Although believed by locals to be a very ancient festival, experts believe that it cannot be more than 300 years old due to the usage of the term puck and the goat's lack of symbolic significance in Celtic culture.
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“This seems a long while ago, and yet it happened since Milton wrote his Paradise Lost. But its antiquity is not the less great for that, for we do not regulate our historical time by the English standard, nor did the English by the Roman, nor the Roman by the Greek.... From this September afternoon, and from between these now cultivated shores, those times seemed more remote than the dark ages.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)