Catherine’s hen is dead:
The head take thou and I the feet,
We shall put her under the ground.
A man who is found to be not wholly sober after the fair is locally said to have plucked a feather from the hen (T’eh er goaill fedjag ass y chiark); so it would seem that there must be such a scramble to get at the hen, and to take part in the plucking, that it requires a certain amount of drink to allay the thirst of the over zealous devotees of St. Catherine. But why should this ceremony be associated with St. Catherine? and what were the origin and meaning of it? These are questions on which I should be glad to have light shed.
Manx has a word quaail (Irish comhdháil), meaning a ‘meeting,’ and from it we have a derivative quaaltagh or qualtagh, meaning, according to Kelly’s Dictionary, ‘the first person or creature one meets going from home,’ whereby the author can have only meant the first met by one who is going from home. Kelly goes on to add that ‘this person is of great consequence to the superstitious, particularly to women the first time they go out after lying-in.’ Cregeen, in his Dictionary, defines the qualtagh as ‘the first person met on New Year’s Day, or on going on some new work, &c.’ Before proceeding to give the substance of my notes on the qualtagh of the present day I may as well finish with Cregeen, for he adds the following information:—‘A company of young lads or men generally went in old times on what they termed the qualtagh, at Christmas or New Year’s Day, to the houses of their more wealthy neighbours; some one of the company repeating in an audible voice the following rhyme:—
Ollick ghennal erriu as bleïn feer vie,
Seihll as slaynt da’n slane lught thie;
Bea as gennallys en bio ry-cheilley,
Shee as graih eddyr mrane as deiney;
Cooid as cowryn, stock as stoyr,