“The dish called ‘meal and ale’ is made as follows. You take a suitable vessel, whether an earthenware pot or a milk-bowl, if the crockery is scanty; but if on the contrary the family is well off, they use other special utensils. In each dish ale is poured and treacle is added to sweeten it. Then oatmeal is mixed with the sweetened ale till the whole is of a sufficient consistency. The cook adds whisky to the mixture in such proportion as she thinks fit. In each plate is put a ring. To allow the meal time to be completely absorbed, the dish is prepared on the morning of the feast. At the moment of the feast the dish or dishes containing the strong and savoury mixture are set on the middle of the table. But it is not served up till the end. Six or seven persons generally have a plate to themselves. Each of them plunges his spoon into the plate as fast as possible in the hope of getting the ring; for he who is lucky enough to get it will be married within the year. Meantime some of the stuff is swallowed, but often in the struggle some of it is spilt on the table or the floor. (M128) “In some districts there used to be and still is dancing in the evening of the feast. ‘The sheaf’ figured in the dances. It was dressed as a girl and carried on the back of the mistress of the house to the barn or granary which served as a ballroom. The mistress danced a reel with ‘the sheaf’ on her back. (M129) “The woman who gave me this account had been a witness of what she described when she was a girl. The sheaf was afterwards carefully stored till the first day of Christmas, when it was given to eat to a mare in foal, if there was one on the farm, or, if there was not, to the oldest cow in calf. Elsewhere the sheaf was divided between all the cows and their calves or between all the horses and the cattle of the farm. (Related by an eye-witness.)”(531)