Killorglin All fair at Puck

Kerry´s great annual binge - trading, music-making, drinking, story-telling - ´Puck´ is the real thing. And that´s no surprise, because the Fair dates back longer than anyone has been able to figure out. A couple of years ago on Gathering Day (the first day of the Fair), a man in the Fishery Bar told Kerry Gems that the festival and the traditional crowning of a puck goat began as a pre-Christian festival in honour of the Celtic sun god, Lugh (and sure enough Puck Fair has always coincided with the ancient festival of Lughnasa.). The German playing the tin whistle in the corner said he didn´t believe it, because Killorglin didn´t exist before the Normans came, and his guidebook said they started the Fair in the 13th century. On Scattering Day (the last day of the Fair) a travelling man told us he had heard from his mother that it all started when a stampeding herd of mountain goats warned the town that Oliver Cromwell was coming. Fifty years ago the parish priest denounced Puck as an occasion of sin and called for it to be banned - or so a farmer from Castlemaine recalls. As with many things in Kerry, the facts are hard to come by. Maybe you´d better find out for yourself.

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