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Social life in that period was, in some ways, very egalitarian and it was dominated by the calendar, the agricultural calendar if you like, and by the fact that the people didn’t live in towns. So at certain seasons of the year there would be fairs and gatherings, and at these gatherings the entertainment was public - it was horseracing, athletic contests, story-telling, and all these entertainments were also practised by the nobles, but at the Fairs everybody could come and listen apparently.
And they also had hurley matches down on the sea-shore and there’s a lot of proverbs which suggest that people looked forward to the Fair Day as the big bright spot in the year’s mundane activities and that girls, for instance, dyed their hair blonde and plucked their eyebrows and got out all their jewellery and put it on ready to go to either a Fair Day or to Sunday Mass, and put their best foot forward. And the men used to be praised for drawing all the eyes of all the women towards them at Fair Days, and spreading their nets of love across the girls like Diarmuid Ó Duibhne who was the beautiful, handsome, hurley-playing lieutenant of Finn MacCool, of the Fianna.
Instead of ideals of chivalry, they tended to promote Finn MacCool and his warrior band as the image of the ideal society and this involved a lot of emphasis on hunting and swimming and fishing and dancing and running and so on - the outdoor activities.
Their houses, particularly in Ulster, the castles were less elaborate and a lot of the enjoyable activities took place out of doors.
And they promoted a very tough disdain for people who got put off by the weather: they remarked of Neil O’Neill, for instance, that he would go out on a campaign when it was snowing so that even the wild geese would stay at home, and that he would grip his spear till it stuck, the skin of his hand stuck to the spear shaft; he would be content to drink water out of a shoe; and sleep in a cloak wrapped up under the trees on the cold ground and so on.
And they had to be tough, I think, in that climate to carry on enjoying themselves out of doors as much as they did.
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