Packed programme for Puck Fair

One of Ireland’s oldest and most unusual fairs gets under way in Co Kerry today.

The annual Puck Fair is expected to attract more than 100,000 people for a marathon three days of celebrations, music, drinking and dancing.

Theories abound on how and exactly when the festival began but every year on August 10, 11 and 12 the small town of Killorglin is thronged with locals and visitors for a packed programme of events.

In keeping with the tradition, a group from the town will be sent into the mountains to catch a wild goat, to be brought back and crowned King Puck by a local youth, and the fair will begin.

The town’s bars, open until 3am, will compete for the Cúchulainn statuette in the Guinness Music Trail over the weekend.

Tomorrow, the cattle fair gets under way, as provided for “under a natural pre-ordained act under charter”, according to the organisers.

The fair has been traced back to the 1600s but some people say it pre-dates this to pagan times.

One of the most popular theories is that the fair is held to celebrate the actions of a 17th-century wild goat who alerted the town to the advancing armies of English dictator Oliver Cromwell.

Another is that it stems from the pagan Celtic festival of Lughnasa, when feasting and sacrifices marked the start of the harvest season, and that the goat is a pagan fertility symbol.