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To add to that, what kind of man would a peasant woman find attractive?

Follow up: what sort of courtship would a peasant man undertake during the time period stated?

Unfortunately, I’m not a historian and I won’t be able to give you a broad answer to your question, but I do know about Irish folk songs, many of which date back to the 19th century or earlier. Also, since folk music was and still is performed at local celebrations like weddings or religious holidays, it reflects the tastes, if not the exact words, of everyday people.

Many songs specifically celebrate a “colleen” (from the Gaelic cailin, literally meaning “young girl”), who is a “country/peasant girl…associated with a rural landscape and way of life” (O’Conner, 2009). Take these lyrics from “Star of the County Down,” for instance:

From a boreen green came a sweet colleen
And she smiled as she passed me by.
She looked so sweet from her two bare feet
To the sheen of her nut brown hair.

In general, there is an emphasis on the beauty of the woman’s hair or eyes. Two other good examples are “The Black Velvet Band”:

Her eyes they shown like diamonds
I thought her the queen of the land
And her hair, it hung over her shoulder
Tied up with a black velvet band

And, “The Rose of Tralee”:

She was lovely and fair as the rose of the summer,
Yet 'twas not her beauty alone that won me;
Oh no, 'twas the truth in her eyes ever dawning,
That made me love Mary, the Rose of Tralee.

So, what general trends about beauty might you be able to draw from these examples?

The descriptions tend to be metaphorical and naturalistic, connecting the woman and the landscape (“rose of the summer,” “queen of the land”). Also, the songs often emphasize that the women are from a specific place in Ireland – County Down is in Northern Ireland and Tralee is in County Kerry in Southwestern Ireland. I think this adds a patriotic flavor – these women are beautiful because they represent Ireland itself, forming a “national feminine ideal” (O’Conner, 2009).

Therefore, the peasant man in your question may not have been pressured to value a narrow physical “type” of woman. Instead, he may have enjoyed praising beautiful women through song, or connecting specific women that he loved in his life to beauties described in song or to his love for his homeland.

Sources

O'Connor, Barbara (2009) Colleens and comely maidens: representing and performing Irish femininity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In: Flannery, Eóin and Griffin, Michael, (eds.) Ireland in focus: film, photography, and popular culture. Syracuse University Press.

“The Grand Irish Songbook.” Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Hal Leonard Corporation, 2006.

Edit: Formatting of lyrics.

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