Is Morality Universal?

Every August the Irish village of Killorglin puts on the Puck Fair. A local girl on the cusp of puberty is chosen to be Queen Puck, and a wild male goat is captured in the neighboring mountains, paraded through town, crowned King Puck, and then caged on a high platform around which thousands of people sing, dance, and drink for three days and nights. On the side streets, small stands sell bad food and plastic trinkets, while a few Travellers, Ireland’s indigenous nomads, work rival fortune-telling franchises. Recent concerns about animal welfare have led to the hiring of a veterinary surgeon who ensures that the goat is healthy when it’s returned to the wild.There’s no agreement about when and why this custom began, so there’s no way to explain its purpose; speculations about its origins range from ancient pagan fertility rites to gratitude for the goat that alerted residents to the approach of Oliver Cromwell’s troops in the mid-seventeenth century. Killorglin advertises the Puck Fair as Ireland’s oldest festival; some claim it has taken place for nine hundred years. I’ve sometimes wondered if the mountains are teeming with traumatized goats. Apart from that, it’s easy to view it ...