Review
This meticulous social history was obviously a labour of love, says Cathal Coyle.
- Hiring Fairs and and Market Places
- Appletree
Hiring Fairs and and Market Places
A valuable picture of what farming was like in the past, Hiring Fairs and Market Places is meticulous in recording a way of life that gradually disappeared during the twentieth century with the advent of new technologies. It captures the atmosphere of the weekly marketplace in towns and villages across Ulster and the hiring fair which became a central feature of them.
The study is confined to the six counties of Northern Ireland and each county is surveyed in its own separate chapter. The book is supplemented by the songs and poems which were sung and recited by the entertainers at the fairs and by those who attended them.
The text also includes over 100 photographs, many of which are from family albums and private collections and have never appeared in the public domain before. These sources are complemented by oral anecdotes and recollections from fair participants and relatives, with John Martin of Augher talking about his father particularly poignant:
‘And the first money ever he got, he got thirty-one shillings for four pigs in Fintona fair and he told me he was shaking hands with himself. And he got a pound a month out of the creamery. If he got 22s 6d you’d think he’d got a tall hat.’
From describing the sale of livestock at the marketplace, the author also looks at fairs from a social perspective. The fair was a source of entertainment for those who attended it and visitors could have seen ballad singers, dancers, fortune-tellers and sideshows of every description. The sheer detail of the marketplace is so comprehensive within the book:
‘Flax was sold in Irish Street and linen in Dobbin Street. When the linen market declined, Dobbin Street became the market place for poultry, eggs and butter. The weighbridge and the markets for pork, grain, grass seed, hay and straw were at the Shambles in Mill Street.’
A significant feature of the fair was the twice-yearly hiring, when farmers looked for workers and workers looked for employment. The traditional dates for hiring were the twelfth of May and the twelfth of November, though in reality hiring took place on the fair day nearest these dates. Many of the descriptions of hiring are first-hand accounts by the people who were hired.
A compelling characteristic of the hiring in West Tyrone towns such as Drumquin and Strabane was that it mainly involved young boys and girls who had left rural Donegal to seek their fortune. The primary incentive for the girls was to work for the farmers for a year or two and eventually get a job in Herdman’s Mill which entitled them to a mill house. Hired men endured a harsh number of months from August to November when their primary function was to help with the harvest and potato digging.
While Hiring Fairs and Market Places is a welcome chronicle of Ulster farming, this labour of love (May Blair spent almost 20 years conducting the research for it) is also a contribution to the historical study of social and economic conditions in the north of Ireland over the past two centuries.
Cathal Coyle
