By Peter Makem
There were 12 times in the year when the small town of Keady burst into serious life. In a tradition going back 200 years, that was the monthly Fair Day when local farmers brought their cattle and pigs and other wares into the town in for sale.
But it also represented a gathering of musicians and singers, traders and salesmen of all descriptions, sellers of home made butter and cheese, jams, cakes and so on.
The Fair Day ended in the early sixties when farming became more “scientific” and was replaced by the Cattle Mart. The arrival of electricity and running water to the country areas at that time saw the milking machine introduced, new veterinary programs, new health and safety and so on.
But the arrival of the Cattle Mart at a single stroke killed off a great historic social, cultural, economic way of Irish life that was the lifeblood of small towns across the country.
I am old enough to remember the Fair Days and to have taken part in them. We owned about fifteen acres of land in two small farms and always reared a few cattle and had a milking cow or two.
My father worked for the electricity board, mostly going around the houses to get people to sign up to the new order of things, so farming for us was a sideshow. Before the coming of electricity, the Tilly lamp reigned supreme and local farmers, in particular, had great debates with themselves, often very anxiety ridden, as to whether they would sign up for the coming electricity supply and guarantee £40 per year for five years. If they let the opportunity go, it would cost a lot more once the lines had been put up across the country.
Taking Cattle to the Fair
Some argued that their ancestors had done without electricity for a couple of hundred years and they weren’t going to change. But most were convinced that its arrival involved power for many other things than mere handy light and so the revolution was on.
If we had cattle for the Fair Day it meant a day off school. Some farmers who had a lot of cattle to take brought them to Keady in a lorry, but most walked. From our house it was three miles and we usually had two bullocks, each about two years old. They had been well fed in the days beforehand and on the morning of the Fair were given a good feed of meal to sustain them on the journey.
Taking cattle to the Fair by road was an art form passed on from one generation to the next and involved three people, a man in front, a man behind and a capper in between. The term “capping” meant preventing cattle from veering off into gaps or roads from the designated route, and he usually had a bicycle so that he could zoom after them and keep order. We had to know all the danger areas and the route to Keady was full of them.
Coming to a crossroads, the man in front blocked one road, and the man behind tried to place himself toward the other forbidden road assisted by the capper on the bicycle, who then sped on ahead again.
And throughout the journey, cattle from other farms along the route to Keady were always a big distraction as they came down toward the gates and hedges to engage in loud greetings or bellows of anger or whatever.
This called for very close cooperation between us, for if one of the bullocks broke into a field of cattle, it might take half an hour to isolate him and get him out.
On arriving close to Keady where it seemed thousands were gathering as at a football match, we had to rope them up, that is, tied a rope loosely around their neck, or horns — if they had any — as cattle intensity multiplied and everybody made their way to Fair Green. There we would find a spot and stand waiting until the “Dealing Men” arrived.
‘Not Come Home Without a Good Price’
The “Dealing Men” were the buyers and sellers. My father, being a native of Keady town, was not a natural countryman and so very often he got a friendly local farmer — who instinctively knew the ways of the dealing men — to stand close and make sure that he got as high a price as possible. He remembered my mother’s words ringing in his ears as he left the house to “not come home without a good price.” But there was always a bottom line and we were prepared to drive the cattle home again if the deal didn’t suit. It seemed that about half came to buy and half came to sell.
A farming neighbour of ours Paddy Haughey always seemed to be around and when bidding got hot and heavy would always come to our assistance and sharpen our bidding process. He knew all the language of bartering, knew when it was time to bring the pressure to boiling point and time to sell.
An outsider would imagine there was a vicious verbal onslaught going on between them and that fisticuffs would break out any moment. But it was all ritual, like some very loud prayer meeting reaching its evangelical heights.
There was also a well-established ritual when the deal was made. The contented buyer and the contented seller both spat on their own hands and gave a very original “High Five” forceful slap down to clinch the deal. Then the “Dealing Man” took a wad of notes out of his pocket and note-by-note formally placed them on my father’s outstretched hand.
The five pound notes in those days were huge, about eight inches by four, white with black markings on them and they represented an enormous amount of money. I remember on one Fair Day about 1959 that we got £77and 10 shillings for two bullocks — and never forgot the price as it was the biggest lump of money I had ever seen.
When the sale was complete, my father always gave the dealer a “luck penny”, a shilling or two shillings. I remember asking why he did this but he had no answer except that it was a very old custom and must have had something to do with preserving good luck, that future cattle would not die and so on.
But some people had become very attached to their cattle, and Fair Days were very emotional occasions. I recall once an elderly woman crying her eyes out and my father told me that she was always very sentimental at having to part with her cattle. It was as if they were emigrating, and it obviously broke her heart to see them walk off with some new owner to some new fields, and apparently she kept looking after them as they were eventually led away around some corner of a road and she would never see them again.
Celebrating at the Pub
Needless to say, there was a final ritual to the day’s events and that was usually held in the pub. This however was a dangerous temptation as most of those who gathered “for a bottle or two” were at a peak of personal wealth. Very often there were visiting musicians and my father immediately took a shine to them and joined in with a borrowed tin whistle or fiddle.
Out in the street, everybody seemed to be buying or selling something and, as an orange juice drinker in those young days, I could clearly see how the evenings became more boisterous as the Fair Green emptied of cattle and dealers and celebrations went on. The pub was followed by the “Eating House” and Keady had plenty of them in those days with appetites raised from a long day oiled with the special appetizer of alcohol.
Often we got a lift home in a car or on the back of a tractor or walked and the one with the bicycle cycled home first and gave all the news about what we got for the two bullocks and who bought them and what neighbours were there and so on. Later my parents formally counted the money again and it was put away somewhere—I never knew where.
But my father often arranged for a few musicians to call to the house later that night “for a few tunes” and usually they arrived. Sometimes “Fair Day songs” were sung about dealers and I remember a chorus to one of them that went-
“It was not the boys from Keady
Or the boys from Ballybay,
But the dealing men from Crossmaglen
Put the whisky in me tay.”