Mairgead Mor - The Winter Solstice

Mairgead Mór  “Big Fair Day”

Over most of Western Europe, particularly in those areas connected with the ancient Celts, December 21, the shortest day of the year fell during the Druidic festival of 'Yule'. Today it is better known as the festival of the ‘Winter Solstice’.

‘Thoul’, an ancient word for wheel, has been handed down to us as Yule. The sun was likened by the Celts to a wheel, traversing the heavens, giving long and short days. The shortest day, and thus a good reason to be of good cheer in anticipation of longer days ahead, was known as Yule. This celebration of light survives in many of our Christmas traditions with the hanging of mistletoe (a white berry), Holly (a red berry) and the lighting of the Yule-log, whose faint light kick-started the longer days Spring. It was an exciting festival for the ancient Celts, coming as it did at the darkest time of year.

In Ireland Yule was eventually replaced by the Catholic traditions surround the religious feast-day of the Immaculate Conception, on the 8th of December and the longer festival of Christmas. However, outside the city, the old pagan traditions continued to be marked by the holding of the Mairgead Mór or the "Big Fair Day, in country towns all around Ireland.

"Brian Nolan, a Loughrea, County Galway native, remembers it as a day of great celebration, when farmers would converge on town to sell their crops, livestock, and poultry, and women would come with them to spend their "butter and egg money" on holiday gifts and goodies.

According to Nolan, "Mairgead Mór was an amazing sight to me as a child in the early 60s before marts and supermarkets modernized everything. On that day, everyone came to town — the ruddy-faced, wool-capped men with their sturdy womenfolk; the too-thin gaggles of wide-eyed children — on horses, in donkey and cart, on bicycles, and on foot, and everyone carried something for the fair. They arrived before dawn, and left, a mess of straw and leavings behind them, after dark".

"Geese by the hundred, turkeys and chickens by the thousand, all 'live,' tied to the back of upturned donkey carts between loads of turf. Mounds of potato sacks brimmed with Kerrs Pinks and Banners from Clare; huge heads of cabbage and turnips; bunches of parsnip and carrots, and the very rare bushel of brussels sprouts. Wheels of hardy cheddar, and what seemed like acres of flats of eggs in hues of brown and white, with the bigger duck-eggs, bluish in the winter sunlight".

"The fowl would be raucous, hog-tied or closeted in bushel baskets with their heads poking out, or in more modern times, poking their heads out of car-boots, and all cackling and clucking and gobbling away to their hearts' content. The 'townies' and some city market buyers made their canny way, back and forth between the rows of sellers, examining here, feeling there, commenting on the size and weight, and what they were fed on, and whether they were spring or summer birds".

"Amid all that was the excitement of the shops, the bustle of the women going in to settle their account with the harvest, butter, and turkey money enabling them to pav down their tab and get some new clothes for themselves and the children, now wide-eyed in expectation and appreciation of the beautiful goods and sweet chocolates they were able to see and touch now and maybe even take home".

December 21st was one of the most important dates in the Celtic calendar as it marked the celebration of a farmer's success and the approach of the New Year. The Mairgead Mór did not always co-incide with December 21, in fact it was usually held on the Wednesday or Thursday that fell in the week after the next Sunday after December the 8th, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.  So it was held approximately a week or so before Christmas, giving folks enough time to kill, hang and pluck their turkey or goose.

These days In modern Ireland, the Mairgead Mór is no longer held, it's now just another big shopping day before Christmas, but in country folks’ minds, the time for cutting mistletoe is nigh and they’d best be getting the turkey ready for market’ Today, the 18th of December would have been a perfect Mairgead Mór.

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This story  is typical of the stories I tell on my Galway's Horrible History Walking Tours. Check out www.galwaywalks.com or contact me at galwaywalks@gmail.com 

This particular story 'Mairgead Mór', which I mostly wrote over a decade ago, appears in edited form in Margaret Johnson’s latest cook book, ‘Christmas Flavors of Ireland’ which is available now through her website or on Amazon.  The book is delightfully written and presented and would make a lovely gift anytime.

It is published by Ambassador International., Belfast, N. Ireland 

Margaret M. Johnson www.irishcook.com  or www.margaretmjohnson.com

Snuff at a Wake and other Pipe Dreams

While yet a teenager, I collected most of these clay pipes around Loughrea, in county Galway, some from the lake shore, some from under the water using a snorkel and mask, the smallest ones from the bottom of a hole I was digging in Elephant and Castle, while working as a student in London. 

I cannot say if any of them were made in Knockrockery, the little village in Roscommon, that was destroyed by the Black and Tans in 1921 in reprisal for a fatal ambush on a British officer in Athlone. While the blame for the ambush was laid at the feet of the people of Knockrockery, it is unlikely that anyone from that village had anything much to do with the attack. Unfortunately however, the only business of note in the village, that of Clay Pipe-making, which had been carried out there for over a hundred years, was destroyed by the rampaging Black and Tan soldiers. The entire village was burned to the ground that fateful night. The kilns were destroyed and the factory was never re-built. Knockrockery's clay pipe-making tradition died,  there and then.

My clay pipes are all incomplete. While the bowls were robust,  the long, white, swan-necked stems were delicate and were easily broken. Two of the stems are marked Waterford and Wexford. One is marked Hanley Brothers. One bowl is marked 6 High Street, Sligo. An eclectic mix one might say. Why they all ended up in the lake at the back of the old famine work-house is anyone's guess.

In local parlance the pipes were known as 'Duidins' (dude-eens) and were the poor man's or poor woman's smoking pipe. Women especially favoured them, being able to secret them away in their bosoms, safely, without fear of burning, unlike a cigarette.

My grand-father's shop, a grocery, drapery, apothecary and general store, M A Brody and Co, in Killimor, Co. Galway, used to supply the local 'Wakes' with the 'wake order'. The typical wake order included a 'Habit' (for the deceased), wax candles (for the vigil), a pound of Brody's Best Tea, (especially blended by my grand-dad Michael Brody), a half gallon (or more) of whiskey, several ounces of snuff, and a gross (144) of filled pipes or duidins.

A 'flaithuilach' or 'fliurseach' of these ingredients made for a good wake. A dearth of them did the deceased no honour at all and no self-respecting family would let the house down by being 'mean' with the necessities. 'Like snuff at a wake' was the catchphrase for a generous helping of anything in life, or death, whether it be drink, food or any other freely given delight. Plenty of snuff at a wake really meant that the odours emanating from the deceased's body needed to be disguised, but even so, a little snuff was never enuff!

My mother, Josephine Brody and my uncle, Padraic Brody, as teenage children in the 1930's, used to have to fill the pipes for the wake order, cutting the hard plug tobacco into shreds with a pen-knife and then packing the 144 clay pipes with a single smokes worth. The pipes were delicate and often broke during the packing, so great care, dexterity and patience was needed, to get the order 'filled'. Mum never smoked, she reckons 'cause of her dislike of the smell of the tobacco from those days. Nor indeed did my uncle smoke either.

In the early 1970's, some 40 years after my mum had filled her last wake order, I worked a summer job in my uncle's shop. The clay pipes were long gone and the half-gallon jugs of whiskey too, but the snuff was still there, in a tightly- capped glass jar behind the counter. I had only three customers that summer for snuff, all older ladies. They came in once a week or once a fortnight for their shopping and when their list was all done, they would ask for their snuff by the 1/4 or 1/2 ounce. There was a special silver scoop for the snuff, a tiny thing, which I would use to measure out a deal of the pepper-like powder into a little white paper bag. I would then weigh the bag and its contents on the brass balance scale, matching the weight of the baggie with the 1/2 ounce brass weight,  Once weighed, I would fold the bag onto itself, at angles, and then full fold, sealing in the fragrant yellow powder.

Only once I had the temerity to ask one lady what snuff was for? I had in mind that it might be like the cayenne pepper that my dad used shake on his fried egg, which naturally, being a child, I never even ventured to taste, assuming it to be on the same par as whiskey, which I had made the mistake of trying once, with predictable results.

She smiled and kindly introduced me to the delicate and secret etiquette of snuff. First one must open one's 'snuff box'....a small indent 2 inches behind one's thumb, if the thumb and index finger are simultaneously extended. A tiny amount of snuff is 'pinched' between the thumb and index finger of the right hand and sprinkled into the 'snuff box' of the left hand. Then while blocking one one nostril at a time with one's right thumb, one sniffed, or snuffed the snuff box with the other 'nose' in one long, deep snort. Repeating the same with the other side, one emptied the snuff box and stood straight, head back, and then it came...the biggest, most violent, most sinus-clearing efficient sneeze ever, bending ones spine to astonishing curvature and the spring-back was capable of launching a sliothar the length of a hurling pitch. 

Aah yes, my first 'snuff' experience...and my last!! My eyes wept for days and my nose ran like a stream in at snow-melt. Such was the force of my sneeze I was unable to pee for two days, not to mind anything else. The little old lady smiled and as she turned to leave the shop, the light caught the yellow powder residue on her jacket sleeve, just above the wrist, where she had stemmed many's a similar sneeze, smothering the explosion with her arm.

Last night, we were invited to a pre-Christmas dinner in a friend's house in Monivea. Barbara and Gabriel are wonderful hosts and their hospitality left us as sated as beached seals on the strand. While I sipped an Irish Coffee, another guest regaled us with tales of Galway in the 1970's and then she talked about a bar her family had owned near the Claddagh in Galway. The bar was called 'The Genoa' after Christopher Columbus, who hailed from that city and apparently visited Galway in 1487, some five years before he discovered America.

We had great fun listening to her telling us in her laconic Galway accent, 'D'je know the Genoa' .Afterwards she told us of all the times the old Claddagh women would come into the bar after selling their fish on the Raven Terrace opposite the Spanish Arch, and how they would sidle quietly into the 'snug' where they would have a small-half-one and a maybe a baby bottle of Guinness, and all the while puffing on their duidins, under their Paisley shawls, their wizened weather-beaten faces, cracked into perpetual smiles, disarmingly obfuscating their hard lives.

I looked again at my little collection of broken clay pipes and wondered at all the tales they might hold and how little we really understand of our not-so-long-gone ancestors. Each pipe has a story to tell, but like the long gone wisps of smoke that curled up from the lit bowls a hundred years ago, those stories have dissipated into the air, wafting around the houses, across the bogs and over the hills and where if we are lucky, the wind occasionally blows back a faint aroma of a time long past, a fragrant flicker of the hint of a life, now gone, scattered, like snuff at a wake.

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I hope you have enjoyed this story. You can hear many more by coming for a walk with me in Galway.

Come join me on one of my 'Galway's Horrible History Walking Tours'. See www.galwaywalks.com 

To Hell or to Connacht

To Hell or to Connacht!

Such was Oliver Cromwell's dire dictate to Catholic landowners during the Cromwellian wars in Ireland 1641-1653, after which 90% of all land-ownership was transferred, at the point of a sword, on pain of death, from Irish and Anglo-Norman, mainly Catholic ownership, to English Soldier/Dissenter/Opportunist Protestant ownership. Dispossessed families, many previously wealthy and important, in a refugee state, found themselves forced into the margins of Connacht, mainly Clare, Galway and Mayo, onto land that was at best marginal, hillsides and bogs, and so began the enforced impoverishment of the last great civilisation of Europe, an impoverishment that peaked with the willful genocide that was The Great Hunger, the 10 years of famine in Ireland in the 1840's and 1850's, when 1.5 million people died and 2.5 million emigrated from Ireland, mainly from the western wetlands of Connacht. Picturesque it is but arable it is not.

Most families subsisted on holdings of less than 5 acres in County Galway, with an artificially crowded density of over 500 people per square mile in some areas, totally unsustainable when one considers that they could only grow potatoes on the land, no cereal and had few animals. What animals they had, a pig and maybe a few sheep and rough cattle were kept to pay the rents on their small-holdings. Rack-rents were exorbitant and if the tenant farmer made any improvements he was punished for his industry by having to pay a higher rent the following year. It was a dire lifestyle, one that came crashing down when the potato crop failed.

Yet life continued and a pride in being a Connacht person was always stirring below the surface, a kind of stoic and indomitable spirit. Today Connacht still has poor land but industry is thriving and tourism is particularly healthy, mainly because of the stark and beautiful landscape. Perhaps Cromwell did us a favour after all. But it was a high price to pay, no doubt about that.

Tonight, the Connacht Rugby team who are based in Galway city, play Edinburgh in Murrayfield stadium, in Edinburgh, Scotland, within sight of Balmoral Castle, summer home to the British Royals, who played no small part in Ireland's subjugation and annexation as a British colony, for 700 years. Something to dwell on when the two teams meet tonight. Sport is just another form of war, thankfully with none of the associated devastation.

The West's Awake, but we always remember our past. For more info on the history of Galway or to spend an hour on one of my walking tours 'Galway's Horrible Histories Walks' see http://www.galwaywalks.com

So, exactly who was it that first discovered America?

On the Galway's Horrible Histories Walk, I weave the Brendan Voyage tale into the stories I tell, explaining how in 929 AD the Vikings raided the Priory Abbey of Annaghdown, 4 miles up the Corrib River from Galway city, which was founded by St. Brendan for his sister, Briga, and where he died in 577 AD. Some time around 531 AD St. Brendan sailed to America with fourteen monks in a leather boat/coracle. He made it home, miraclously, ten years later and penned a best-seller manuscript recounting his voyage called 'De Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis'. (some 100 versions of this manuscript exist in museums and libraries all over Europe). A copy of Brendan's book was looted by the Vikings in their raid on Annaghdown (or possibly when they raided Clonfert, where Brendan is buried) and hey, guess what, some eighty years after the book was stolen, Leif Eriksson 'discovered' America around 1,012 AD ... funny how he never mentioned the book that his grand-dad, Eric the Red, had nicked when he visited Galway...! (He didn't pay the Library Fine either...must be enough to bail out the Irish economy by now!).

Anyway, fully 400 years later, around 1483 a certain sailor named Christopher Columbus visited Galway, as captain of a trading ship, from Coruna and on visiting the Church of St. Nicholas, he too borrowed a copy of Brendan's manuscript and yes, you guessed it, nine years later he was telling Queen Isabella that way out there in the west was a land filled with wondrous stuff, which he was eager to discover for her, entirely of course omitting that he too was following in the very large and confident footsteps of St. Brendan. (yes, I know St. Brendan was from Kerry, but he really only came into his own when he came to Galway, and that's a true story)

St. Brendan's feast day is celebrated on May 16, but you can also celebrate his birthday, on 27 November.

If you care to see how world explorer Tim Severin proved that St. Brendan could have discovered America in a hide and wattle boat, watch the video below ... it truly is an inspiring story.

Ever find yourself in Galway with an hour or two to spare, call me at 086-3273560 or email me at galwaywalks@gmail.com and we can walk and talk together, exploring Galway's Horrible Histories. It's a lot of fun, trust me. Galway Walks http://www.galwaywalks.com