Fair Days In Ireland

Fairs played a vital role in the rural economy. Farm income depended on the seasonal sale of stock or crops and the fairs were where these transactions took place. Some fairs were just for cattle, or sheep or pigs, others were more general, and items sold included hay, turf and potatoes, as well as turkeys, geese, calves and bonhams.

Fairs were held in most towns and even in the cities. The top part of Eyre Square has been a market-place for probably five hundred years or more.

Each fair was held on a set day, and that day was marked on the farmers calendar, and the life of the farm revolved around having the stock ready for each fair. Fair days were held for centuries on the same day of the month, so tradition was of huge importance, and the fair days were oriented to the seasonal production of stock and crops, unlike today, where the mart is open most days of the week. While they all read the 'Farmers Almanac', they knew their fair day dates off by heart.

I remember the fair days in Loughrea in the early 1960's, before the mart was built. We got the day off school on fair days, so we loved the tradition, though not the inconvenience of the fairs. Personal safety aside, we got the day off because of the amount of liquid slurry that lined the streets and the footpaths and made walking around town on a fair day, a rather mucky, smelly business for a young 'townie'.

Pig, geese, turkey and calf fairs were smaller than the big sheep and cattle fairs and most of the animals were brought to town, confined by the creels of the cart, which was drawn by a horse or a donkey, though I remember several mules and ginettes pulling carts as well.

The sheep and cattle fairs were much bigger affairs. The animals began arriving for the big cattle fairs from around 9pm the night before, with canny farmers and their bleary-eyed sons staking out traditional pitches, where generations of each family had always sold their beasts. Such a territorial spot was important and also considered 'lucky' so it was always on their minds to get to town early and secure their 'sweet spot' for selling their cattle or sheep.

Sheep fairs were a sight to behold. Unlike cattle, sheep had to be penned, or they would simply disappear into the night. To achieve this, men brought wooden hurdles with them to town and tied them to the fronts of houses, shops, gateways, whatever they could find, and wherever they could, and made a three-sided pen into which they herded their sheep and lambs. I remember seeing the full length of main street on both sides, penned off in this manner, with perhaps a half mile in total of sheep pens up and down Main Street, strapped to the fronts of each and every business premises on the street. There were probably thousands of sheep in town for those fair days.

 My mother owned a ladies drapery shop, which had two big plate glass display windows, perhaps 3 metres wide on the front of the shop and an elegant, wide, glass doorway in the middle. The sheep pens were tied right up against the shop windows, filled to bursting with huge woolly bleating sheep with panic in their eyes and escape on their minds. Dad had special wrought iron grids made to protect the shop windows from being stove in by the press of the sheep in the pens.


After the fair, I would be given the task of hosing down the footpath and the walls of the shop, brushing away the yards of sheep-poo. Then I had to get the lanolin oil off the windows and have them gleaming for the morning. I don't think I'll ever forget the smells.

Cattle fairs were very different. Cattle can stand in groups for hours without wandering off, with a little minding, so no pens were needed. Hundreds of cattle would fill every street in town, and while to the stranger it must have looked chaotic, it was in actual fact, quite organised, with each farmer's cattle being watchfully guarded and herded so they weren't just in one huge herd. This 'minding' of the cattle was done by the boys and they had a difficult task of it, but they were used to minding cattle, unlike me, who was terrified they might bite!

Once the cattle were in place, the men went off the gauge the market, or meet the cattle jobbers, leaving their sons in charge of the cattle they'd just driven into town. For all of them it had already been a long, tiring night, walking the cattle as much as ten miles in the dark, possibly in the rain and certainly in the cold, running ahead to stop the cattle turning off the road, down bohareens, or into front gardens of road-side houses.

They may have been tired, but they were excited too, at the responsibility they now had for their farm's valuable stock, and at the notion of being in 'town' for the fair, with it's change of scenery from their rural pastures. The cattle too sensed the excitement, looing and mooing, scittishly threatening to break from the herd at any moment, prodded back into line by the boys, yelling and 'hullahing'.



The streets were a mad cacophony of animal and man sounds, echoing around the dim, foggy streets of the town. There always seemed to be mist, whether thats my dimming memory, or the combination of cold, damp steam rising from backs of the cattle, their soft, musty breath condensing in the cold night air, and the blue wisps of smoke from the coal and turf fires wafting down through the throng. The smells were incredibly vital, fresh, dungy, wet, musty, but to a very high volume, if smells can have a decibel level.

The boys wore their working clothes, many wore duffle coats, the 1950's hoodie, but their hands and faces, and their bare legs over the tops of their too-big wellingtons, were raw from the moist cold. The men were the same, though many of them were dressed for town, a serviceable suit or jacket, and a heavy overcoat, and of course they too wore wellingtons, or big boots. The jobbers, distinctively dressed, were dapper in their broad-brimmed hats, velvet-collared crombie coats and bright ox-blood slip-on boots.

By 2 or 3 am the fair was in full swing with buyers, jobbers and sellers all engaged in their deal-making. The big cattle-jobbers moved very efficiently through the fair, buying huge numbers of cattle, strippers, heifers, bullocks, bulls, all destined for further fattening in the midlands, or for abattoirs in Dublin. Many cattle, just like generations of our people, were destined for England. Those just-sold cattle were herded off by drovers and were held in track-side pens, for later loading onto dozens of cattle-cars that had been shunted into place the day before, for onward shipping, to catch the boat to Hollyhead and on to the English markets. Other cattle were loaded onto cattle lorries with high creels, and off they trundled to their destinations across Ireland.

By mid-day, palms had been spat upon and slapped,.deals had done and settled, money exchanged. The boys were given a tanner or a few bob for their services and they made a bee-line to the sweet shops. The men were not done yet. They met up with their wives who had come to town in the pony and trap at a more civilised hour. They settled a few bills around the town, the hardware shop, the grocery, the drapery and the insurance office. In later years they went to the bank, to pay off an overdraft or lodge some money to the farm account.
Almost universally, before they headed home, they went to the pub, usually a pub-grocery, where they bought some shop goods, biscuits and sausages, a side of bacon. The men stood at the bar, the boys waited in the 'lounge', while the wives went about town, buying some necessities for the house or for themselves, a dress, a coat, some wool for knitting, a luxury or two, perhaps. It was also a time to match-make and many's a farmer came to town with a few cattle and returned home with a wife!

Finally, after enjoying a few pints of stout, with their friends, or neighbors, they made their way home, in the pony and trap, home to the farm they'd left almost 24 hours previously. Back on the farm, the cycle of farm life started again, while over in the town, the big clean up was under way, and the smells only got worse before they got better!

Copywright - Brian Nolan, Galway Walks - Walking Tours of Galway  http://www.galwaywalks.com
12 October 2015.
With Thanks to Mount Talbot- A Journey Through the ages for the Ballygar Fair photos, dating from 1953, and the Lawrence Collection for some of the older b&w's.