extracted from the Appletree Press title Hiring Fairs and Market Places by May Blair. COUNTY TYRONE By the outbreak of the First World War, hired men were earning £10 and women £6 a half-year together with their food and lodging. Many came from Donegal. Some were accompanied by their parents. Others were cold, dejected and alone and bore all the signs of homesickness. Amongst them was the young Rose Welch who hired in Strabane but was to settle in the countryside near Drumquin, though she obviously had no idea of the geographical position in which she found herself. This is Rose’s story: 'Times was hard and we used to walk from Dungloe to Fintown to get the eight o’clock train to Strabane. There were about thirty of us all heading for Tyrone and we had a great time walking to Fintown in our bare feet. We put on our boots when we got on the train. All the mothers and fathers came with us. We were to get no money to the six months was up an’ we were to get every other Sunday to Chapel. When the farmer hired you, you be to hand over your wee bundle of clothes. I never seen my sister after – she was hired somewhere an’ I was hired somewhere – ’til May come, an’ then we met up again in Strabane.’       Someone else was eagerly waiting on that day too. Rose’s mother was not only looking forward to seeing her daughters. She also desperately needed the money they had earned to pay the rent and feed and clothe her ten younger children. When the girls had re-hired she took them to McGarrigle’s second-hand shop and bought them whatever they needed in clothes. Rose got fitted in a skirt and blouse for a shilling. They got sixpence each for themselves and their mother tucked the rest of their earnings into her bosom for safekeeping until she got home. Rose hired that day with a man who had a farm and a butcher’s shop. She wasn’t sure whether she wanted to go home with him or not: 'I mind runnin’ after that oul man for about four mile. He was on horseback. I’d heard him tellin’ my mother he was a butcher and I thought, ‘Jesus, he’ll kill me!’       An’ when I got up the next mornin’ an’ went to milk; I milked three cows an’ took a bucketful off every cow. I thought that was enough. I threw it into the creamery can when I had the bucket full. So the oul boy came after me an’ he says, ‘There’s not much milk in the creamery can. How many cows have you milked?’ And I says, ‘I have three cows milked.’ He says, ‘You couldn’t have three cows milked an’ only that wee drap o’ milk in the can!’ So he took the stool off me an’ he sat down and he got another bucketful. Then we went in for our breakfast. When I saw it I could have cried. He said, ‘What’s wrong with you, Rose?’ Says I, ‘I don’t want spuds. I want my breakfast.’ Says he, ‘You ate them before they ate you! If you’re hungry you’ll ate them,’ he says. And so I did.       Then when I’d be boilin’ the spuds for the pigs in the big boiler I used to – if I got an egg handy I’d put the egg into the boiler and boil it. And when I’d be emptying the boiler I’d break up the shell and ate the egg. But you had to hide the shell or they’d find you out – that you’d ate the egg. Then he’d go to the creamery and I’d start an’ feed the hens an’ feed the ducks, make drink for the calves, feed the pigs, sweep out the pig-house ’til it would be near dinner time. Then the spuds was boiled and a big rough bag was put on the table an’ a hoop on it. An’ the spuds was heeled up in this hoop to keep them from scatterin’ over the floor. And there was a wee lock of salt put on every corner of the bag – no plates or nothin’. And we’d to peel them an’ ate them. Then I was told to go down to the pantry an’ bring up the buttermilk. Well – the buttermilk – I don’t know when it was churned. There was blue hair on the churn and it would have cut your throat. Every time they came back from the creamery there was a pan of stuff threw into this churn. That was the buttermilk.       I used to have to make the porridge for the supper after dinnertime. She used to make me put on a pot of water and throw in a bowlful of oatmeal and a big bowlful of Indian meal and mix the two together. That was boiled for six o’clock for the men stoppin’. The two meals was mixed together and boiled. That was it then. You got no tea or nothin’ ’til the next mornin’. &nbps; &nbps; &nbps; We never went out of the house them six months only to Mass. We were too young you see at fifteen. We didn’t know where the town was even. You didn’t know where you were just. I begun to think long an’ I began to cry one day. I went outside and there was all these bushes and this big hill. I sat up against the bushes and I thought, ‘If I went over the top of that hill I would see home.’       I think it was Bessy Bell [mountain] maybe I seen. But I didn’t get. I’d to stick out my six months. Rose had hired in Strabane which was easily the biggest and best hiring fair in the county. Its fairs served not only the immediate area but a wider hinterland stretching from Tory Island to Cavan and Monaghan. As in most towns the main fairs, each lasting two days, were held in May and November but the quarterly fairs held on the first days of February and August drew large crowds too. Boys and girls converged on the town for days before, some walking bare-foot with their boots slung round their shoulders, others getting lifts in traps and carts, but many travelling on the wee Donegal train from such places as Glenties, Stranorlar and Letterkenny. Some came from the offshore islands such as Aran and Gola. Jimmy Quigley, a native of Strabane, was familiar with the town’s hiring fair and wrote the poem, ‘The Hiring Fair'.       Extracted from the Appletree Press title Hiring Fairs and Market Places by May Blair. Previous extract regarding County Tyrone: Part 1 Forthcoming extracts regarding County Tyrone: Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12

[ Back to Top ]

All Material © 1999-2009 Irelandseye.com and contributors