extracted from the Appletree Press title Hiring Fairs and Market Places by May Blair. COUNTY ANTRIM But not all hirelings were as fortunate as Nat Sloan. Robert Higgins’ experience was just the opposite, for every place he hired was to prove worse than the one before. When Robert ran away from home at the age of eleven and took a job with a farmer at Cairncastle he little realised what he was letting himself in for. On his first morning he, another hired man and the servant girl were called at four o’clock. Robert’s first job was to milk the cows and take the milk to the road to be collected by the creamery cart. After that he cleaned out the byre. By then that morning’s milk had been lifted and the previous day’s empty cans were waiting to be brought to the yard and washed.       By eight o’clock it was time for breakfast, which consisted of buttermilk and half a soda farl spread with margarine and jam. For dinner he got a salt herring and two potatoes. At supper time a plate of porridge was set down with two spoons, one for Robert and one for the other hired man. They supped from the same plate. Each had his own mug of buttermilk.       Robert left that place after six months and fared better at his next place, though worse was to come. It is possible Robert’s account is exaggerated but it is just as likely to be true:       I left there and I went to a man called Thomas Wilson of Ballyalbana. Well, it was a good house. There was no two tables in Tom’s house. He was a gentleman tae work till and everybody sat at the same table, but I still had only five shillin’s a week an’ my meat an’ bed. But the house was too wee and I had to sleep in an outhouse. It was their old dwelling house and they kept the meal down below and I slept up the stairs. But it was comfortable.       After the six months Tom was going to stop labourin’ [growing crops] so I went to Larne Hiring Fair. I went down to the bottom end of the Town Hall and all us boys that was for hirin’ stayed down at that door and talked about farm life and what sort of man he had worked till and what his last six months was like. I hired that day with a man who was the sexton of Glenwherry church. Tom Wilson stepped forward and told him that I was a good worker and he would guarantee me to work if I was left alone.       ‘But,’ he says, ‘he’s a bit hasty-tempered but if you work him the right way you’ll have no fault and he’ll stay the six months.’       Nobody could tell me anything about him; whether I was going to a good place or not. Well, there wasn’t much meat about it but there was plenty of bloomin’ hard work. When I went to him in the month of May he had no crop in, so I helped him to put all the crop in and when it came the month of November all the crop was out – the turnips an’ all snedded. Most of the time I stayed away from him and he stayed away from me. I never seen the inside of Glenwherry church while I was there even though he was the sexton. I was never invited to go to that church and even when they were saying prayers at night I was dumped up the stairs to bed. He had two daughters and a son. Well, the son got hardened to the father and couldn’t do with him at all and he went out to Australia. Then he found out where the son was, and he sent him the money to come back home because he was an old man and couldn’t run the farm without him.       The last I remember about the old man: I asked one of the daughters could I have a piece of bread and a cup of milk at night for supper.       The old man said, ‘Did you challenge [ask] Lizzie to get you a cup of milk and a piece of bread at night? Why, what’s wrong with your porridge that you can’t take it?’ I said my heart didn’t lie to porridge. ‘Och well,’ he says, ‘You’ll just sleep better without it,’ and I had tae go to bed without any supper. I got nothing at all!       When my six months was up I went to see the doctor in Larne and he said I was badly nourished and badly run down and didn’t he advise me to go to the Cottage Hospital in Ballymena. When I came out of hospital Tom Wilson was there waitin’ to take me back to his place but I had made up my mind to go to the next hiring fair in Larne.       We were all standing in a group and this man said to me, ‘Boy, have you got a place?’ ‘Naw, I haven’t got a place yit.’ ‘If you don’t get a place here, what are you goin’ to do?’ he said. And I said, ‘If I don’t get a place here I’ll go to Ballyclare Fair.’ (Ballyclare’s fair was held later in the month.) ‘Well,’ this man said, ‘Robert, I have a man here but he takes a lot of drink and he’s hard tae work with. Any man that has ever been with him has never finished the six months.’ I says, ‘That’s a bloomin’ recommendation you’re givin’ me!’ But I hadn’t got a place and I said I’d go. He was a wee man that lived at Hall’s Crossroads outside the town. He says, ‘What’s the wages?’ ‘I’ll take what I was gettin’ from the rest of them – £6 for the six months,’ I says. But by God I didn’t know what I was in for. He daled [bought and sold] a lot in horses – and was maybe away for a week at a time. He would come home late in the afternoon and he would say, ‘Go over to Sam’s and get him to run you to the Border [dividing line between Northern and Southern Ireland] in the lorry and you can bring home a few horses.’ At the Border I met the man that had the horses and he told me what field they were in, and at night I had tae go into that field, put the ropes on them and bring them out. Usually there were six, sometimes four. I roped them two abreast, got on one in the middle and away I went. Between gettin’ a ride and walkin’ it was a long journey. It took three or four days.       When I got them home we fed them, got them up nicely and as long as I could work with them he guaranteed that they were quiet in harness in all farm work. So when it come the horse fair in Belfast – I think it was the first Wednesday in every month in the market at Allam’s – I had to have the horses in that fair before eleven o’clock because that’s the time they got them numbered and put through the ring. And what he didn’t sell I had tae turn roun’ and walk back home and when you got home you were hungry and all you got was tea and bread.       Then the boss would have come in and said, ‘Robert you’re not that tired, boy. Yoke [harness up] that oul mare there stannin’ in the stable and cart out manure ’til it’s bedtime.’ I seen me that when I went down to say my prayers at night I was that tired I wakened up that same way in the mornin’.       If it was rainin’ he would say, ‘Go to Larne and redd out that man’s midden and when you get home put the manure in that field.’ (You see lots of people in Larne kept animals at that time.) And off you set in the early hours of the mornin’ for a load of manure. And if there was no dung to be got, you went down to the sea for a load of wrack instead, and spread that over the land. But you couldn’t use too much of that because of the salt in it. It would have poverised [impoverished] the ground.       I mind one time he had a field that was full of cutworm. So I said to him, ‘I’m goin’ to plough that oul bog down there.’ The boss’s father come over to me when I had it half ploughed and he says, ‘Robert, what are you doin?’ Says I, ‘I’m goin to put corn in this.’ ‘You might as well go home an’ lie in bed,’ he says, ‘because my brother-in-law ploughed that fiel’ for years an’ they never could grow anything in it because it was full of cutworm.’ ‘Well,’ says I, ‘To hell, I’ll try it. I’m goin to Larne for two load of manure in the mornin’. I want a lend of your cart and horse. I’m goin’ to scatter dung over it and plough it in.’ ‘Ye need’nae bother.’ But instead of goin’ to Larne for two load of manure, I went to Carrick for two load of gravel salt and I spread the gravel salt and killed the cutworm, because nae cutworm would live where it was. Well, I went down to Mounthill and I got five cwt of seed corn.And the boss comes home and he says, ‘What did you plough that oul bog for?’ ‘Well,’ says I, ‘I put corn in it. I don’t know if it’ll grow or not.’ Says he, ‘You’ve a brave braird [first shoots] in it anyway.’ The dickens, it grew as high as the house!       Some people went home between fairs. I never went home because I had a stepfather and he wasn’t good to us. But on the eleventh night (the night before the fair) we all gathered at the crossroads and we had a jolly night then. Somebody would have had a melodeon, somebody else a fiddle and maybe somebody an oul fife or something. You had your six poun’ in your pocket and a bottle of beer was only sixpence. When you got a few bottles of thon heavy Guinness in you, you enjoyed yourself. Then there was one time we used to grow a terrible lot of flax in this country. When it was ready it was put up on the laft where you slept and then the rats and mice come in. I remember one night I was that tired after workin’ hard about the farm, when I riz in the mornin’ my face was all scratched and bleedin’ so I had to go to the doctor to get an injection. I always thought that it was rats or somethin’ that ate the side of the face nearly off me.       About that time I got married. It was the ‘hungry thirties’ and you couldn’t get a job anywhere, so I bought the Belfast Telegraph one night and I read where a man wanted an all-round farm-hand, with a free house and 29s 0d a week. But when we got to the house half the slates were off it, and I had to put bits of tin under the slates to keep the water out. There was no free food or nothin’ there. If you got a stone of potatoes or half a pint of milk it was taken out of your wages. By this time we had a child but the child wasn’t allowed inside that man’s house. My wife had to work the same as I had for the 29s 0d and I had to get up at three in the mornin’ to have the milk at the end of the loanin [lane] for six. The horses were ready for me when I came out from my breakfast and I had to wait for daylight so that I could see the first fur [furrow] before I could start. He used to give me a hurricane lamp so that I could find the cows in the field in the mornin’ to bring them home for milking.       I used to listen to them sayin’, ‘Rule Britannia. Britons never shall be slaves,’ but Larne was one of the biggest slave markets ever I come across in my life. Once you hired you were down for six months slavery and you needn’t expect from any farmer an easy time because you did not get it.’       In actual fact Larne hiring fair was no worse than any other, but Robert’s perception of it was coloured by bad experiences in the places where he had hired. Hiring day was a day of freedom – a day when servants could say ‘yea’ or ‘nay’ to their masters; a day which could herald the beginning of a new life in a new home in a new place for the next six months. It was a day when the country people took over the town in a big way. It was a big day for the farmer too. He perhaps sold a few cattle or a cart load of pigs. He met and chatted with his neighbour or treated him to a drink. To the townsfolk it was a novelty. The stalls were always more alluring than the shops with their profusion of gingerbread, apples, hard nuts, dulse and yellowman. Larne Fairs are remembered with affection by many people and admirably described by John Clifford in his poem ‘The Hirin’ Fair’. In the early days much of the produce brought to Larne was exported to Scotland but as roads improved and demand increased at home, farmers began to market their produce in Belfast. Larne had a hinterland of good farming land and the usual industries associated with farming, i.e. spinning, weaving, tanning, milling and threshing. There were in addition three rope manufactories and salt pans which by the 1830s had fallen into disuse.       East Antrim was one of the earliest areas to be settled by the English and Scots (chiefly the latter). They landed at Carrickfergus and proceeded to the districts allotted to their leaders where they occupied themselves with farming and weaving. They were a Presbyterian family called Edmonstone to whom a patent was granted to hold a monthly market in Ballycarry. The market was used for the sale of yarn and cloth. To encourage excellence the Edmonstones offered first, second and third premiums to the families which produced the most and best quality of yarn. This worked well for many years but when the premiums stopped the markets quickly followed suit. Fairs (never more than four in the year) were originally held at the Black Hill about a mile outside the town but later moved to the village itself.       Neighbouring Mounthill had never more than two fairs which were also established early in the 1600s. They were held on the first days of July and October. The Fair Green was at one time let out by the landlord to one or other of his more prosperous tenants at a yearly rent of between five and ten pounds. Anyone who wanted to hire a tent on the day of the fair could do so for a half-crown. Ballycarry and Mounthill fairs had much in common. Both witnessed scenes of drinking and fighting which caused their fortunes to rise and fall over the years. A poem entitled ‘Mounthill Fair’ by John Clifford captures the atmosphere. A cockfight was held at Mounthill on the evening before the fair. The drinking started then and continued until the day after – generally called the Old Fair Day. The first day of July 1840 turned out to be very wet. Around 200 horses were sold that day (about half the usual number), some 250 each of black cattle and beef cattle, 150 pigs on the string, 20 cart loads of young pigs and about 100 sheep. At the same fair there were forty tents selling whiskey alone! There were also stands for the sale of gingerbread, sweetmeats, tinware, soft goods, wooden vessels, hardware and baskets.       Extracted from the Appletree Press title Hiring Fairs and Market Places by May Blair. Previous extracts regarding County Antrim: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Forthcoming extracts regarding County Antrim: Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13

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