Hiring Fairs and Market Places - County Armagh [part 2 of 8]

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extracted from the Appletree Press title Hiring Fairs and Market Places by May Blair.

COUNTY ARMAGH

Middletown had six fairs throughout the eighteenth century and twelve in the nineteenth, together with a general market held every Thursday and two grain markets which supplied the needs of the local distillery. The grain markets stopped suddenly in 1850 when the distillery failed. However, farmers’ wives in the surrounding countryside made excellent butter which they put up in meskins and took to the markets in Killylea and Middletown. Much of this was bought up by dealers who exported it through Belfast and Newry. Eggs were sold in the markets too.
Keady came to prominence towards the end of the eighteenth century with the arrival of the stage-coach as a means of transport. The Dublin-Armagh stage passed through the town six times a week, three going in one direction and three on alternate days going the other. No doubt it patronised one of the town’s twenty-five licensed hostelries. The Surveyor of 1838 described Keady as ‘having the appearance of a handful of houses thrown into the valley without much regularity as to size, materials or relative position’ and the market house as ‘small and insignificant’. However there were at the time successful weekly markets and a fair on the second Friday of every month. Hiring was also a feature, but the serious hiring took place a few miles away at Newtownhamilton. By 1870 a new market house had been constructed and markets were being held three times a week, one for butter, eggs and pork and two for grain. The weighmaster at the crane in those days was Laurence McShane. Laurence was also Keady’s grain merchant. The Callan River which flowed through the town provided the power for the corn mill situated beside the market house, as well as the many other mills scattered across the countryside. James Greene, a native of Keady, remembers the markets well:
Barney the gasson sold fish. He drove a white horse and cart from Omeath to Keady selling herrings. He wore a blue-and-white checked apron with long pockets full of coppers. He started to sell at Robinson’s Crossroads about a mile outside of Keady on a Thursday evenin’ shoutin’, ‘Herns alive.’ [Herrings] [He] then sold roun’ the town and put the horse into Carver’s yard that night; took the cart out an’ sold them along the mill wall the next mornin’. He sold them at sixpence a dozen an’ counted them by placin’ them between his fingers. He always claimed to have an extra one in the count. He wud say, ‘An’ there’s one for the gasson.’ Carts sellin’ plants gathered there too. The apple sellers gathered roun’ the monument.
You cud have bought delph too an’ second han’ clothes. Trousers was one an’ six or two shillin’s an’ a coat half-a-crown. Men wore putties to keep their trousers clean. After the war you cud have bought putties at sixpence or less. Keady was a good market. Pigs were sold in Davis Street; cattle in the Square or any of the streets roun’ about; horses in Chapel Street.
But it was to Newtownhamilton that James went when he decided to hire for the first time. The farmer who hired him lived between the two towns on the Armagh-Monaghan border. The year was 1925:
I hired in Newtown. It wasn’t far from Keady – about six mile. I went on my own. My father was dead. I was the third youngest of eleven. You stood there. They were all over the place, strangers and farmers and everything. Farmers wud a come from roun’ be Armagh an’ Killylea an’ the Dyan to look for a man. They wud go about watchin’. They cud nearly tell a man that was useful for a bit o’ work. Then when the hirin’ was over the young ones went down to the pubs and had a bit of a sing-song. There was twenty-seven pubs in Newtown that time. Tom O’Neill’s in Blaney Street was a favourite, at the fut of the hill. That’s where the boys went, weemin too; the Crossmaglen men and the Cullyhanna men. It didn’t take much drink till do them. Two or three bottles of stout wud set a fella drunk. They weren’t used till it, ye see. There was more Crossmaglen men hired (and weemin) than any other people I know. The girls hired for farmwork the same as the men. They had arms on them like strong horses. Crossmaglen and Cullyhanna the len’th of the Dundalk border – a tarrible people hired from that district. There was a cattle fair that day too, at the Commons, and sheep and pigs.
The first man I hired with was John Douglas of Aughnagurgan. He didn’t know me and I didn’t know him. His house was on the very border. It was a big slated two-storey house and a cart shed on the end of it. The stable an’ the barn laft [loft] was all in the one wi’ the house too. It was a big range of a house. The brothers an’ sisters used to come home to help wi’ the harvest.
I used to go to Newtown Chapel of a Sunday. I got the afternoon off. I had to milk before I went and be back to milk in the evening. You fell in wi’ people from roun’ about. John Douglas was a Presbyterian. He went to Clarke’s Bridge Meetin’ House. It wasn’t so bad if you got a good house. I foun’ out Douglas’s wasn’t counted a great house for grub. There was a man lived in a neighbour house the’ called Barney Laverty. An’ I was doin’ the lane wan day – clippin’ the hedges an’ cleanin’ the channels an’ things like that, an’ Barney says to me, ‘Young fella’, how are ye gettin’ on?’
‘Not too bad at all, Barney,’ I says.
An’ he says, ‘How are they treatin’ you for mate?’
‘Well, Barney now,’ says I, ‘I cud be doin’ wi’ more.’
‘I know that,’ says he. ‘It’s counted a bad house for food. But,’ he says, ‘If you “put the hammer” [pressure] on them at the right time, you’ll have no bother. I know they think a good deal of you. I know that.’
Well one day we were ploughin’ an’ it come till dinner time an’ it was a Friday. Now I didn’t ate beef that time on a Friday. An’ I was that hungry I could a’ ate a whole cart an’ the cribs an’ all. I was that hungry after ploughin all mornin’. An’ I looked over an’ there was a salt herrin’ on my plate, an’ they were atin’ beef. Well, Barney Laverty had sort of put a bit of spirit in me. I says, ‘What’s that?’
She says, ‘Sure you don’t ate beef on a Friday.’
Says I, ‘I don’t, an’ I’ll not ate it, but I’m not atin’ that.’ I tell you the sweat was runnin’ aff me wi’ anger. Says I, ‘Haven’t you plenty of eggs, an’ butter, an’, says I, ‘I cud ate that.’
An’ she turned away all in a huff an’ she give me the eggs an’ ever since that day that I put the hammer on them, I cud get anything I wanted. They didn’t like givin’ you eggs, for they were makin’ a few coppers on them you see. She’d bake soda bread right enough, an’ the bread man come once a week. She wud’ve been sparin’ too wi’ the milk an’ butter. They sowl [sold] that too, d’ye see.
I used to ate raw turnips, especially the wee young ones. Them was quare [good] stuff. An’ an odd time they kep’ pigs. An’ if I was boilin’ spuds in the boiler for the pigs, them lovely big spuds, I used to take a wee lock [amount] o’ salt out (I wasn’t askin’ her for it, like) an’ you cud have a good feed of spuds. An’ another thing, if you got a hen layin’ in the manger, you were sure to cop that egg; or outside annunder [under] a whin; raw eggs, the boys all ate them. Every man I knowed that was hired always ate raw eggs. I stayed there three years. It was a good house only I wasn’t gettin’ enough to ate at the start.

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