Hiring Fairs and Market Places - County Armagh [part 4 of 8]

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

COUNTY ARMAGH

Newtownhamilton, situated in attractive upland country called ‘The Fews’, was by far the best market town in the South of the county. It was founded by one of the Hamiltons in 1770 and no doubt fairs and markets began at that time. By 1838 Newtown was described as a good town with around two hundred slated houses and the rest (about forty) thatched. The markets were held on Saturday and were well supplied with ‘all kinds of meats and wearables’. The last in the month was also Fair Day. Stallions paraded through the streets before the fair, with their manes and tails plaited and intertwined with ribbons. The markets took place around the market house in the centre of the town (a big feature was the sale of cabbage plants from the Loughgall area) but as James Greene said, the fairs were held at the Commons, a piece of ground at the junction of the Markethill and Armagh Roads. The last fair was held in 1961. It was very poorly attended.
The months of May and November brought hiring day, which drew droves of young people from the mountain areas round about and also from Counties Louth, Monaghan, Roscommon, Longford, Antrim and Down. Hiring must have taken place on more than one day, for it was said at the time that ‘servants when on going to their place if they find it not so agreeable as they expected then they come the following market day to look out for another place’. This was fraught with risk. It was in Newtown that a man hired with a farmer, regretted it before the day was out and hired with another. The first refused to take back the earls. The case went to law and the man was fined. He refused to pay and was jailed.
Terence Quinn from Crossmaglen was another of the many who found their way to Newtown. The year was 1909. Until that day he had been attending Glasrumman School, but he had taken a dislike to the new master who subscribed to the ‘Spare the rod’ theory. ‘If you have tears,’ he would threaten his terrified pupils, reaching for the cane as he spoke, ‘prepare to shed them now.’ At other times he would sit down and open a newspaper, every so often darting a sharp look over the top to try and catch someone out. Terry and his pal had been thinking about leaving for some time but the arrival of this new master decided it. They set off that fine May morning and walked the seven miles to Newtown, taking up a position along with some other boys in the Market Square. Stall holders were already doing business when they arrived. A ballad singer was singing:

It wasn’t the men from Shercock
Or the men from Ballybay,
But the dalin’ men from Crossmaglen
Put whiskey in me tay.

At the mention of Crossmaglen, Terry and his pal looked at each other and smiled.
One big fellow who had been there before was airing his knowledge. ‘There’ll be no hiring ’til eleven at laste [least] but you’re better off gettin’ a place on the stan,’ he announced to no-one in particular. Terry was quite surprised then when he was approached by a small stout man who was so out of breath that he was puffing and blowing all the time. Sweat was running down his jaws, wetting his collar. Terry hired with him for £3 12s and discovered afterwards that he was known to all as the ‘Spit’ Gibson. Terry’s job was to look after Gibson’s forty head of cattle, twenty pigs, six milch cows, two horses and an old grey mare. The job held no terrors for him as he had done similar work at home. There were also twenty dozen fowl which were looked after by Gibson’s two nieces. Many a time Terry would have liked a boiled egg for breakfast, but every egg was counted and sold to Thomas Doyle of Markethill to provide cash for the day-to-day running of the house. Terry’s breakfast consisted of oatmeal porridge and a mug of buttermilk, along with what they referred to as ‘a rider on the mug’. This was a piece of bread cut to about one eighth of an inch wider than the rim of the mug and always in imminent danger of falling in. Terry hired for seven years at as many farms, before being persuaded at the age of nineteen to look for work in Scotland. That was the end of hiring as far as he was concerned.
Annie McCreesh also hired in Newtown. She was just fourteen and she remembers her first hiring as if it were yesterday. Here is Annie’s story:
At that time there was really very little money and parents had to let their children take whatever they could get in the line of a job. They couldn’t afford to keep them at home. I happened to hire fairly convenient with a man called Pat Hughes about four miles outside Keady on the Castleblaney Road. Pat was a stonemason. He lived in a big white-washed house with two rooms downstairs – a kitchen and another room. It was quite old-fashioned really. The fire was down on the floor and a big ash pit underneath it and bellows that you could blow to light up the fire. It was a big open fire with old black pots that you hung on a crook.
My job was to look after Pat and his brothers who were elderly, and also their old mother. There were two rooms upstairs. The brothers used one and me and the old woman used the other. When Pat brought me he said to her, ‘Mother, I brought you home a wee girl.’
‘Pat,’ she says, ‘did I not “rare” enough o’ childer?’ (She had brought up eight.) But she was very good to me. I cooked for her and cooked for the men and kept the house clean.
She had cards and she would say to me, ‘When you get that done we will have a game of Old Maid.’ That passed an hour for her. She died when I was only there a month. I was in bed the night she died. They woke me when she was about to depart. I was really frightened. After she died Pat brought a nephew of his home to keep me in company. He was called Patrick after his uncle. He was about six and I used to take him to Drumhearney school. I grew very fond of him.
About that time I had an older sister hired in Keady town. She used to come out on her bicycle to see that I was alright. Then Pat bought me a bicycle and the two of us used to ride home together. It was about eleven miles. I did it often. The roads were really bad at that time, rough with loose gravel. Sometimes we had to get off and walk. We walked it in winter for we were too scared of the bad roads to take the bicycles.

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