'Hiring Fairs and Market Places' by May Blair, published by Appletree Press

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

COUNTY DOWN

Comber had four fairs but no market or market house throughout most of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. However stall holders of some kind must have turned up at fairs, for they were charged fourpence halfpenny for an open stall and sixpence for a covered one according to the Ordnance Surveyor of the 1830s. Tolls ranging from twopence for a sheep or pig to sixpence for a horse were also charged. At that time the Comber area was regarded as good corn and flax country and there were numerous mills throughout the countryside. A report was published in the Northern Whig following a tour of inspection by a Peter Barnard in 1823. It stated: ‘In no part of Ireland or the Netherlands that I have visited have I seen flax in the field of so good quality as that grown in the immediate neighbourhood of Comber.’
By the end of the century the town had monthly fairs and a market for hay, straw and potatoes but efforts to establish a general market did not succeed. The fairs reduced to four again sometime between the two World Wars. By then farmers were marketing their produce in Belfast. It would seem however that the town once had a market for yarn – according to words once penned by an unknown poet:

A maid goin’ to Comber her markets to l’arn,
To sell for her mammy three hanks o’ fine yarn,
She met with a young man along the high-way
Which caused this young damsel to dally and stray.

“Sit ye beside me, I mean you no harm,
Sit ye beside me, this new tune to l’arn,
Here is three guineas your mammy to pay,
So lay by your yarn ’til the next market day.”

They sat down the-gither, the grass it was green
And the day was the fairest that ever was seen,
“Oh the look in your eye beats a mornin’ in May”
“I could sit by your side ’til the next market-day.”

Many seaside towns were market towns too – Kilkeel and Warrenpoint for instance had markets and fairs throughout the nineteenth- and into the twentieth century. In Kilkeel the action took place in the Market Square and from there to the market house in Kilmorey Square. Cattle, sheep and other animals lined Greencastle Street as far as Mourne Presbyterian Church on the last Wednesday in every month which was Fair Day in the town. General farm produce such as potatoes, oats and flax were sold in the markets. There was also a market for brown linen. Customers came mainly from the local area.
Warrenpoint on the other hand attracted people from Armagh, Louth and Down (anything up to six thousand in summer) and the scene of activity was the Square and Duke Street. Much of the produce was bought by agents who exported it to Liverpool via the steamers belonging to the town’s port, which had developed during the eighteenth century and was used for the export of cattle, poultry, eggs and oysters. The harbour at Kilkeel was used extensively for exporting potatoes, oats, native timber and granite. The main import at both places was coal. Like Bangor, Warrenpoint had one of the earliest farming societies (formed in the 1830s) which met once a year to organise a ploughing match, cattle show and grain show. Rostrevor and Dundrum had good fairs too which were held continuously from the seventeenth- to the twentieth century. In the case of Dundrum they probably began with the Normans in the twelfth century. Dundrum was also noted for its Great Markets.
However, none of these compared with the great fair at Greencastle. ‘The Ram Fair’, as it was called, is thought to have started in Pagan times, was revived by the Normans in the twelfth century and again by Arthur Bagnal under patent granted by James I in 1613. There were, for a time, two in the year, the main one being held on 12 August. All roads led to the fair, and the sea also was dotted with boats and yawls coming from the Louth shores. The custom of enthroning a ram on the castle walls as a symbol of the fair and giving him the title ‘King of the Benns’ was introduced by the Normans and kept up until Greencastle’s fairs ceased early in the twentieth century. From his vantage point no doubt the ram could see the extent of the fair, which was said to stretch for miles in every direction. To farmers the main business of the day was that of selling their animals. In the old days a grassy plain stretched along the shore and this provided the ‘green’. Nowadays a narrow lane called Fair Road leads down to the beach and what is left of the old fair green.
The setting was idyllic with the Carlingford mountains across the lough on one side and the backdrop of the Mournes on the other. The people arrived from day-break, mainly on foot but also in farm carts, donkey carts and any other mode of transport they could find, bringing with them geese, ducks, hens, turkeys, baskets of eggs and so on. They were joined by vendors of such things as noggins, trenchers, churns, butter pats and wooden spoons; also the inevitable large quantities of whiskey and poteen. There were tents galore, almost all of them with a ‘resident’ piper, fiddler or fifer. Prizes were given for the best dancers of jigs, reels and hornpipes. There were fortune-tellers, jugglers, and performers of every description to distract and entertain all day long. And always the sound of music was in the air as the young folk danced the hours away.

Who has e’er had the luck to see Greencastle fair
A Mourne man all in his glory was there.

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