extracted from the Appletree Press title Hiring Fairs and Market Places by May Blair. COUNTY DOWN It was a different story when he hired at Hayes’s at Soldierstown, for there the servant men had their own room above the kitchen and Gertie the maid attended to the beds every day. Matt had never in his life seen such luxury. He knew he was in a gentleman’s residence when he saw, for the first time in his life, a chamber pot under the bed. Not that he would have dreamt of using it! He continues:       It was a lovely place. There were just the two of us staying at the time though there was another man who lived with his wife in a house in the yard. The household consisted of old Mr Hayes – he was a big hefty man – and his son Dick who was very tall. Then there was an old uncle who used to give me after-shave.       It was just a general farm with cows and bullocks and lots of pigs. I remember makin’ hay at it – tossin’ it up with a fork, then puttin’ it into laps or rucks. When it was ready it was brought into the stack-yard on the ruck-shifter. Then in the middle of the yard there was what they called the round-house. It was a covered-in place and the horses used to walk round it. That was where the thrashin’ was done. Och, I liked Hayes’s – but I didn’t like the pigs. So I left.       I hired at a few other places in that part of the world but eventually found myself in Newry once more. The year was 1930 and it was to be the last time I hired at a fair. This time the man that came forward was from McKee’s Dam outside Hillsborough. I was puzzled as to why the man was coming to speak to me for he had a lad with him that he had already hired. But he needed another lad for a neighbour, he said. I decided to give the neighbour a try. His name was Mercer – William (or Willie) Mercer. He lived with his widowed mother who was ill and couldn’t do very much. He and I did the cookin’, made the butter, took the eggs to market. He had just one horse and Wards, his cousins across the way, had three. I sometimes ploughed in Ward’s field with Mercer’s horse and one of their horses and then ploughed in Mercer’s field with the same pair of horses. Man I just loved to take hold of the handles of the plough and walk behin’ them two horses and the steam risin’ off them at the start of a day’s work. You always tried to make sure your furrow was clean and straight. You took pride in the way you did things them days.       After a time Mercer’s hadn’t enough work for me and I finished up working full-time for Wards. They were very good to me too. Old Granny Mercer (Mrs Ward’s mother) used to darn my socks and do my washin’ and there was no trouble about going to church or anything like that. Of course they were staunch Presbyterians and great churchgoers themselves, though two always stayed behind to look after the house and yard. You would have seen the other nine heading off to Hillsborough on bicycles every Sunday morning. About that time I met a man called Sam McComb who taught me how to kill pigs. Sam’s tools consisted of a kettle for the hot water, a stunning hammer, a set of knives and a sharpening steel. The steel always hung like a sword from his belt. The two of us killed pigs all over the country. One of the places we killed was at Jack McClure’s. (It was Jack that hired me that day in Newry for Willie Mercer.) Jack worked on the railway but he would have killed four or five pigs at a time and kept one for the family to eat off all winter. Then I got to know his daughter Annie. The problem was – her father didn’t allow her to go with boys so we had to meet in secret. He would have raised an awful row if he had found out. After a while Annie and me decided to get married. I borrowed £3 to have a suit made with a tailor in the Listullycurran Road. When I was shavin’ on the mornin’ we were to be married I was thinking about Annie. She was goin’ on the bus to Lisburn Market with her eggs an’ butter. I was wondering how I would face her father afterwards. The arrangement was that I would follow on the bicycle and we would meet Canon O’Boyle at the chapel at eleven o’clock. Everything went according to plan and we came home man and wife. Annie’s father wasn’t as cross as we expected. I suppose he could do nothing about it anyway. In the end Annie’s father forgave us and gave us the piece of land to set up home but Annie was always afraid of him and quaked at the sound of his voice ’til the day he died.       Extracted from the Appletree Press title Hiring Fairs and Market Places by May Blair. Previous extracts regarding County Armagh: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 Forthcoming extracts regarding County Down: Part 12

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