extracted from the Appletree Press title Hiring Fairs and Market Places by May Blair. COUNTY TYRONE Strabane became almost a boomtown in the days before the fair. Eating houses were established overnight and food supplies were in great demand according to Mary Ann Elliott of Lower Main Street:       'My mother would have been cookin’ for two days before it – bakin’ bread – this lovely treacle bread – big, big scones baked in the pot oven hung over the open fire and the red coals heaped on the top of it. She would have baked maybe twenty scones from a bag of flour – treacle bread and soda bread wi’ big raisins in it. As well as that she left in dozens of loaves and Paris buns. The loaves all had to be sliced and we would have had welts on our hands cuttin’ bread. You always sliced it thick for they were brave and sore on the butter and jam – young fellows and girls wi’ big appetites and them half-starved in some of the places. If we run out of bread I was sent to Tom McElhinney’s for more. You could have carried a dozen loaves in my mother’s big basket. They were joined together in fours. Every four was (called) a ‘ticket’. The people that came the night before got a bit o’ supper – porridge it was them days.       Most of the ones that we had came from around Gweedore. My mother came from Gweedore and she knew all the generations of them. We had eight beds here. She would have said to the older ones, ‘There’s two double beds in there and two in the front room and four in the return at the back. Youse is all frien’s. Sort yourselves out whatever way you like.’ Some of them didn’t like to lie down – you know – the oul weemin talkin’. Sometimes they had a singsong if somebody had a mouth organ or jew’s-harp.       'Next morning they would have been up from six getting themselves ready, tying their bundles together. That front room was redd out to make room for tables and forms for teas. When they had hired, some of them arranged for the farmer to lift them here later in the day. I have seen them cryin’ in the street there – didn’t want to go when the farmer came for them at evening time and the trap or cart waiting outside. If they got it hard they walked back to my mother in the night. Sometimes in a day or two a farmer would come and ask, ‘Have you a girl you could recommend?’ And somebody would get another chance. In the area surrounding the main street there was hardly an inch that wasn’t put to use. A cattle market was held in the Abercorn Square, Castle Street and Castle Place; also from Buchanan’s garage on the Railway Road to the courthouse on the Derry Road. Horses and horse-dealers congregated in Irish Street and Newtown Street. Since a deal was usually completed in a pub, dealers became more drunk and quarrelsome as the day wore on. One man is reputed to have looked at the clock and exclaimed, ‘Dammit! Four o’clock on hiring day and not a blow struck yet,’ and promptly hit the man beside him with an ash plant!       In the Main Street there were swing-boats, hobby horses, fiddlers, singers, three-card-trick men, trick-of-the-loop men, Crown-and-anchor men, rickety wheelers, thimble ringers, fortune tellers, shooting galleries, roulette wheels and much, much more. There was an Italian organ grinder from Londonderry who got a squeak of music by turning a handle on the side of a box. He had a monkey which was trained to collect pennies in a cap. Sometimes it snatched the cap from a passing schoolboy’s head causing merriment. An organ, or ‘hurdy-gurdy’ as it was called, was the centrepiece of Mary and Paddy Corrigan’s act too. Their organ was surmounted by a birdcage containing two budgies and the whole outfit was trundled about on a handcart. Their patch stretched along the Main Street from the Provincial Bank to the Commodore Cinema. Paddy provided the music – usually old Irish airs – while Mary brought the birds out on a stick and asked them to pick your fortune out of a hat – blue paper for a boy, pink for a girl.       Not far away a man was selling kitchen utensils, tin-ware, crockery, cutlery and knick-knacks of all descriptions. Every so often he would hold up half-a-dozen teaspoons – every one guaranteed to sweeten your tea without sugar, or so he claimed. He also sold fine combs (for de-lousing heads) which he said would kill ninety-nine out of the hundred! Next to him very special Initial brooches were being sold at half-a-crown. It was big money, but worth it for the pretty girl you had fallen in love with earlier in the day.       Further along Peter Harte from Stranorlar had set out his stand. If you gave Peter a penny you were allowed three kicks at a football which you aimed at a doll sitting on the edge of a tea chest. If you managed to knock the doll backwards you got a free kick. The ball was attached to a rope spiked to the ground. For a penny also you could peep at a picture show. You could choose between Irish scenes and cartoons and you were allowed to see just six. Then there was big Hughie Gibbons who took his stand at the Post Office and offered the people a silver watch for ten shillings. He always wrapped it up with the instruction that you were not to open it until you got home. In the end you were charged just one shilling but when you got home the silver watch had gone and in its place you would find an old brooch or medal. Hughie could provide a minor attraction by touching his chin with his nose. Lilter Meehan was another regular visitor to the fair. He invited people to throw coppers into a bowl from a certain distance. They either missed the bowl altogether or the penny bounced out again so there weren’t many prizes. Once in exasperation somebody threw a stone and broke the bowl. This started a row, much to everyone’s delight.       Mick ‘the Whang’ and his wife Betty sold leather laces, Willie Puzzle sold wire puzzles and rat traps and Bounce Gallagher sold purses filled with half-sovereigns which turned out to be new half-pennies. Another character called ‘Tie-the-boy’ visited all the fairs. He was heavily tattooed and claimed to have sailed the seven seas. He was strong enough to bend iron bars and could wrestle himself free no matter how well he was tied up. When the ropes were being tied he would whisper, ‘Hi boy, give us a chance.’ Sometimes he would lie down on the ground and invite strong men to swing a sledgehammer and smash a stone on his chest. Pat McAllister, an ex-boxer with a cauliflower ear and a nose to match sold bottles and rubs for pains. His patter didn’t vary. ‘D’ye see this bottle. It’s made from a secret recipe that I got from Jack Johnson, the heavyweight champion of the world, the night I knocked him out wi’ wan big punch in Madison Square Gardens in New York – and as he lay there in the ring dyin’ he whispered the secret to me, black an’ all as he was (these last words were muttered under his breath), ‘Take it back to dear old Ireland and put the people on their feet.’ ‘And here it is specially for you in Strabane at half-a-crown a bottle.’       In the midst of all this there were street singers and music-makers galore – Mickey Harron with his violin, the man they called Ghandi who had no legs and went about in a specially made small cart playing an accordion. Mick Corrigan sold penny broad-sheets there and his voice could be heard above the general din singing ‘Lovely Martha (The Flower of Sweet Strabane)’: If I were king of Erin’s Isle And all things at my will, I’d roam through recreation New comforts to find still. But the comfort I would seek the most As you may understand, Is that lovely maid called Martha The Flower of sweet Strabane. Old Malachy Kelly usually stationed himself under what was known as the iron staircase. He played the fiddle and sang ‘Killeter Fair’. Some even said he composed it. Other favourites of Malachy were ‘The Day Bella Brooks was Drowned’ and ‘The Killygordon Train’. These he certainly composed. Yet another fiddler played jigs and reels and danced to the rhythm of his own music. Every now and then Beezer Cassidy was seen to close his shop and depart for a ‘pint’. Here and there, boys were distributing handbills notifying the crowd of where Dances were being held that night. The biggest one was at the Town Hall but there were others at Barry’s Hotel, the Forester’s Hall, The Corkscrew and one known as ‘The Little Heaven’ in Railway Road.       But the biggest attraction of all was Johnny McIlroy who stood aloft on his four-wheeled horse-drawn lorry selling horse-collars, harness, bridles, ropes, nails, whips, straps, buckles, kidney covers, and second-hand clothes. Johnny could always be relied upon to raise a laugh, usually at the expense of some unsuspecting by-stander. A young Donegal lad could suddenly find himself the centre of attention as Johnny pointed and shouted, ‘Here young fella, catch a hoult o’ that rope and see if it would stretch as far as that! Man there’s enough rope there to hang the wife or anything you want – and all for three shillin’s. (Haven’t yiz all heard of Milton the famous poet? When he got married he wrote Paradise Lost. Then when the wife died he wrote Paradise Regained). Occasionally Johnny got a bit blue and while the by-standers roared with laughter, the police would sidle up – just to keep him under observation. Johnny would watch them out of the corner of his eye not once breaking his line of patter until they were close enough to hear and then he would address them. ‘What did you think of the trousers I sold you at the last fair Inspector? Did they wear well?’ Then he would look hard at his victim and shout with feigned delight, ‘Be damn but that’s them you’ve on. Sure they’re as good as new yit. Would you like another pair?’ And the crowd would roar louder than ever.       Extracted from the Appletree Press title Hiring Fairs and Market Places by May Blair. Previous extract regarding County Tyrone: Part 1 | Part 2 Forthcoming extracts regarding County Tyrone: Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12

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