extracted from the Appletree Press title Hiring Fairs and Market Places by May Blair. COUNTY TYRONE Two of Donegal’s most famous sons have described the hardships of a servant boy – Patrick MacGill in his books Children of The Dead End and The Collected Poetry of Patrick MacGill and Patrick Gallagher in his autobiography Paddy The Cope. Patrick MacGill’s http://www.irelandseye.com/irish/history/hiring_fairs/poem_song/farmers_boy.shtm">poem ‘The Farmer’s Boy’ could only have been written by someone who had seen the tears of his mother and felt the loneliness of leaving home at the age of twelve.       Tears fell in Patrick Gallagher’s home too on the day that he left for his first hiring in Strabane:       ‘The big people warned us we would not have such a rush in our feet when we had the thirty-seven miles’ tramp to Ballybofey past us, but we only laughed at them. I’ll always mind the morning I first left home to go to the Laggan; that was what we called the countryside beyond the mountains where boys went on hire. I think I see my mother as she handed me four shillings for the journey. She was crying. She kissed me again and again. I can’t say whether I was crying or not, though it’s likely I was, for to this day it’s easy to make me cry. It was in Irish she spoke and this is the sense of what she said: ‘Paddy, son, here is four shillings. Two shillings will take you to the fair. If you hire, keep the other two shillings ’til you come home; if you don’t hire, it will take you back to me.’ Patrick and his friends reached Ballybofey that night as planned, paying threepence for the privilege of sleeping in a barn. They were up early the next day to catch the train to Strabane where they made their way to the main street feeling both small and vulnerable. He continues: ‘When we reached Strabane we all cuddled together, and were scared at first, but the big fellows told us to scatter out so as the farmers would see us. They made us walk up and down to see how we were set up and judge what mettle was in us. Anybody who looked tired or faulty in any way was passed over, and I was getting scared I would be left. In the end two men came to me. ‘Well,’ said one of them. ‘Wee fellow, what wages do you want for six months?’ I said: ‘Three pounds ten.’ He said: ‘Get out, you would be dear at your meat. Walk up there to the market clock until I see what you are like.’ I walked up, he followed me and made me walk back to where I started from. I heard him whispering to the other fellow: ‘He is wee, but the neck is good,’ and he then offered me two pounds ten.’       Patrick goes on to describe how after a bit of haggling he hired for three pounds. After the fair, the farmer trotted the horse out the Donemana road with Patrick running after, slowing down occasionally when he thought the horse was tired. When they reached the farm, they had covered a distance of fourteen miles. In spite of all this Patrick worked hard and counted himself lucky that he never went hungry. At the end of the six months his trousers were threadbare and his master bought him a pair of corduroys so that he would look respectable at the next fair. The sum of four shillings and sixpence was withheld from his wages in lieu. However even this did not spoil the excitement he felt at the prospect of seeing his friends again. He takes up the story once more: ‘When I arrived in Strabane most of the Cleendra boys and girls were there. (...) They made fun of me about my trousers. Some called them ‘Fiddler’s trousers.’ I did not mind what they said, I was so glad to be going home.’ Before leaving the town Patrick went to a stall and bought a halfpenny clay pipe for his father, rosary beads for his mother, and threepence worth of sweets for his sisters. He then set off for home with a group of others from his own townland. They reached the first house at two in the morning and to their surprise all their mothers and fathers were waiting for them. Patrick’s mother hugged him so tight he thought she would never let him go.       He was to hire at a number of places before he had the idea of forming a Co-operative for the benefit of farmers. The seeds of the idea were sown when he and his neighbours decided to get together to buy a large quantity of artificial manure so that they could get it at a cheaper rate.       The plan worked and Patrick later formed the Templecrone Co-operative Society in the Rosses area of Donegal. It was an enormous success and he became its first chairman.       Other Tyrone fairs going back to the seventeenth century include those at Trillick, Killeter and Drumquin; also at two smaller places i.e. Killen and Magheracreggan. The latter had ceased to exist by the end of the nineteenth century; Killen still had one held in October and the rest, together with Dromore and Castlederg, all had monthly fairs and almost certainly hiring fairs as well. Castlederg benefited from having good landlords in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Sir Robert Ferguson built a good inn in the town around 1830. It was a handsome building and served as a halt for the Londonderry to Enniskillen stagecoach. He also gave a piece of land free of toll for a cattle and pig market and saw to it that the town had a reservoir and a piped water supply. This was installed in 1829 at a cost of £170.       Extracted from the Appletree Press title Hiring Fairs and Market Places by May Blair. Previous extract regarding County Tyrone: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Forthcoming extracts regarding County Tyrone: Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12

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