Airgead Póca (2)

                                                               Airgead Póca (2)

 Story by' Padraig 'Paud'  O Cuirrin, photos (c) Eddie Cantwell .

 My thanks to Paud, for this follow up

As previously mentioned there was a significant gap in time between the sugar-beet thinning season and the harvesting of the crop, so other ways had to be found to earn some pocket-money to cover the school holiday period when it was most needed. Central to these fund-raising efforts would be the saving of the hay and the harvesting of cereal crops.

In Tipperary long ago they used to say “The hay is saved – and Cork is bet!” which aptly described the importance of hay in the farming cycle. There was - and still is - a huge dependency on the hay crop among farmers, small and large, to see the farm livestock through a long and often harsh winter.

When it came to hay–making the first obligation was to the home place and afterwards one might fit in some paid work with a neighbour such as Garrett Quinn, who had an extensive farm close by Before the widespread use of the baler, the process of saving the hay went through a number of labour-intensive stages – all meant to ensure that the hay ended up fully dry in a rick in the haggard or in a barn. The changeable nature of the Irish summer meant that the description of the hay being “saved” was indeed very appropriate!

Whether working at home or on hire to another farmer there was something pleasant about hay-making. It did not involve the hardship associated with the beet crop and the work was, out of necessity, carried on in fine summer weather. Also saving the hay had an element of the meitheal about it, as people often helped each other – and never did a cup of tea and a slice of currant cake taste better than when enjoyed lying against a cock of hay!

Most small farmers would have an acre of oats or barley – whether for animal feeding or selling on to a local grain merchant – and again some opportunities for earning pocket-money opened up in late summer, when the harvesting took place. By the time I was old enough to do serious farm work the combine harvester had largely taken over from the reaper and binder and the threshing machine, and the job had become more about lifting bags of grain and gathering up straw. That one piece of modern machinery fundamentally changed the face of rural Ireland as the concept of the meitheal or people working together for a common purpose, such as at a threshing, largely came to an end.

A source of some scarce spare cash for some of us in An Rinn was winkle picking. Periwinkles were to be found in abundance to the east and west of Cē Bhaile na nGall and in a few other places such as Poll a' Phūca. The demand for winkles seemed to have come from the Continent as it is only very rarely that I saw them being eaten locally. Winkle picking was not easy work as it involved being stooped over for as long as the tide allowed you to be on the rocks, and weather conditions were often harsh. The problem for us “suppliers” is that there were very few buyers and more often than not you were faced with a monopoly situation. The going rate was around a half-crown a bucket but sometimes the bucket produced by the buyer was well in excess of the standard measure – and the winkles would be piled so high that they were falling off the sides! Even if you protested and held back from selling you ran the risk of the winkles dying off before another buyer appeared. On the whole, picking winkles was neither attractive nor very profitable and it was something that we did when there was little else available.

The most lucrative part-time job I had was for a summer in the early 1960s. The Land Commission decided to bring some order to bear on the many bits and pieces of land, broadly around Baile na nGall  ; where the boundaries of such small holdings were largely undefined and where ownership was sometimes disputed. The job entailed a lot of fencing and I was employed as part of a work-gang of about six men tasked with erecting concrete fence-posts and wire. As material had to be moved around the various sites our farm horse and cart was needed and there was extra payment given for this service. Mickey Dalton, who is still to the good as a well-known traditional musician, was the site foreman and the late Eddie Curran (Glenbeg) was responsible for paying us on behalf of the Land Commission. An engineer from Dungarvan occasionally inspected the work. Some of the fencing that was erected is still in place fifty years later and was probably helpful to people over the years, especially during our recent building frenzy when sites in An Rinn were hugely valued? In any event, I was well paid by the standards of the time (when the premium for the horse and cart was tallied) – even if most of what I got had to be surrendered at home!  

In due course, we moved on to more serious and permanent ways of earning a living. Much is made nowadays of “work experience” or the lack of it. I like to think that all of these little jobs that we did in our youth amounted to relevant “work experience” - if perhaps not for inclusion on any formal CV but, in a more general sense, as preparation for life.