November Day Mart...

November Day here...the first Monday after the first day of November is called November Day...most towns have a Fair...not a roundabouts and coconut shy sort of Fair...but a selection of animals for sale.

In our town they congregate by the Tower house which was once owned by the town bailiff...huge painted horses with feathered feet are left to roam about, while snappy little ponies are tied to the lamp-posts with bits of raggy string...donkeys stand forlornly...heads down...their coats matted with mud.

Car boots are left open revealing cardboard boxes full of eager puppies...tongues lolling out...scrambling over each other... they attract a small crowd of people who exclaim with delight, quite forgetting those puppies will grow into big rangy dogs, hell bent on chasing anything that moves... unless trained to behave and have some manners.

Traveller children used to sell young Foxes...they'd sit together on the tarmac...Fox cubs clutched anxiously in dirty hands...I'd sit down beside them and have a chat about Foxes and how they really ought to be out in the wild and the childers would look at me with vacant eyes...'Me Da said we'd be beat if we didn't get rid'...so I'd go away and find someone from the animal rescue who wouldn't bawl and shout but would quietly exchange some cash and put the cubs in a box...impossible to release into the wild, the most healthy would go on to a wildlife refuge...the others would be taken to the Vet.

Then there were chickens and geese...tiny Bantams with little feathered crowns on their heads...miniature Cockerels who strutted about...razor sharp spurs on thin yellow legs. The sellers would sit on the tail gates of their battered vehicles...Sunday best jacket on over the top of a grimy shirt and too big trousers held up by wide leather belts...'What price are you asking?' the answer was invariably 'Make me an offer' accompanied by guffaws of laughter or a coughing fit...

Gypsy lads would ride bareback up and down the main street...showing off the horses gait...it was wise to stand well back out of the way of flailing hooves, newly shod. Sparks would fly as the iron hit the ground and the horses would barely break a sweat...

Tossing their heads and flicking their tails, there was no point in asking the selling price...these animals would exchange hands for thousands of punts.

Sometimes there'd be pigs...weaners...ready to be fattened for the Christmas...they'd be nestled down in bright yellow straw...snouts emerging every now and then. Little beady eyes watching the people looking at them. A chap with long greasy hair and Wellies covered in muck, would poke the pigs to make them show themselves off...fine fat pigs! They'll make decent enough bacon!

In the town square, there were stalls selling cheap mats in gaudy colours, for a sitting room perhaps...the inevitable Irish music stall attracting tourists tempted to buy pirate copies of Daniel O'Donnell...

Old Traveller women with heavily lined brown faces...hooped gold earrings and broken down mens shoes on their feet would sell cooking pots and saucepans...plaster of Paris statues of Our Lady, her gown freshly painted in bright blue...pictures of Christ...the glass cracked and the frame broken. Tiny plastic bottles of Holy Water from Knock...puppies of an un- definable breed skittering around their display.

There'd be a bucket man who sold nothing but feed buckets and another who sold plaster of Paris dogs and horses to put on your gate piers...

Trailers parked...laden with sawn logs or 'good black turf'...cheap and cheerful clothes in bright Polyester from the Indians... who look bored to tears and spend the day on their mobile 'phones...packing up their van by two in the afternoon, anxious to get back to Dublin.

The 'pubs had their doors wide open serving pints of the Black stuff and over-priced cheese and ham sandwiches while the chipper did a roaring trade...shopkeepers would shoo away the dogs who were anxious for scraps and curse the horses when they left heaps of steaming shite almost on the doorstep...

I heard some of the best stories then...talking to the old chaps down from the mountains for the day...tales of babies born and discarded on the midden...stories of walking to school bare footed...using a slate to write upon...hiding IRA weapons in old boreens...the appalling cruelty of the Black and Tans...the American Wakes...

The November Day marts are cleaned up now...the characters I used to love have died...the older Traveller women with their haunting faces are long gone...no child sells Fox cubs...puppies have to be micro-chipped...people don't want to buy a set of well scrubbed saucepans...the handsome Traveller lads sell their horses through advertisements in the free papers...

Can't help but feel sad about a tradition which is rapidly dying out.