School: Ballinahowen (roll number 8646)
- Location:
- Ballynahown, Co. Westmeath
- Teacher: T. Hanly
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0745, Page 047
Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.
See copyright details.
DownloadOpen data
Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
- XML School: Ballinahowen
- XML Page 047
- XML “Local Fairs”
Note: We will soon deprecate our XML Application Programming Interface and a new, comprehensive JSON API will be made available. Keep an eye on our website for further details.
On this page
- The fairs are held locally in Moate and Athlone. Sometimes buyers go to farmers houses and buy cattle. In olden times the fairs were held in Kilgarvin in a place called the green. In Moate the fairs are held on the streets and in Athlone they are held in the green.Tolls are paid on animals in Athlone one penny for sheep three pennies for cattle and six pennies for horses. Galvin and Blaney get the money. When cattle are sold luck-penny is given sometimes two shillings is given and a half-crown. People strike hands when making a bargain. When animals are sold the buyers put mud on the flank or clip the hair and raddle them. The halter is given away with a horse when sold. The January, March, April, September, & November, fairs are the greatest fairs of the year. The first day of the January fair is for horses and the second for cattle and sheep. The first day of the September fair is for sheep
- Collector
- Liam Ó Dubhraigh
- Gender
- Male
