Fair day

Until very recently the local fair was an important event all over rural Ireland. Besides the essential business of buying and selling livestock and their produce there was abundance of entertainment on offer around the fair green, with ballad singers, dancers, hucksters, and tricksters vying with each other for an audience. The fair thus fulfilled and important social as well as economic function and, indeed, the few fairs which survive today - the Ould Lammas Fair at Ballycastle and the Puck F...