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Traveller in the Glens: 'Our Antrim Dialect' (pt 4)It is interesting, at a fair, regatta or other congregation of Nine Glens folk to hear the diversity of dialects and to attempt to place the speakers. It can be done to within a mile or two! Talking of fairs reminds me that these once-important events have ceased to play as great a part in Glens life as they did, due to the Government control of prices and also to the fact that dealers do not now wait until the animals are brought to fair or market, but with improved transport facilities can buy on the farm and have the animals or produce delivered to suit themselves. Our fairs are but shadows of the olden events, when they were to occasion not only of buying and selling, but also of merry-making afterwards.An old-time fair was very enjoyable if a bit noisy. The animals were scattered in groups over the ‘Fair Hill’ while buyers and sellers engaged in animated discussion. The ballad singers, with a crowd around them, ‘rendered’ the latest songs, many of their own composition, dealing with the doings of ‘Tommy the Toff-t’ or ‘Willie Wilson’s Wake’, or a regatta or horse-race, the various – whack-fol-de-dols being chorused by the listeners. Then there was the congregation of young folk of both sexes for the twice-yearly ‘hiring fair’ when they either changed their master or mistress for the ensuing six months or agreed to stay on for another term. This was their one day of liberty, when the girls donned the finery that had lain in camphor-scented boxes, not even being produced for the couple of hours granted them to attend their church on Sundays. The boys, very self-conscious in their ‘fine’ boots (yellow for preference) and their blue suits with unaccustomed collars feeling as if they might choke them, meandered – or ‘dandered' as they themselves called it – about, casting sheeps-eyes at pretty damsels who, missing none of these glances, but apparently intent only upon the chatter they were having with other girls, could yet send a devastating glint from a bonny eye that reduced some lad to a humble hanger-on at that night’s dance. Only one of these big fairs remains, and even that is shorn of much of its former importance, though the song, The Ould Lammas Fair of Ballycastle has helped to bring more sightseeing visitors to that attractive little town on the last Tuesday of August each year. (The Ould Lammas Fair was sung at a Royal Command performance in 1937.) From the Appletree Press title: Traveller in the Glens (pb), click here for more information.
Part 1 of this 'Traveller in the Glens' Antrim Dialect article |
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