Tape 143

Mikeen McCarthy  7,8,83

Contents

Horse droving, description; Guinea hunting, buying and selling horses and tackle

Lonesome (haunted) roads, Road from Tralee to Castleisland haunted

Playing mouth organ to calm horses

Haunted trees at side of road

Bóther an Marbh (Walk of the Dead).

"Sarking", gammon for putting horse in field without permission

Horses or dogs have second sight, snarling horses

The Bullring in Tralee (horses led through house)

Scum in horses’ eyes cured by sugar

Horses illnesses, spavines, string halts, splints, etc.

Listening to cures “behind my father's back”

Can tell horses' age from teeth up to seven years.

Dan Sheridan cures pony with strangles

"If they told you the cures, they would cease to believe in them"

Unlucky to cure a dying beast

Daughter Kathleen in hospital, filly died at same time (life for a life)

Never lonesome after a dog

Life for life superstition

Travellers kind to animals

Horse-fairs, Cahermee, Ballinasloe

Travellers favour piebald horses for themselves

Good horsemen among Travellers, Sheridans, Cash's;

Mikeen a blacksmith

Gorgies always went to Travellers when vet failed

Guinea hunting

Cars took Travellers living

Young people “no idea of horses”

Vicious horses

J C       Right.  You said one time Mikey, that you used to….. you did droving; is that right?

M Mc  Yeah.

J C       Could you tell us about that; tell us how you did it?

M Mc  Well, there was cattle drovers like; we were horse drovers, and we were called guinea hunters as well as drovers, because in them times like, you get a train from some towns in Ireland, there was no horse lories in them times; there might have been but people hadn’t the money to buy them like.  Then when the fair’d be all over in the evening…… we’d our own customers like.  So a man might have six horses, maybe four, he might have eight as that part of it, and I drove them then from one fair, and you’d have to ride the horses all night long tied from head to tail like.  The young ones you couldn’t tie up so you’d have to leave them run behind because over being young they’d follow the older ones for company like.  And we’d travel on all night long.  If the road was too long; such has schoolhouses, in Ireland that time they were very remote places   We’d put them into a schoolhouse yard for the night and shut the gates.  And we’d get our top-coats off and we’d lie in the new hay or a hay barn if ‘twas the wintertime, and then we’d be up before the children ‘d come to school in the morning and the schoolteachers.  We’d be up about six o’clock and have them gone and clean around the schoolyard where the manure ‘d be and all that, destroy all evidence of the man, that they were never in there, and then we’d carry on again.  And it might be twenty miles, could be thirty miles, but you’d have to be there in the morning before the next fair ‘d start, because the horses that they bought in the first fair, they’d be selling them in the second fair in exchange and all that.  And you’d have them in there and you’d have them all cleaned off and ready for the man that you’d be working for; and we used to do all that for ten bob a horse, so the more horses you bring, the more money; well, ‘twas quite a lot of money that time.  Well then, for making the deal of the horse all day and….. we’d three or four rackets.  I’d be selling whet they call halters (te), and you’d buy them in them times for half a crown each.  Then, when a man ‘d sell a horse, well he’d bring what they call harness winkers on the horse to the fair.  So he’d buy a halter then off you and save his winkers and his reins, and he might throw you ten bob, and the feller that’d buy him, he’d give you ten bob, so that’d be a pound.  And you might be going that way all day; you’d imaging a pound wouldn’t be a lot of money, but we might go through ten, twelve pound a day that time.  And then the following morning we collected again for droving the horses; ten bob a horse again.  And then that’s the way we travel then from fair to fair, fair to fair.  I used be in a fair every morning one time; not all the time now, but it could happen maybe five days a week; four days a week maybe sometimes, maybe more times three days a week, it might take you two days to get from one fair to the next one; might be fifty miles away.  And that’s the way we spend most of our days.  Good days, lonesome days like; there wasn’t much cars on the road.  But talk about ghosts and all that; we got frights; I don’t think we’d believe in them today, but we definitely got frights like.  There was roads we used to avoid, whet we used to call lonesome roads, the haunted roads, we used to avoid them and go the long way round, but nothing ever happened to us.  But ‘twas the lorries came on then, the big horse lorries.  Wherever liked going to a fair where there was a train or a railway because you’d lose trade there like, you see, the trains ‘d take them, so then the horses….. the horse boxes came on, the big horse lorries, and that’d kind of put us out of business too.

J C       Would it be just farmers you’d drove for, but would it be other Travellers as well?

M Mc  They’d be farmers as well like, because we were very well known, and ‘twould be all mostly Travellers horse dealers.  And then a farmer might say, “I’m on your direction, which direction are you going”, like.  And we’d tell him the direction; he’d say, “Will you drop that horse off for me and I’ll give you a pound, or something”.  Now he might be a decent man like, he’d give you a pound, and we might only have that horse only two mile, maybe three, maybe five mile, we don’t know, and we’d drop him off and the man ‘d always give us a pound like; they knew us.  But we always landed a horse quite safe; nothing ever happened to a horse with us. 

J C       They’d always trust you would they?

M Mc  Oh yeah, oh yeah.  Well, they knew us, they wouldn’t trust everybody, only us that they knew, because we’d meet them in every fair anyway like, so you couldn’t do anything cocky to them.

J C       Could you….. can you think; you mentioned about the roads that you were….. you wouldn’t travel because of the ghosts and that; could you think of any of these in particular Mikey?

M Mc  Oh, there was, there was a road from Tralee to Castleisland; ‘twas only eleven miles.  In that road like, ‘twas only a short road and you could save horses like; ‘twas an hour and a half, or two hours because you’d have to give your horses time like, not to be sweating them, not to be losing shoes, ‘cause they’d lose an amount of money the next fair like, if you didn’t look after them proper.  And there was that road, there was Ballyseedy, well, we’d always wait till daylight before we’d go on that road because we’d never venture it in the middle of the night, what we would do to other roads.  You’d head from Castleisland then, we’ll say, to Killarney; that was all right, that was only about sixteen miles.  And then, when you get to Killarney then there was another fair coming off in Kenmare, a place called Kenmare; that was twenty one miles.  It was the name of Twenty One Miles without house, home or habitation like, they claim, but there was houses for about three miles, and you’d a good fifteen miles, sixteen miles road, nothing, no house at all, nothing at all.  ‘Tis when you be on your own, the dead hour of night they say; they wasn’t all very fine nights, some, a storm, and we often travelled in thunder and lightning as well; you wouldn’t have every day fine.  In the middle of the night, and the only company you had was the noise of the horses shoes and your matches and your cigarettes; when you’d see anything coming agin you, that was your only lights, when you start cracking a match. And ah, we’d have an old mouth-organ or tin whistle, and the music of the old mouth-organ, or we’d be singing or something like that, you know, it kept the old horses quiet, you know.  Funny thing; we often went of for a mile and a horse ‘d be very wild and all this, then, when you got on the lonesome roads, as we call them, you’d get out the old mouth-organ or the tin whistle, or whatever it would be, and bejay, the old horses….. well, ‘twas the only company that the horses had as well; they’d be fairly breeze (?) themselves I’m sure, because when you ever hear them snarling we’d get frightened then as well because they claim when a horse snarled that it was the sign of ghosts.  But the old horse ‘d be afraid as well because we often saw an old horse, he’d run off a byway, and you’d keep travelling on hoping that he would come on; he wouldn’t be long turning, he’d be galloping after us.  They had sense as well.

J C       Did you ever hear any stories connected with people on the road in the night with horses; can you think of a story now Mikey?

M Mc  Well it happened to ourself really like; it happened a few times.  And ‘twas the coolest night I ever see; you could light a match now and just hold it up and you could just….. there wasn’t even a puff of wind, and there was a young grove of trees, young trees like, palm trees, and they were all running along the side of the road and they went for about two, three hundred yards.  And ‘twas the same as you get a stick and you run all along them like, you know, doing about fifty, sixty mile an hour; went all along the trees and shook the whole lot, right to the end.  But we got our scafflers in our hand, we use have scafflers that time and we had them.  The old horses started bolting across the road and all this, d’you know, and we held on to them.  But nothing happened, but we definitely saw that like, we heard that.  I don’t believe in ghosts myself but I definitely heard that..  I was riding a blue and white mare one time for a man that got very sick, and ‘tis a place called Bóthar na Marbh, it’s outside of Killarney, it’s a very lonesome road altogether; Bóthar na Marbh means The Walk of The Dead in English; it’s in Gaelic it is.  So I jumped on the mare’s back anyway; regard of me, I was like Lester Piggott with a horse like, no fear.  I jumped on the horse’s back and away to go and I got into town grand.  But then I coming out, with a quarter of a mile of my caravans the horse started going back like and trying to turn on the road and I kept on, kept pressing her and pressing her.  And she nearly threw me three times bolting from one side of the road the other; well, not from one side to the other; she kept to the left hand side and she kept bolting back the whole time, want to get back, and I kept her on; she was snarling and snarling.  And I kept going because I had to go out there, and she had to go as well.  But I kept going and when I got off of the horse she was…… sweat was running all over her. When I got out to the caravans I jumped straight off of the horses back and into bed.

J C       When you..... you were talking about putting the horses into the schoolyard and taking them out so the people didn’t know; do you have a name for that, when you put horses into a man’s field without his permission; is there a word for that in Gammon?

M Mc  Yeah, yeah, sarking?  He’d ask you…… all Travellers knew that word; where did you sark the horses last night; where did you sark the curras?  That’s in our own language like; where did you sark the curras.

J C       What’s curras; horses?

M Mc  Horses; or where did you sark the grais; that meant horses as well.

J C       The grai, yeah.

M Mc  If you were inside in a pub and say that like; where did you sark the curras, you know, where did you sark the grais; well the Gorgie man wouldn’t understand what you were on about then, d’you see.  There was times then when the gates would be locked in those schoolhouses and we used have to l lift the gates off the hinges and put them back on again.  (Laughter)

J C       Did they get very cross, the farmers, if you….. if they found you?

M Mc  Oh, they would if the caught you.  But I often put them in in the wintertime with the light of the tilley lamp in the night, and I’d take them out with the tilley lamp in the morning, and two dogs. 

J C       Did they used to believe, the Travellers, that the horses could see something that men couldn’t?

M Mc  Oh, yeah, oh that was definite, yeah; the horse or the dog.

J C       Or the dog?

M Mc  Yeah; d’you see, nobody knows beside the people that lived with, that lived under it.  We lived under the skies.  If you heard something in a house like, you’d a roof over your head; the only roof we had was the sky, and the bed was the ground.  If there were anything moving like, you’d have to see it, you know.  I never see nothing, but we heard quite a lot.

J C       But horses were quite sensitive to…..?

M Mc  Horses; they’d a way of snarling; a horse can snarl ten times from here to the crossroads there, but you’d know their snarl.  But they had a different way of doing it, and they’d bend as well, seem to be trying to get across the road from it like, and we’d know it, you know.  And they’d snarl like; you’d see a horse snarling, now this is when he’d be walking along or trotting you see; (cough – cough imitation) you know, it’s like a cough.  But then when he goes snarling then like, when he sees something, it’d be a long snarl; (imitation) that kind of way, ‘twould be longer than that again.   And you’d find a horse sweating.  

…… I got it in Tralee, The Bullring they called it because there was an awful lot of them in Birmingham that time, The Bullring, so they called it The Bullring in Tralee, Mitchell’s Crescent was the name of it, but all the Travellers christened it The Bullring over such a lot of them working in Birmingham.  So we’d be all playing cards inside and jakers, all of a sudden five or six fellers laid the table and away to go; you’d have to push in your chairs to leave your horses through the front door, out through the back door and to the farm in the back of it.  (Laughter)  It’s still going on.  There was eleven owners for the farm in twelve years, now they left altogether, they owned it now. (Laughter)  Some twenty, thirty acres there; they left it to them because ‘tis no good no matter what we did.  Oh, you had to pull the chairs in, the tables in, leave the horses pass by out through the house.  (Laughter)

J C       The story you told Mikey some time ago, and we got a bad recording of it, and I can’t remember it at all, about Danny Sheridan and the blind horse; d’you remember that at all?

M Mc  What was that one about now?   Yeah.  There’d be what they call a scum like comes over a horses eyes; ‘twould come from a very dark stable if it was kept in now like.  Sometime it come with old age.  And you’d break sugar like, fine, very fine, you know, and you’d blow the sugar into their eyes like that and ‘twould knock off the scum like, the crust.  You wouldn’t want to break the sugar too fine, you know, and you’d blow it into their eyes, ‘twould knock the scum off of their eyes.  Ah, the Travellers had several cures for horses.  Is that the one you mean?

J C       That’s the one. Who did you learn about horses from; did you learn from one person?

M Mc  Oh no, from everybody, from everybody.  You’d hear….. there’s none of the old folk going now like; no matter how clever they were, the old men, and they were clever about horses, you never see them going to a vet like, or anything like that, about horses.   But no matter how clever they were, they were always learning; there was a man always tells them a different one; there was another man always knew more, and that’s where we got the experience from.  You’d spavines, you’d string halts, you’ve splints, and you’d so many diseases in horses like; they could cure the most of them barring spavines.

J C       What is spavines, could you…..?

M Mc  Well, that’s a hard working horse and they get a lump on the inside of his hocks; you’d always see a very kind horse with a spavine or two spavines; they’re better off with two than one because they wouldn’t go lame then like, if they had one they’d be going lame with it; well, they go lame for a while then they straighten up.  But any one with spavines is always very kind, ‘cause that’s what put them there like.  Then you’d the string halts, that’s a horse‘d be lifting the hind legs up, you know.  But that’d go away again after a while.

J C       What causes that Mikey, d’you know?

M Mc  String halts, well, it’d be the cause of a low cart on a horse, and the back of the cart‘d be hitting his heels and he’d get a string halt over it, and when you put him under a high car then he’d do the very same thing.  You’d splints than, splints came by breeding; that was a big knob in the inside of their front leg, a splint.  Sometimes you could burst it, more times you couldn’t.  You’d leymanitis, you’d farcy, you’d dropsy; there was dropsy and farcy now, they couldn’t be cured.

J C       I’ll tell you what Mikey………….  (switch off)

Now did you learn from one man in particular; I know you learned from everybody and you picked up here and there, but was there one person who took you aside to start with to teach you about horses, or what?

M Mc  Oh, I’d always be listening behind my father’s back; he knew a lot.  But as I say, they were always looking for more information, and they got it, and I be listening behind my father’s back, and when he’d forget I’d….. as I say about a child, he never forgets when he hears something.  Really like, they all had different cures, but it all amounted to the one thing like you take in headaches; get a headache and you take Anadins or take Aspros, both of them would take it away.  But I would always listen; I was always at my father’s side like, and then they’d be talking, there was the big conversation inside in pubs like, apart from singing now, apart from singing now, apart from storytelling; then they’d get into horse dealing, they’d get into all about diseases, and there’d be some of them telling a load of bloody lies, that they cured things that couldn’t be cured at all; and who knows, but they might have did it, but the other man wouldn’t believe it, d’you know.  ‘Twas always a challenge with them about horses; ‘twas a challenge about them going out there and getting a horse and looking at his teeth and disputing one another about maybe three months, of three months maybe, they’d be arguing about three months between seven years of age; they’d say, “He’s not a full seven yet and they’d find out the day of the month he was born, they’d find out, they could see that gap in his teeth, they’d have it three months off.  Ah, they were clever men, d’you know, very clever men.  ‘Cause you’d see the yearling there now, an then ‘twould come two year old; they’d know that; then ‘twould be time for shedding the teeth, that’d be the two front teeth dropped; then ‘twould be rising three year old; then ‘twould be four year old like, the teeth wouldn’t be properly full then; then ‘twould be five year old, ‘twould drop the bridle tooth.  They’d know all them things; then they’d come six year old, and they’d see all the teeth’d be full with a level mouth, right across, be all level; hat’s how I know a six year old.  Then when it come to the seven year old like, the teeth’d be a bit longer, eighth of an inch but you’d see it.  Past seven then, ‘twas hard to know when they passed seven; you’d have a good idea like, but you’re not dead on after seven.

J C       You’d know it was passed seven?

M Mc  But after seven ‘twas hard to tell then; we’d have a rough idea like, you’d say, Ah, she’s eight or nine year old, or she could be ten year old, ‘Cause the teeth never moves until they be getting old, until they lose them altogether, and losing their cutting, for they call it.  But ‘tis from the old folk, the old men, you’d be listening to the old men al chatting about that like.

J C       Was there any jealousy among….. about….. was there any reluctance to give information?

M Mc  Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh jay, there was old Travelling men went to the grave and they’d cures and they wouldn’t tell nobody, no, they went to the grave that way, they had them and they wouldn’t tell nobody; they’d do it theirself but they’d have to have it away in a quiet place, they wouldn’t tell nobody; they took it to the grave with them.  ‘Cause I had an old pony and there must be thirty horse dealers on the ground, and she’d what they call the bafter strangles (te) and them strangles‘d come out through every bit of her body; and I reared the old pony; the wasn’t old, she was only four year old.  So there was a big horse dealer, they’re all dead and gone now; Jim Heggarty, God have mercy on him, he was a great friend of mine.  Jim said, “I think that old pony’s going to hit it”, you know, that she was going to hit the dust like, going to die.  Ah, sad, ‘cause we reared her.  So there was an old man, and he was down in the end altogether, Old Sheridan was his name, Old Sheridan they used to call him.  And he said, “Go down”, he said, “and call Old Sheridan”, he said, “and buy him a couple of pints”, he said, “and tell him”, he said, “what you told me”.  Jay, I went down to Old Sheridan and I bought him a pint anyway; Dan was his name, “Oh yeah Dan”, and all this crack.  “Dan”, say I, “I’ve an old pony up there and we reared her”, said I, “and she’s going to hit the dust, she’s going to die like; is there anything you can do for her?”

“Is that the yellow and white pony I see”, says he?

“Yes”, says I.

He said, “She’s what they call the bafter strangles”, he said, “and it’ll kill her.  See”, he said, “she’s getting no breathing ‘cause all her nostrils are blocked”, he said; “her throat’ll be next”, he said, yeah.  “Buy me another pint”, he said, “and I’ll see what I’ll do”.

I bought him another pint; I’d all the pints in the bloody pub. 

But he told me the following morning, he said, “Go away and get a brown stone”, whatever the meaning was a brown stone.

He says, “Get me an old bath”, and I got an old bath.

He says, “Go down to the chemist”, he said, “and get a pound of dry sulphur”, and I got it.

He said, “Redden the stone now, in the fire”, a round, brown stone.  And I reddened it in the fire.

He told me, “Tie the pony to a telegraph pole that was there”, in the way the wind was coming agin her, and he put the bath in the way the wind was going like, and the brown stone inside in it, and he used catch the sulphur like, he know how to time it; I’d have killed her; he know how to time her, know the time to take it away, and he cleaned her and he saved her life.  But ‘twas timing that did it. 

He told me after, he said, “If you had to put that extra bit”, he said, “and that extra bit of strong smoke”, he said, you’d have killed her as well”, says he.  But how he timed her and timed her and timed her, and the old man was there for two solid hours; he cleaned her all out.  She lay down and she slept for a week nearly, the old pony.

J C       Was there any superstition about a man who told you the secrets of horses losing them himself?

M Mc  They didn’t; if they told you, the old men, if they told you they didn’t believe in their own cures any more than, ‘cause as I said a while ago about that dropsy now, and farcy, they’d cure that in a certain part of Ireland, and when they’d cure it an animal in that parish ‘d die after, so they give it up, they didn’t cure any more.  That was back in the west of Dingle.

J C       How’s that?

M Mc  They cured dropsy, that couldn’t be cured in a horse, all the vets in the world couldn’t cure it.  Well farcy like, and they used cure it back in the west of Dingle where they used to speak all Gaelic.  But they used to bring them there from all parts of Ireland then, back there, and they used cure the horses, but if they did, even when the horse’d be gone away, another animal’d die in the parish, a cow would die or something’d die, so they never did it no more then, they give it up altogether.

J C       Do you know why that is Mikey, what it does to another animal to cure?

M Mc  In our people ‘twas very unlucky to cure a dying beast, ‘cause it happened in a few occasions and something‘d happen other animals or something’d happen one of the kids or something, you know.  Really they never liked to put on that pressure too much; they’d say, “Leave here go”, you know.  I remember my daughter getting knocked down one time; Kathleen; and I’d a very valuable filly, very valuable; I’d a lot of horses and she was the best one I had.  And she was in a coma, she was unconscious that time, two months, and the morning that the filly got killed; it took her about two hours to die; she got with the railings like, and all her guts came out on the road, you know; very valuable filly.  And during the time that filly was dying I was speaking to a woman; she was telling me the same thing; that her brother’s wife was dying in Dublin, and he brought the mare across from Fishguard to get her horsed, what we call in foal (te) in England; very valuable blood mare.  And she got off of the boat and she ran away, got killed, the mare that he brought over to England, very valuable mare. And he didn’t worry about the mare, he rang back his wife to Dublin, and she was sitting up having a cup of tea.  So the same thing happened to my Kathleen; while my pony was dying Kathleen was coming around in a hospital in Mile End.  So I had a good swap.

J C       Can I just ask you about this thing; we never heard of this at all; about an animal dying?

M Mc  Oh, that’s the truth to all Travelling People, even to a dog; no matter how precious a dog was, anything like that, when a dog get killed they pay no heed on it, they just catch it and chuck it away, although ‘twas alive again they wouldn’t take five hundred pound for it.  No; never lonesome after a dog or anything like that.

J C       But did you ever hear of anybody actually killing an animal to save another animal or to save a human being?

M Mc  Oh, we killed horses ourselves because there’d be nobody around to shoot ‘em.

J C       No, I mean, you know, this thing about if a horse is dying……. If you cure a horse that is dying, you say another animal will die in its place; did you ever hear of anybody killing an animal to save something else at all?

M Mc  No, no, no, I never heard tell of that.  But a horse now, if he broke his leg we’ll say they were miles away from vets or police, guards we’ll say, anybody that’d shoot it, there was men among us used kill them that time, take them out of pain; we couldn’t bear to see a horse suffering or an animal suffering, you know.  We’d do our best; we couldn’t see ‘em suffering ‘cause animals….. we were kind of reared up with animals.

J C       Would you say in general Travellers were kind to animals?

M Mc  Oh yeah, oh yeah, they were their life sure, animals was; we were kind of reared up together.  Horses was Travelling Men’s life, still are; they never stopped talking about horses.  There’s very rich Travelling People now, such as Simey there now, he bought three yesterday.  He wouldn’t go in to catch one, he just carrying on the old tradition all the time. This man here of this car sales, he owns this one here as well, that one in there look; well, he keeps his horses as well; he’s going to the trotting match now Sunday.   They want me driving one next Sunday for them.  Yeah.

J C       Are you going to?

M Mc  Yeah, yeah.

J C       Where about?

M Mc  Out in Romford.

J C       Can we come and watch you?

M Mc  Yeah, yes, of course man.  If she’s any good I’ll have her on about thirty two mile an hour, if she’s on it.  (Laughter)  I’ll show them how to drive a horse.

J C       Can you name for us Mikey, the fairs back in Ireland that were specifically connected with horses?

M Mc  Oh, all fairs in Ireland; you’ll say Puck Fair, Ballinasloe, Cahermee, Spancil Hill; they were all the main fairs.

J C       For horses?

M Mc  Yeah; but they were all the big ones, that’s where they come from Holland, they come from Germany, come from America, England, all parts of England, but they go to Cahermee; that’s where the best horses in the world came out of, Cahermee, ‘tis only a village.  But they were the best bred horses in Ireland or in the world.  You’d have Ballinasloe, yeah, the best horse in the world came out of Ballinasloe.   You’d the Agadan Prince owned one, all them, they were all bred in Ballinasloe, you’d all those famous horses, they all came from Ballinasloe, the famous horses of the world; they’d be all bloodstock.  But you’d the ordinary common fairs then like, you’d Dingle, you’d Killarney, you’d Cahersiveen, you had sixth of August, eighth of May, you’d all that.  To me ‘twas like an Old Moore’s Almanac, I could tell you every fair without looking at any almanac or anything like that; knew every fair that was in Ireland every day; ‘twas my life like, ‘twas my business or trade, whatever you’d like to call it.  But you’d the fifteenth of August in Kenmare, you’d the eighth of July, you’d that in Killarney, you’d the other one the eighth of May, you’d the eighth of May in Anascaul Fair they called it, you’d the sixth of May in Dingle, you’d the first of November in Tralee, you’d the second of November in Castleisland and you’d the twenty ninth of June at Abbeyfeile, you could carry on like that like, you’d all fairs in between.

J C       And sometime we’d like to go through the fairs with you and if you could give us the date, but not necessarily now.  Travellers seem to us anyway, to go for a certain type of horse now, like the piebald, we would always recognise it as a favourite Travellers horse; is that right?

M Mc  Yeah, yeah.  Well that was their own horses; that’s the horse they keep for theirself, ‘cause you’d see them in a dark night when you were sarking them.  (Laughter)  But the ordinary horse, d’you see, they were the horses you’d buy to sell again, that’s the nackers like, you’d send them to Holland then, you’d send them to France.  You’d Ballinoe, that was outside Limerick, for the bad ponies and all that, you know.  But that’s why ‘twas number one question one time on the radio back in Ireland; “Why do a Gypsy keep a piebald horse?  ‘Twas a bust conductor asked me and I coming up along.  I didn’t know what answer to give him.  He said, “To pull his caravan I suppose”, and it came up. (Laughter)

J C       Are there any other type of horses that the Travellers favour for themselves?

M Mc  There was; the palominos.  Travellers always have a good stock for theirself, always.  As the old man said, “I don’t keep the best, I sell them”, he said.  They had old mares, what we call, that’s the old mares for pulling the wagons; well they’d be our heavy mares, they’d be over fifteen hands, some of them’d be sixteen, but they were the ones they depended their life on; because there might be a caravan going along and she’d under….. and there might be eight or nine kids inside in it, and you really want a horse that you can trust for that.  Well you wouldn’t buy that mare for no money, no money at all, ‘cause the wife’d be driving her.  And when a lot of them went, they were getting off of the road, the old men; well they wouldn’t sell them horses to another man to use them; they made sure and they sold them to be slaughtered, they wouldn’t like to see anybody else driving them.  But that was their job, just pulling the caravan then from place to place.  They knew their old caravan like, the man or the wife that owned the caravan, they knew it theirself.  If the man was never there the woman’d put her under the wagon and all the kids’d get in; she’d pull up when she want to pull up, she’d go on when she want to go on.  They were kind of reared with us.  They’d know….. we had old horses used to come back home in the morning, ah, they’d jump out of the field theirself and they’d come back when they’d have enough ate.  (Laughter)  When they’d be hungry they’d jump in over it; when they’d enough ate they’d jump back out again.  (Laughter)  Yeah.

J C       Were they….. would you say horses in general were clever, are they clever animals?

M Mc  Very clever, very clever altogether.  But we often sold old ponies we’d reared there, we sold them to farmers; they wouldn’t do anything with the farmer.   An old farmer told us one time, “I couldn’t get him to move”, he said, “he saw a horse and caravan passing the road”, he said, “below”, he said, “and away with him”, he said, “after it”.  (Laughter)  But they were, they were very clever.  But we knew them like, and they knew us.  When you’d be reared with something ‘tis, I don’t know, we could nearly talk to them.  It’s like the old dogs was reared with us like, we could nearly speak to them, you know.

J C       Who was the best horseman you’ve ever known, a man working with horses?

M Mc  Oh, the Sheridans was the top men of Ireland, they were the top men.  You’d the Cashs, they came from Kildare, they were all top men again at horses; they were the big exporters.  But the Sheridans was the best vets; they couldn’t write their name but there was no vet could tell them anything, not a vet.  They were trained in Oxford College, they were trained all over the world, but they were no good to the Sheridans; they knew too much; they’d only laugh at the vet; make a joke of him.  The vet often ordered a horse to be put down; they’d only and make a laugh of him.  Jakers, what.  In their eyes the vet knew nothing.  I don’t think he did comparing to them like.

P Mc   Did Travellers do their own….. were there travelling blacksmiths?

M Mc  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m one.

P Mc   Yeah?

M Mc  Yeah, professional, yeah. 

P Mc   Shoe horses?

M Mc  Yeah, make ‘em and all, yeah.  They’d sooner shoe them theirself than leave a blacksmith shoe them because they knew the ins and all, they knew where they wanted to squeeze a shoe and where to leave it low and where to leave it high to bring the horses hoof straight, d’you know.  They reminds me of nothing on those car salesmen now, touching up those cars and trying to sell them.  (Laughter)  They’d a special; spray, and they’d go into the chemist and they’d get it and where there’d be any grey hairs like, that’d come from old age, jay, they’d dye her all over man.  They could clean up the teeth and bring them down right and make a six year old out of her.  (Laughter)

J C       Would you tell us that one Mikey; the whole thing of going through all the things they did with the horses?

M Mc  Oh dear; I’d be telling you the next thirty years. (Laughter)

J C       We’ll be round for the next thirty years Mikey.

M Mc  Is there one man….. you say the Sheridans; is there one man that you would say had all the old cures, lots and lots of the old cures; one man in particular?

M Mc  They all had them, but they had them in different styles.  Like you get half a dozen of mechanics at an engine; they’d all have different ways of doing it.  They had them; each one of them knew as much as the other; some of them knew a bit more, ‘d’you know.  But then, the old feller, he wouldn’t believe nothing; he’d sooner his own methods.

J C       How about the Gorgies, would the Gorgies always go to Travellers for cures, or what?

M Mc  Mostly, mostly.  You’d easy know when the Gorgie come to the Travelling Man because the vet’d be after failing, ‘cause that’s the first man the Gorgie go to, and the Travelling Man’d say that to him; he’d say, “What vet were you at last?” ‘cause he’d know, ‘cause he’d know where he’d been again you see, and he’d say, “Tell the truth, weren’t you at a vet; he’d cut him out, didn’t he,; you might as well tell me the truth”, they’d tell you the truth.  Well then it went to the time then like, that the Gorgies used to go to the Travelling Men to buy their horses for them, you know, they’d be on the Travelling men there where the vets’d be; they’d soon bring out the old Travelling men.  They’d come out and they’d tell them the gospel truth, that there was a spavine wrong, she was over five year old, six year old, whatever, he’d tell them the truth because that was their living, there was no bluff there like, or nothing like that.  You couldn’t buy them either, ‘cause he might be buying a horse for that on the next year again; he’d try them out, do everything, take him away for an hour maybe, then bring him back; he’d say, “Everything is all; right; such and such a thing wrong”, thing like that, you know.  ‘Cause if you bought a wrong horse for a man in a big parish, that’d go through all the whole parish, and ‘twould go from that parish on to the next one, so he had to be dead on with them like.  And them old men was.

J C       You mentioned before, a guinea hunter Mikey; could you tell us about what the guinea hunter does?

M Mc  Well you’d get up in the morning, say a fair, and you’d be working, and that was a pound and a penny, you’d always give us a pound; a pound and a shilling I mean.  So you’d buy the horse; you’d have to be spot on like, as I say, like a car salesman; you’d have to be spot on, you’d have to know the value of tem; you’d want to know the height you’re buying and who you’re buying it for.  And there’d be some men that’d be buying horses over fourteen hands like, we’ll say; there’d be more for them then that’d be buying horses for Belgium, they’d be over fifteen and they’d have to be under seven years of age.  So you’d have to be spot on like, not be making a fool of yourself.  Then you’d have to buy them in a way that you’d get your profit and they’d get their profit.  Ah, the men knew you then; if you were that good, you’d buy horses through the country and you’d ring them through the phone and you’d tell them what you’d bought, such a height, such an age and such a description, all this,  but they’d take your word, they’d come and pick them up.

J C       So you’d be middle man, like a middle man between the seller and the buyer?

M Mc  Yeah, yeah, in fact the big man, he never used do nothing, just sit in his car or just walk around town with his cheque book, that was all.  No, we were the middle men, we uses do all the dirty work.

J C       Did you do that; guinea hunting?

M Mc  Yeah, yeah.

J C       How long is it since it all stopped Mikey, or…… I know it still goes on, but since it stopped in a big way?

M Mc  Oh it must be twenty years, twenty five years; twenty years anyway.  There were still horse lorries on the road when we were still doing it because they were used to our methods and we were used to theirs; they knew their horses ‘d be better looked after, all that.  ‘it’s kind of ourself got tired of it ‘cause the car started coming into business then; instead of travelling all night we’d be there in an hour, d’you see.  And when we’d be have to leave our trailers or wagons, whatever we’d have, in the middle of the night so we could leave at six o’clock in the morning, could have a good nights sleep.  We’d go on there with a car, and then the trains, that’s for taking horses.  You’d the horse lorries then, and ‘twas easier and ‘twas better.  It done a lot of people out of work like, but we still survived, we still got our living.

J C       If it all came back tomorrow Mikey, would you be glad or sorry?

M Mc  Oh yeah, oh, I’d love top be droving again, I would, yeah.  But the young people’d die with the hunger today, they wouldn’t know nothing.  (laughter)  Jakers, what.  I wouldn’t like to put one of them into a field where there’s a load of wild horses and, “Pick out the one you want”.  I know where they’d be; in the first pub.  (Laughter)   Yeah, you’d the man-eater horses, you’d the horses that’d eat you.  You have to know how to handle them.  A horse’d kill you with a kick if you didn’t know how to handle them, you see.  You’d have to go in to it in the middle of the night; you’d want to know your job.  You’d have to lasso them like the cowboys does now; you have to lasso them with ropes and everything ‘cause you couldn’t get near them other ways, they’d be going between more wicked horses; you have to be spot on the whole time like.  If you missed once he was gone because you’d have a job of catching them the second time.