On a beautiful sunny Tuesday Grandad took us to the Galbally Horse Fair which was very busy and lively with horses, ponies, donkeys and other livestock – we saw puppies, chickens and even a litter of piglets!

We asked Grandad about the Fair and this is what he told us:

“Before there were Marts all the cattle were sold in villages like that. Ballylanders had its own fair. You’d bring the cattle down and put them in a place in the village for sale. Everyone had their own little corner. We’d have our cattle outside the Kingdom Bar and the Cashins would have theirs outside the Premier. We used to walk them down from the farm at Carraturk.

“When the Marts opened up people started using them and now the cattle get sold by auction. You don’t have to be as good a judge of your own cattle because the auctioneer sets the price.

“The Galbally Fair was for cattle and everything one time. It nearly died out when people started using the Marts. It would have died out altogether except that about ten years ago on market day two people came in to the square, one man had a chicken and sold it to the other – this kept the rights to the market going and it’s built back up since then into a big annual fair.”