A certain tinge of regret - the ending of the Christmas fowl market in Kenyon Street
Popular Nenagh Guardian columnist, Patricia Feehily, here recalls the pure street theatre of the Christmas Fowl Markets staged in former days in Kenyon Street:
The advent of Christmas in the Nenagh of my childhood was heralded, not by harmonious carol singers, but by the discordant noises from gaggles of geese and rafters of turkeys echoing from the Christmas fowl market at the bottom of Barrack Street (now Kenyon Street). It may have been raucous, but it was also oddly re-assuring. At home, for most of us, it was the background music of our lives.
The market usually took place on a particular day in late November or early December and had been a feature of Nenagh town life for generations. In 1889, George H Bassett included the various markets of Nenagh in his ‘County Directories’, mentioning in particular the butter market and the large fowl market held on St Martin’s Day in Barrack Street. For what it’s worth, the fowl market in 19th century Nenagh, was toll free – unless it had the misfortune to fall on a Thursday.
To be honest, I was never at the centre of the event. But I was there by association and I can hear it still through the years – the gobbling, the hissing, the quacking and the crowing, while above the whole cacophony, the haggling rose in ritualised and time-honoured harmony. It was pure street theatre with a country flavour – straight out of a Hardy novel.
ATMOSPHERE
It had an atmosphere unparalleled by any of the ubiquitous farmers’ markets of today, with dollops of tradition, tinctures of continuity and a hint of a culture that predated Christianity, all thrown in. The traditional bloodletting of St Martin’s day was still fresh in everyone’s mind.
From early morning, the place was black with people, both buyers and sellers. Cars, horse and donkey drawn carts, trailers and even a couple of wheelbarrows were parked at various angles to the pavement in front of and across the road from the Market House, now Teach an Leinn. The parking bylaws were far off in the future and fowl discomfort was tolerated. I remember once seeing two snow white geese in individual hempen sacks, their legs obviously tied behind them. They were sitting on the pavement, their long, elegant necks protruding high above the openings at the top of the sacks, trying to maintain their dignity as best they could as they took a gander at the activities around them.
“Christmas is coming and the geese are getting fat. Please put a penny in the poor man’s hat,” one wag shouted, as I looked on in outrage. Fortunately, in those innocent times, I had never heard of foie de gras. Nevertheless, I wanted to free the doomed birds and betray my rural heritage, if that’s what it took.
By mid-morning, town dwellers and other customers could be seen walking up the street, each with a plump bird - invariably a turkey - under their arms. The birds would get a short reprieve of three weeks or so, pampered, fed and watered out in the back yard, until the axe would inevitably fall. That was the raw reality of country life, but what upset me most was the sight of townspeople colluding in the ritual. I had aspired at the time to abandon peasant life when I grew up and become a townie. But now, I wasn’t sure.
I wouldn’t mind but we kept poultry at home ourselves, mainly for our own use. Every small farm in the area had a quota of hens, ducks, geese and the essential rooster which hopped on the dunghill at daybreak and proclaimed to the world, his unbridled enthusiasm for a new day. There was something supernatural about that. The fowl were usually the remit of the farmer’s wife back then and this was how she earned her pin money. The farmer regarded it as women’s work, like housekeeping and making the dinner. The theory was supported by TW Russell MP who told a conference in Dublin in 1911 that women had “a distinct ability in this direction” – poultry production. Yet the number of women holding up plump birds by the legs to be weighed at the Nenagh fowl market each Christmas was minimal. The men seemed to take over at the opportune time, but maybe my memory is faulty.
Turkeys were not as common in the farmyard as geese. Geese were easier to raise and grazed in the fields themselves without making any demands on their owners. Most people had goose for Christmas dinner, but I knew one farmer who kept a gander, instead of an Alsatian, as a watch dog. Even the postman couldn’t put a foot inside the gate without arousing the fury of the terrorist goose. There was nothing new in that of course, Wasn’t it a goose that saved Rome from the marauding Gauls?
When he was 10-years-old, my brother decided to become an entrepreneur. He invested his post office savings in half a dozen Turkey eggs, procured from a neighbouring farmer’s wife. Even in those days, ten was a bit young for an entrepreneur, but nobody laughed, because we all knew a local man who had made a fortune out of cabbage plants before he was 15. The eggs were hatched by a broody hen who was desperate for a family of her own. She reared them well until she realised that they were too big to put under her protective wings when danger threatened, so she promptly abandoned them.
FOWL MARKET
They were all great pets and we delighted in their fowl idiosyncrasies, their fantail fantasies and the way they’d look at you quizzically when you were acting the goat. When the time came to prepare for the Christmas fowl market in Nenagh, a heavy cloud of gloom descended on us all. I prayed every night that we’d win the Sweep, so that my brother could realise his investment without having to sacrifice our feathered pets.
Turkeys, we’re told, do not vote for Christmas. But one day in late October, our turkeys – all six of them – lost their faith in the franchise and went on hunger strike instead. We were the laughing stock of the place, with the skinniest birds this side of the Mojave Desert. There was nothing we could do to entice any of them to fatten up for the looming Christmas Fowl Market in Nenagh. They spurned our tempting offers of oats and other delicacies and gobbled disdainfully in our faces, as if to say they knew what we were up and were having none of it. The only thing they’d eat were stones picked from the yard.
They weren’t stupid and they certainly weren’t bird brained. Now it turns out that turkeys are highly intelligent birds. Ours were a particularly high-brow bunch of brown turkeys with names like Terentia (after Cicero’s wife) and Henrietta, after some royal personage. There was one called Amy (Johnson), because she learned to fly at a young age, and then taught the others to do likewise. The impromptu flights which occurred in short, swift bursts into the trees or over the ditches, did nothing at all for the Christmas fattening programme and ensured the continued maintenance of their svelte figures. They made it to the fowl market anyway a few weeks later, where the Christmas spirit was already in the air and an age-old scene was being re-enacted. We could only hope that there were enough stones still stuck in their craws to make some kind of an impression on the weighing scales.
There is a threat to turkey supplies this Christmas because of the current Avian flu crisis. The birds have been taken indoors to avoid infection from wildfowl, but there’s no panic. There will be an abundance of ‘organic’ turkeys in the shop fridges. But that’s neither here nor there. Turkeys are no longer as intelligent as they were and they certainly don’t taste the same. They don’t wander curiously or purposefully around the farmyard anymore and none of them eat stones with abandon. The EU won’t even let you kill a turkey at home now. Generally, you don’t see geese grazing in the fields anymore either and nobody keeps a gander as a watchdog. The historic Christmas Fowl Market is long gone too from Barrack Street and even I, who was never a great fan, feel a certain tinge of regret for a time and a way of life that was once so much a part of this historic market town.