Country Living

A day when Tuam Races put paid to the innocence of a young punter

Published

2 years ago

July 29, 2021

The date was Friday, July 31, 1970, and the race was the Carling Black Label Maiden Plate with Lucky in Love, ridden by P. Sullivan just edging it from None Better with M. Kennedy on the saddle. The Tuam Races drew large crowds for their one big day of the year before the reins were pulled in 1973. Photo researched by Joe O’Shaughnessy.

Country Living with Francis Farragher

I couldn’t even remotely claim to have any knowledge of the gee-gees although here and there I’d have the odd little flutter on a horse, and of late, Pateen has been kind enough to me with a couple of good wins across the water. Pateen of course is called after Galway three-in-a-row start, Pat or ‘Pateen’ Donellan, with his original owner, the late Michael Corcoran of solid Dunmore stock.

My childhood memory of horses probably relates to that of many people of a certain generation where the horse – and indeed the donkey as well – were the mainstays of farming life and especially for ageing farmers who just had no interest whatsoever in the purchase of a second-hand or a rebuilt Massey Ferguson. (Ruanes of Athenry were the great specialists of the time in rebuilt Masseys).

We owned the most imperious of a black gelding, his only concession to colour contrast being a white face, and whose pulling power was lauded across the village. But he was never an animal to be taken for granted and especially during the later summer season when the quills or horse flies could provoke him into a sudden and sometimes violent enough tantrum. Only my father could handle him with a mixture of firmness and platitudes but our equine warrior still managed to overturn a load or two of oats or hay when negotiating dodgy gaps that bit too impatiently.

His ageing demise and subsequent sale coincided with my journey into teenage years and that loss of childhood innocence when the realisation strikes that life is transient, made all the more poignant by the fact that it coincided with the gradual decline of my father as he slipped into the 70s and the sunset years of life.

The Galway Races though were always special even if we didn’t venture into Ballybrit that much as a family, as invariably there was always hay to be saved, although a ‘concession’ would often be made in terms of calling into a neighbour’s house with a television to watch The Hurdle or The Plate.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App

Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.

Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.

Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.

Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.

Up Next

Teacher has sights set on passing ultimate Ironman test

Don't Miss

Cool the jets – let’s give Galway sideline supremos a fair hearing

Country Living

All a long way removed from cautions over noxious weeds

Published

3 days ago

June 8, 2023

Francis Farragher

More innocent times: A scene at a fair day in the late-1950s-early-1960s as a young Garda does his rounds.

Country Living with Francis Farragher

Maybe, I’m a bit old-fashioned, but back the years we were always given the standard family advice of the time – ‘Not to be cheeky, to show respect for older people, and to do whatever a Guard would tell you’.

Those little life mantras didn’t seem to do us any harm as we grew up in a rural setting which was almost completely crime free.

Our local guard was based in the nearby village of Barnaderg – a man by the name of Martin Lyster RIP – who was the quintessential rural Garda: he knew everything that was going on and if at all possible he would advise rather than prosecute.

There was a sense of alarm one summer’s day when he called to my father about what we all thought must have a very serious issue.

The purpose of his advisory visit was to gently remind my father that one of his fields near the road had a few thistles too many per square yard while a couple of other intruders had ‘moved in’ also, such as ragworts and docks.

It was a very serious but friendly conversation and as I kept an ‘ear out’ for what was going on, I could hear the guard mentioning the Noxious Weeds Act, and the need for us to comply with the law.

Sure enough, that evening the scythes were lined up – one or two of them borrowed from the neighbours – so father and sons spent the best part of the following few days mowing down the noxious weeds.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App

Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.

Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.

Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.

Country Living

A time to stay dry as EU seeks to rewet farmlands

Published

1 week ago

June 1, 2023

Francis Farragher

Rewetting: Trouble coming down the drains.

Country Living with Francis Farragher

For most of us who grew up on family farms back through the decades, it could seem to be a very mixed bag. There were always ‘jobs’ to be done like looking at the cattle located a few miles away on a fine summer’s evening when a game of football would seem a lot more attractive.

There were the tougher jobs like thinnowing beet or turnips; footing turf for a day; or that task I hated with a vengeance – picking stones from the meadow fields. I could never quite figure out as a young lad why stones had to be picked almost every year – it was as if they grew out of the soil!

For all that, the quality of life was quite good for most of us out the country, even during the more straitened times of the 1960s, when in fairness, there was always healthy food on the table but very little by way of the clang of silver in your pocket.

In general, it was a time when farms were less intensive but in the ‘pre-dole days’, it still remains something of a mystery to me how families managed to rear and educate quite large ‘clutches’ of children.

There was of a course a whole culture of self-sufficiency on most farms with the hens supplying the eggs that provided food for the table and the ‘gugs’ also went a long way to paying for the groceries when the ‘travelling shop’ called once a week. We used to call him the ‘eggler’ – in my childhood days, a man called Christy Mannion from Barnaderg whose Wednesday visit to our house was almost akin to a Santa Claus arrival every week.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App

Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.

Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.

Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.

Country Living

Getting a small bit spooked as the machines get smarter

Published

1 month ago

May 11, 2023

Francis Farragher

Country Living with Francis Farragher

WE all get attached . . . nay, even dependent . . . on our technology devices, most notably the mobile phone, but here and there the technology does spook me a bit.

A couple of weeks ago, as I sat into my car one evening as I prepared to head for the hills, I began to sing a verse or two of the Beatles classic ‘Yesterday’.

The Apple CarPlay system was on in my car and I had scarcely completed the first verse of the song when lo and behold what started to play on the speakers but of one Paul McCartney with the ‘real thing’.

Now, some of my technology nerd acquaintances will come up with a simple explanation as to why this happened but it surely wasn’t a coincidence.

There are times too when I think I’m paranoid, or maybe not, when after certain conversations have taken place about anything from cars to canisters, an ad flashes across my iPhone about the topic we’d just been discussing.

And now, the latest buzz words in the whole chain of technology advancement are Artificial Intelligence or AI, which I have to admit is just a little bit above my basic level of competency or understanding of high-tech jargon.

Being of country stock, the AI initials always meant only one thing back the years – artificial insemination – when the man with the straws of bull semen would arrive on the farm to impregnate cows in what had to be a very non-pleasurable experience for all concerned.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App

Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.

Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.

Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.