Cork community revive harvest festival in bid to keep parish hall open
The strange thing was, I was just about to start writing this piece and it was going to be all about our recent harvest festival held just last week.
The two subjects are intrinsically linked - the ‘Thrasher’ and the harvest - wasn’t it strange the two should collide at the one time?
When I was growing up, I must admit I had never heard of the Bartlemy Thrasher until a girl from way down in East Cork came to live around here, by way of marriage, it was a cliamhain isteach - she ‘married into’ a farm - and married well too!
She told us all about a particular kind of a wind that was well known in her native parish. During the month of September in the Garryvoe, Ladysbridge, Ballycotton and Shanagarry and surrounding areas, a gushing wind from ‘the North’ was always referred to as the Bartlemy Thrasher.
They were down in East Cork so we were north of them, thus the rustling, blustery wind came from ‘the North’.
September was traditionally the month when the two great Horse Fairs were held in Bartlemy - dating back to the 1600s. The 4th and 19th of the month were the Fair Days - or two days at either side of those to allow for Sundays and Church holidays.
Well, as the great storyteller Eamon Kelly would have said, ‘things rested so’ until this week came the news that in Kildorrery the phenomenon of the Bartlemy Thrasher was also observed and spoken about in days of yore, and that village ‘on top of the hill, bare, naked and still’ is more elevated than Bartlemy!
Anyway, nature is a fright and the vagaries of wind, rain, storms and hot and cold days are truly a mystery - isn’t it great that we still have mysteries? Sure, life would be no fun at all to be honest if we knew everything!
Talking of fun, I grew up in the 1960s when carnivals and festivals were still going strong, and all summer long these gatherings were great to break the hum-drum and mundane nature of life.
For a certain age group - those old enough to be dreaming, thinking and planning to ‘go courting’ - the Golden Age of the Showband was still very much to the fore back then. Just a few days ago, a neighbour of my vintage was leaning over the gate as he listed off The Top Hat, Majorca, Majestic, Redbarn, the Arcadia, Hi-Land, and many more Ballrooms of Romance.
This man had spent a term in London, so the Galtymore, the National, the Gresham and the Hibernian were amongst the favourite haunts of the Irish.
In an era when GAA teams had few enough ‘organised’ games in League or Championship - long before backdoors, round robins or preliminary qualifiers, local tournaments were the lifeblood of most rural GAA clubs.
Our local Parish Hall was built in 1961. Though a lot of voluntary labour went into the construction, there was still a substantial debt to be paid off. To raise the needed finance, a carnival was organised and ran successfully for about ten years from the mid-1960s.
As I said, carnivals and festivals were literally two a penny from May until August. If one peruses the entertainment pages of the Cork Examiner or the Evening Echo in those days, you will see dozens and dozens of ads for these gatherings.
We were lucky with a ‘new’ hall and dancers flocked to hear Martin Codd and the Herdsmen, The Zodiacs and many other bands.
Four-team hurling tournaments were played for sets of medals - many a good hurler never won a championship but collected silver from a local derby contest.
In truth, for us in these parts the Watergrasshill, Conna, Bridesbridge, Bartlemy and Castlelyons tournaments attracted huge crowds, especially if two ‘neighbouring teams’ got to the final.
They say every dog has his day and by the 1980s just a handful of these local week-long gatherings remained. Araglen Carnival on the Cork/Waterford/Tipperary border is still flying after 60 years of entertainment and fun.
Here, locally, the Covid pandemic and its aftermath saw the local hall struggling for footfall. The level of activity plummeted, and even when the masks came off and some semblance of normality returned, the hall was struggling for survival. The bills had still to be paid - insurance is an ever recurring necessity.
People put their collective shoulders to the wheel and vowed to keep the hall ‘open for business’. A brainstorming session came up with the idea of a Weekend Harvest Festival and committee members just went away and organised a massive range of events.
So, last weekend Bartlemy was rockin’. The idea of the festival wasn’t primarily about raising funds - though finance was needed. No, it was just getting the parish and the community active with a common purpose in mind. Boys, oh boys, did it succeed!
From the bingo on Friday until the family fun day finished up on Sunday evening, the festival was just magic with huge crowds. In fairness, the weather looked kindly on us - neither sight nor sound of the Bartlemy Thrasher.
On Saturday afternoon, I led a walking history tour around the village - I think in a distance of a few hundred yards we had around 40 things - people, buildings, events, stories and pure history to talk about. I finished with The Water Pump At Bartlemy:
I got that poem years back from both Jim Ahern and Mary Healy.
Then, on Saturday night nostalgia abounded when local showband The Zodiacs came together again to relive the light of other days. Sounding as good as they did 40 years ago, the lads were just superb on a night that brought back memories of the swinging ’60s and ’70s.
On Sunday, I was besides myself on the Village Green - in truth, the scarecrow was an uncanny resemblance of me - some locals couldn’t tell the difference!
An ‘old time’ sports featured sack races and tug o’ war. I had never before seen the event called ‘throwing the half hundred weight’ where a 56 pound solid lead ball was thrown with one hand - I managed 5ft and the winner Bertie Cuffe got a massive 15ft. People lingered around all afternoon, enjoying the music and chatting.
Yes, indeed, the Harvest Festival was a tremendous success - it’s great to be back!
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