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Irish farming and history on dvd.

1920s Irish hiring fairs


Irish hiring fairs  had become well established by the eighteenth century. Hiring fairs where places young people looking for work and would gather in the centre of the town. Wealthier farmers found their farm hands for the next few months at these hiring fairs.


This dvd "The hiring fairs in Ireland" Based on the memories of Sam King, Maggie Faulkner and Jim McAuley who attended such hiring fairs in Ireland were hired themselves during the 1920s and 30s. This history dvd traces the fortunes of 16 year old Mary Mullan and her brother Jimmy who was 8 years old. Mary and Jimmy were hired for six months to a rich farmer from Co. Antrim.


A reinactment of such hiring fairs is shown in this dvd showing the farmers inspecting the children to see who would come to work at thier farm.


Tragic stories are recalled of how the parents of the hired children felt having to hiring their loved ones to pay the rent.  Also a few comical stories are told of young men taking advantage of the farmer at the hiring fairs, nostalga, heartbreak and laughter is combined in this dvd of the hiring fairs showing an intricte part of irish history.

Price: €12.00

Days of Hunger

A film following a family through the great Irish famine of 1845.  The population of Ireland in a 1841 census was given as 8.1 million people. Some believe that it could have been as high as 9 or even 10 million. The vast majority of the poor depended on one resource - the potato. One acre of land could grow enough potatoes to support a family. When a mans sons got married they would have erected a mud cabin, take a share of their father's land and start a family, that family would have subdivided again when their offspring were ready to marry so by the middle of the 19th century with the population at an alarming high rate the competition for land increased and rents rose dramatically. In the Autumn of 1845 a deadly disease struck the potatoes and the following year the crop was totally destroyed.

Price: €12.00

Wildfowling & Roughshooting In Ireland

For Centuries the Irish lakes and rough terrain have been a haven of wildfowl and game of many species.  In this video we follow the complete shooting season,  including duck,  snipe, partridge, pheasant , rabbit and vermin control. Lough Neagh,  the largest piece of inland water in the British Isles, attracts thousands of duck every year. Pochard, tufted duck, scaup and golden eye all make testing shooting. Young guns, Barry Turner and Martin Doyle shoot the Lough almost every Saturday during the shooting season,  and the viewer can look forward to a spectacle of marksmanship - be introduced to Dumper the best retrieving dog that I have ever seen, and gain much information about the Lough- a wildfowlers paradise. Occupying over 4000 acres of good shooting land in North Antrim, S and R Sporting Agencies offer shooting breaks to sporting guns from all over Europe.  We were fortunate to be invited to shoot and film on 150 acres of bog land where pheasants were almost as plentiful as the heather in which they live.  Brothers Seamus and Cathal McAleese show off their Springer's- all three dogs giving a fine performance of hunting and retrieving. On another day we travelled the six miles to the scenic Island of Rathlin where last season 10,000 red leg partridge were released.  We witness the driven beat, and with birds flying at up to sixty miles an hour, the kill rate was one in six shots - sometimes reaching one in ten. On order to preserve game on the shooting land, vermin control is as necessary as rearing birds.  The fox hunts are carried out with military precision,  with often a dozen guns taking part.  The age old practice of ferreting rabbits is also featured.

Price: €12.00
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