Origin: Fair of Turloughmore

Subject: Fair of Turloughmore, background to
From: Big Tim
Date: 09 Jul 01 - 01:42 PM

Does anyone have the historical background to this haunting trad Irish ballad. I've just recently acquired the recording by Patrick Galvin (thank you again Dita). I seem to recall that I read somewhere that it refers to an incident during the "Tithe War" in 1831 (protests about tithes, the tax on the whole community for the sole upkeep of the established Church of Ireland). O'Lochlainn calls it, "The Sorrowful Lament for Callaghan, Greally and Mullen- killed at the fair of Turloughmore". And which Turloughmore is it, Clare or Galway?

Subject: RE: Help: Fair of Turloughmore, background to
From: Wolfgang
Date: 10 Jul 01 - 08:19 AM

Big Tim,

if ever you intend to make a book out of all that background information on songs you collect I'll buy it. The songs come much more alive for me if I read about the background.

As usual I have no local information but a tiny bit I found on the web:

Fair towns of Ireland, 1834 only lists Turloughmore in Clare as a fair town.

And a 'County Clare in 1845' site (http://www.clareweb.com/eolas/coclare/history/gazclare.htm) gives the dates of the Turloughmore fair as follows: Turloughmore, June 8, Sept. 29, and Dec. 12.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: Help: Fair of Turloughmore, background to
From: Big Tim
Date: 10 Jul 01 - 11:51 AM

W: thanks again. Are you interested in the lyrics, or do you already have them?

Subject: RE: Help: Fair of Turloughmore, background to
From: Fiolar
Date: 10 Jul 01 - 02:31 PM

Don't know the lyrics but according to my information Turloughmore is in County Galway, about 17 kilometres south of Tuam on the N63 road.

Subject: RE: Help: Fair of Turloughmore, background to
From: Wolfgang
Date: 11 Jul 01 - 03:55 AM

Thanks, but I have the lyrics. They are in Galvin's book (and in the DT).

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: Help: Fair of Turloughmore, background to
From: Big Tim
Date: 11 Jul 01 - 04:23 AM

Fiolar: there is also a place called Turloughnore in Clare north of Ennis and west of Gort (in Galway). It is tiny. If we knew which one it was at least it would place the song geographically.

Subject: RE: Help: Fair of Turloughmore, background to
From: Big Tim
Date: 11 Jul 01 - 12:54 PM

That should of course be Turloughmore. On an unrelated topic - anyone interested on a previous thread on Sean Hogan (old IRA) I got hold of Martin O'Dwyer's Biographical Dictionary of Tipperary, " he [Hogan] returned to work on his farm in Donohill but after a while sold it and moved to Dublin and started up a vegetable farm. He later married and had a son. Towards the end of his life Sean suffered from very poor health and lived on his own in a tenement flat on North Great george's Street in Dublin. he died aged 68 on Christmas Eve 1968. His remains were taken back to Tipperary and he is buried in St Michael's Cemetery, Tipperary Town". RIP.

Subject: RE: Help: Fair of Turloughmore, background to
From: Big Tim
Date: 10 Jul 03 - 03:37 PM

A further search locates Turloughmore in Co. Galway about 12 miles N.E. of Galway City, in the Parish of Lackagh. Apparently the Fair there was a famous one, where bloody faction-fights often took place and at which a lot of home brew was taken. So the deaths may have been the result of a (tribal) faction-fight or a protest against tithes.

Could the line "it was Brew that ordered us to fire" be a reference to strong drink rather than a personal name?

Subject: RE: Help: Fair of Turloughmore, background to
From: Big Tim
Date: 29 Jul 03 - 03:24 PM

The following info is based on contemporary reports, and newspaper accounts from the "Tuam Herald", courtesy of Galway County Libraries, Galway City,                                             

There were two Fairs at Turloughmore: 1 August (Horse Fair) and 18 September (Sheep Fair). The fatal incident of the ballad took place on 1 August 1843. It was the result of a Faction Fight, not a political protest.                                                

There had been "riots" during the day, the police intervened, the rioters then turned on the police with sticks and stones, at first the police replied in kind, then with gunfire, and John Callaghan, from Moycullen, about 20 miles west, across Lough Corrib,was badly wounded. His father came and tried to carry him home but he died in Galway (town) on 4 August.

A young man from Claremorris, named "Grealy", died on 11 August, from a gun shot wound to the hip received at the Fair.

The man who had ordered the police to open fire, Thomkins Brew, who was the local Resident Magistrate, was suspended from his post and ordered to stand trial for murder after a coroner's inquest. However he was himself shot dead soon after, by an unknown killer or killers.

A few local men served shortish prison terms for their part in the riots. After the fatalaties both (Catholic) church and government clamped down on Faction Faction and it faded away considerably, though some Faction Fighting survived into the early 1900s.

Subject: RE: Help: Fair of Turloughmore, background to
From: GUEST,John Moulden
Date: 29 Jul 03 - 05:45 PM

Curiously, I'm pretty sure there is no surviving print of this ballad though Colm O'Lochlain claimed that the words came from ballad sheets and the version printed by the Cuala Press. Certainly there is no print in Colm's own collection which is in University College Dublin and none in those of the other Dublin Libraries for whose collections of ballad sheets I have made a database.

Subject: RE: Help: Fair of Turloughmore, background to
From: Big Tim
Date: 30 Jul 03 - 03:55 AM

Wherever it came from, it's a beautiful song: one of my all-time favourites. I'm glad to have finally traced some of the story behind the song.

The only recording that I have heard is Patrick Galvin's, which is now over 40 years old. Anyone know of any other recordings?

Subject: RE: Origin: Fair of Turloughmore
From: MartinRyan
Date: 18 Aug 11 - 06:25 AM

Click here to hear the recording Big Tim mentioned by Patrick Galvin.

Regards

Subject: sean hogan
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 19 - 08:45 AM

Subject: RE: Origin: Fair of Turloughmore
From: GUEST,John Moulden
Date: 10 Apr 19 - 09:35 AM

There is evidence that Thomas Davis had a copy of such a ballad sheet but no trace of it remains except for his use of it in the Ballad Poetry of Ireland, from which, it seems, all other uses stem.