“To be sure,” Patrick replied. “Over in Leinster they held a great fair once in every three years, and they had games and chariot races and horse races. People went to the fair from miles around, and the harpers and story-tellers always planned their wanderings so as to be there for the three days.”
“It must have been something like market day,” said Kathleen, who could not forget the crowd she saw at the Letterkenny market.
“There was marketing, too,” said Patrick. “It wouldn’t be Ireland without marketing. There was selling and buying of horses, sheep, and pigs, and all sorts of hand-made gold and bronze ornaments. The country was famous for her hand-crafts then; and she will be so again some day, praise be!”
“There couldn’t have been such pig markets as the one we saw yesterday,” said Danny, laughing at the thought of the hundreds of squealing pigs in the Letterkenny streets.
“I don’t know about that,” said Bee. “It took them two years to get ready for the Leinster fairs, and we go to market in Boyle twice a week.”
“I should be on my way there now, instead of sitting here talking as if I’d nothing to do,” said Patrick. “I want to see Tim Keefe about buying the heifer come Saturday. Have you any eggs to send, Bridget mavourneen? And will you go with me, Danny, my boy?”
Danny went out to help Patrick harness the mule, Mary Ellen held the creel while Kathleen counted out five score of eggs, and Bee packed ten pounds of beautiful, golden butter into the market basket.
“There, Patrick avic,” she said, as she followed him to the barn and put the basket into the trap, “bring me back a good bit of silver for my work, and a ribbon apiece for the children. I’ll have them watching for you when you come home.”
“This is the best day to sell the butter,” she said to Kathleen, as the trap disappeared down the boreen toward the road. “There’ll be people buying everything you can name, from butter and eggs to needles and pins and imitation gold chains, at the Wednesday market.”
“What will they buy in the Saturday market?” asked the child.