Hay? Isn't it all silage and black plastic rolls now? Well, on this coming Sunday at Trim, Co Meath, "the glorious tradition of haymaking" will be revived as part of the Trim festival. Master haymakers, we are told in The Meath Chronicle, from near and far will display the tireless craft of cutting, turning, lapping, cocking, sugan roping and other practices most of us have never heard of, much less had a hand in. (Over in Moynalty, of course, for more than a quarter-of-a-century we have been led through the elaborate ordeal of steam threshing and much more of our past.) And in Trim they will have hay-making implements and machinery; also horses, donkeys and mules. You don't have to be a hundred years old to have memories of helping with the hay. Indeed, on small holdings, and above all on our islands off our coast, surely haymaking goes on still?
And haymaking enters a lot into poetry. Shakespeare, the country boy knew that "good hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow" and his phrase "tumbling in the hay" became the title of a book long after him. And an octogenarian recalls when he was only 10 or 12 he went camping in friendly country in Co Antrim. The weather was so bad and their tent so flimsy that they accepted the invitation of the farmer to sleep in the hayshed, not yet emptied of the previous year's crop. Neither of the boys was of a sneezing disposition or wheezy, so they had a week of warm and fragrant shelter. So big was the barn that they were able safely to cook on a primus stove. At Trim you will also get some of the fare that went with the haymaking - buttermilk, oaten bread and boiled bacon sandwiches. And there's more. The haymakers and companions will retire to a dancing deck on the banks of the Boyne where "The Haymaker's Jig" will be danced. Other musical items are listed as "Pat Murphy's Meadow" and "Trottin to the Fair". Will they have nice little open pony traps?
Shakespeare reminds of a phrase once used, according to a scholarly friend, now no more. He had an interest in, or obsession with, the diction and vocabulary of the people of Islandmagee. He was once shouted at in a hay field where he was watching when he might have been helping. "Hey, son, there's a fork standin' there thinkin' long. Pick it up and do a bit of work." A fork thinkin' long? "Pure Shakespearean English", he said, and quoted a phrase of someone "thinking long thoughts". Haymaking and erudition.