Farmers Day Out: 1841 v 2012

3rd Dec 2012

Even though Christmas adverts from panicking department stores and flashy phone networks started in mid-October this Saturday sees the ‘official’ start to the Christmas season with the Feast of the Immaculate Conception aka ‘Farmer’s Day Out’. This is traditionally the day that our country cousins down tools and put their grant application forms to one side as they head for the big towns and cities across the island with their families.

Yerra tiz dat Kinsale road roundabout, sure twould frighten the life outtaya

Online shopping and bland suburban shopping centres may have taken some of the business away from shops in Cork city centre but like returning swallows you’ll still spot loads of country heads in town. If a group of shoppers ticks four out of five of these criteria then you’ll know they’re farmers:

1. Glowing red faces that might indicate severe cholesterol issues.

2. Rushing everywhere (cattle have to be fed and cows have to be milked by 5pm)

3. At least one family member will be wearing sandals with white socks.

Tractors are getting so bling these days

4. Slight hesitation approaching escalators and revolving doors.

5. Usually seen shopping in the more traditional/old-skool businesses where they have personal relationships with the staff (which means a bit more wiggle room on the prices!).

It’s a good day to come to town if you like the excitement of Christmas. All the stores have their window displays out, City Council have the Winter Wonderland in full swing, buskers all over town are booming out the carols and Christmas classics and there’s still plenty of time to go to the ‘big day’ so there’s no panic-buying just yet.

Up tah Cork we go!

It wasn’t always this way and Corkonians who get caught up or wound up by Christmas fever would do well to reflect on how this city and county used to be less than 200 years ago. On this very day, December 6^th, in 1841 the Cork Examiner published a report that paints a very different picture of how Cork looked at Christmas time. It reported on the masses of poor people in Cork – many of them immigrants from farming communities demolished by poverty:  

‘Their clothes is a single garment retained more from a sense of decency than anything else. Their beds are no more than piles of wet straw not fitting for the kennel of a dog. The middle classes, the tradesmen and small room keeper, a class normally comparatively free from the ravages of hunger and poverty are also affected.’

They're bracing themselves for farmers coming in looking for Android tablets

And while iPhone 5 and Android jelly bean fever might be gripping the Rebel  county in the run up to Christmas there was a very different meaning to the word ‘fever’ back in those days.

‘We deeply regret that it becomes our imperative duty to announce the fact that fever has alarmingly increased among the poorer classes of our people, and that there does not exists anything like an adequate remedial provision for their relief’.

At that time it was said that many Cork people would only be able to eat a ‘meagre meal’ every two or three days. At a time when childhood obesity is an greatly expanding problem in Ireland it serves us well to look back to times like this to see where we’ve come from.

Off up to Cork city to queue up for the new iPhone no doubt

The weight of our children is a big problem but relatively speaking their risk of immediate death is miniscule when compared with a child of 1841 that looked like a sickly bag of bones.

The recessionary period that followed the end of the Napoleonic Wars was devastating for Cork with its harbour now used far less. The currency returned to the Gold Standard opening Ireland’s economy up to international competition.  Credit was almost impossible to find without being fleeced by dodgy back street dealers and unemployment soared.

The results of a contraction in the economy in those days were catastrophic compared to now. It may not be popular to say that the social welfare system we have now is great but almost nobody is dying directly because of the recession and nobody will go hungry to the point that they become emaciated and diseased beyond cure.

Give generously bobilla

You can argue all you want about chancers flahing the current system and riding the tax payer for extra dole or children’s allowance but having to deal with problem certainly beats barrowing the bodies of Cork’s dead adults and children by the hundreds to pits every morning of Christmas week. Not exactly the ‘Christmas cheer’ we know nowadays.

So if you plan on being a grumpy langer this Christmas intent on regaling every Corkonian you meet with miserable tales of woe from the last four years of economic grind bear in mind that, with respect to Cork’s tough and turbulent past, we live in good times.

You could even go as far as to say that for all the Corkonians that have ever lived, this is probably as good as it has ever been. Or if not, very close to it. Whether you’re a cityslicker Rebel or a culchie Corkonians enjoy de crissmuss!