Playing the market at a packed Borris Fair

The mile-long Main Street - reputedly the longest in Ireland - was a meandering tableau vivant of Traveller life and resembled an impoverished Balkan village on market day. This was a world away from the street markets of Spanish fiestas or postcard-pretty Provencal "marchés" so beloved of Irish tourists, writes Michael Parsons.

The Borris Fair is a traditional market for farmers as opposed to a farmers' market. There wasn't a sun-blushed tomato, jar of organic quince and fig conserve or a sage and oregano sausage in sight.

Most of the merchandise was so tatty it wouldn't have passed muster in Ceausescu's Romania.

The pavements were heaped with shoddy footwear and clothing, hideous furniture, cheap toys and displays of trailer-trash ornaments - the perfect antidote to rampant, designer-label consumerism.

Traders had come to this south Carlow village - the quintessential one-horse town - from all over Ireland.

Most were Travellers and they've been gathering here for generations. They included the extended "settled" Doran family from Carlow, whose patriarch, Miley Doran, will be 85 later this year and is believed to be the oldest male Traveller in Ireland. He was having a grand old time.

The old people used to say you could buy everything from an anchor to a needle at the Borris Fair. But no one wants either anymore. The best customers used to be the "mountainy men" - small farmers and their wives who came down from the Blackstairs on the Feast of the Assumption - to buy and sell sheep and perhaps pick up a new set of delph or a pair of britches.

But small farmers these days are up at 5am and commuting to building sites in Dublin or Waterford. Shopping is done at weekends and holy days of obligation have gone with the wind. Yet the fair evokes fierce nostalgia and support and remains a fixture on the calendar of the rural southeast. Despite, or because of, the sheer tackiness, the crowds turned out in droves again yesterday.

The village was full of characters who looked as if they had come directly from the JM Synge casting agency.

Broth-of-a-boy Christy Mahon types with big grins, terrible teeth and Val Doonican jumpers bought and sold horses at the gates of the "Big House", a walled demesne and former seat of the high kings of Leinster.

"Pegeen Mike" women, who used to be flame-haired until they hit the peroxide bottle, cuddled their "babbies" and sold religious pictures and cheap bed linen.

Images of Pope Benedict made the odd appearance, but John Paul II still rules here.

The Travellers were gracious, good-humoured and unfailingly polite. Some complained about Mary White, the local TD and Green Party deputy leader who has been campaigning against "early arrivals" causing traffic problems during the lead-up to the fair. They noted, without surprise, that the pubs were closed and seemed inured to what a few called "discrimination".

Sally Flynn from Clondalkin, Dublin, who's been coming to Borris for years, said Mary White "doesn't want the Travelling people in town", and claimed "the pub owners gave all their customers a mobile phone number to get in the back door".

But White said she "had consulted widely with Traveller families" and thought yesterday was "the best-run fair in years".

Gardaí said the atmosphere was "peaceful" and there were no incidents reported by mid-afternoon.