Sir, –Making hay while the sun shone makes for delightful reminiscences but the sun didn't always shine! My wonderful summers in Headford revolved around saving the hay, sometimes in good, more often in showery soft weather, with eyes set on the clouds across the lake and into Connemara as my uncles decided on the day's strategy. The radio weather forecast was not of great import as it was a long, long way from the Bay of Biscay (a favourite of forecasters then) to the hayfields of Lough Corrib. The tasks themselves involved as much labour as magic. Turning out the blow by the wall to make cutting less dangerous for the mowing bar in stone-walled fields, turning the hay by hand (memorably 19 times in the very wet summer of 1962), making very small cocks, then meadow cocks using hazel tripods, and ropes made from the hay itself, and finally sheep cocks about a month later when the hay had settled and any overheating had subsided.
But there were compensations. Not least were tea in the fields, spring water, graduation to use of a real hay fork and wonderful relations and neighbours. In addition, for a boy from the city, the not unimportant increase in muscle strength, very useful for the next school year on and off the hurling pitch! – Yours, etc,
MICHAEL HAMELL,
Courtlands,
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Dublin 9.
Sir, – What’s this talk of a mowing machine and a horse? My Uncle Joe cut the oats in the small field with the scythe and I and my brothers, Tom and Liam, made the sheaves across the bay from Dun Briste, Ballycastle. – Yours, etc,
EUGENE O’CONNOR,
Paupish,
Carlow.