FROM THE ARCHIVES:The farming world used to come to town annually for the RDS spring show, as described here by Eileen O'Brien.
– JOE JOYCE
BEFORE ONE reached the showgrounds at all, the nurses in scarlet, white and blue with their collecting boxes, black-habited nuns a foil to them, importunate street photographers, all conspired to build up the feeling that one was going somewhere important, urgent, truly exciting.
In the industrial hall the nurserymen with their blazing displays had the advantages of colleagues whose ware were less colourful, but one could not withhold praise from one well-known firm which succeeded in making sausages look glamorous or from a big rubber concern which had the idea of standing its wading boots round a rocky mountain stream brimming with goldfish.
The Department of Agriculture had live fish too, flanking an intriguing model fish farm. Are rainbow trout, with their depressing damp blotting paper flavour, the only thing which can be reared on a fish farm? It’s all right, an official answered reassuringly. You can rear brown trout too, and anyway the rainbow trout are only for export.
Further along the Department hall were what looked like a million bees pullulating on a honeycomb. “How many of them is in it?” clamoured three of the plain people. The Department official maintained commendable patience.
Outside at the judging rings and enclosures – where Northern accents predominated – the frequency of the showers left the ladies in high heels and flowery hats at a decided disadvantage beside the landed gentlewomen in raincoats and stout goloshes . High-stepping trotting ponies, their manes done up in wonderful beribboned topknots, recreated some aristocratic pre-1914 scene, the Lord Lieutenant’s progress through “Ulysses” perhaps, and the children high on their mounts, kept up the illusion that one had stepped back through the looking glass into a pre-Connolly age.
A typist who misheard the phrase “high-yield dairy cows” one night almost had a charming alternative included in the official report of the Dáil; her version was “high-heeled fairy cows” and this was recalled by the delicately exquisite blonde Jerseys which graced the ring yesterday morning. This breed has a magical air about it, even their horns are set in a pooky fashion.
Back in the stalls great grooming and burnishing was going on. Majestic Hereford bulls consenting to have their curls brushed into place, their tails looking as if they had been marcelled with old-fashioned curling tongs, were a fine sight.
The pigs all seemed very long indeed. Some slept with that beatific air of total relaxation which only they can achieve: others grunted politely. Among that multitude of spotless, hygienic shampooed and perfumed pigs it was consoling to find one down at the very back, his little eyes rolling madly, who was unrepentantly dirty and uncompromisingly angry.
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