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Vanishing Ireland
Above: Mick Moore
(Photo: James Fennell)
MICK MOORE
CATTLE DRIVER & FARMER
FERBANE, CO. OFFALY
BORN 1929
As darkness fell, the fourteen-year-old boy was still several miles walk from Tullamore. The thirteen young cattle which he had been entrusted with were becoming ever more tempestuous. It seemed a long time since the morning when the farmer in Ferbane had offered him a pound to drive the herd eighteen miles to the railway station in Tullamore. He had left Ferbane at midday, just as the CIE bus from Dublin spluttered past. The next nine hours were probably the busiest that Mick Moore has endured in his 82 years.
‘There I was chauffeuring these thirteen animals along the road. I had a bad bicycle so I was wheeling that with one hand and I had a stick in the other. Every time there was a gap or a side-road or an open gate ahead, the cattle would go through it and I had to throw down the bike, get them back, pick up the bicycle, go again. I didn’t know the road but I got to know it because they were gone out at every opportunity and I’d be playing hide and seek again. There was a shocking amount of running in between the long haul, chasing them here and chasing them back again.’
Things were made no easier by the fact that the thirteen giddy Herefords came from three different farms. The three groups had not encountered one another until the farmer bought them at the fair in Ferbane that morning. ‘So they fought each other until they were tired and the more they fought, the harder it was for me.’
Mick had not yet reached Clara when the CIE bus came back past him the other way. He can still recall the driver’s surprised face, watching the young boy in the short pants trying to herd this angry herd down the main road. The young lad with the stick and the wobbly bicycle that now had two punctured tyres.[i]
But one way or another Mick got the cattle to the railway station in Tullamore and packed them up onto a wagon bound for Edenderry. Fortune finally smiled on him when the farmer from the Ferbane fair appeared to check up on his progress.
‘You’ll have to drive me back home’, said Mick.
‘What?’ the farmer replied.
‘I’ve two flat wheels so I can’t cycle back. And I can hardly walk back with the state I’m in.’
The farmer eventually dropped him off three miles from home and Mick limped home with his sick bicycle shortly after midnight.
‘You’d tell that story to some young fellow now and he’d say “who do you think you’re codding, that couldn’t be done!” But it did and I was the last of the drivers.’
Peter Moore, Mick’s father, was a farmer and a small time cattle jobber, which was then a relatively common profession, buying and selling cattle. From the age of ten, Mick accompanied his father to the fairs. And there were fairs a-plenty in those times. ‘We were in Ferbane every month, Kilcormac every month, Clara every month, Moate and Cloghan two or three times a year and Tullamore maybe twice a year.’[ii] The fairs began at eight o’clock in the morning, or seven in the summertime, so father and son would set off down the road with whichever cattle they hoped to sell. They generally left at four or five o’clock in the morning in order to be ready when the buyers arrived. ‘It was hard work,’ says Mick, ‘because you always had to bring cattle home again after. If my father sold a few, he bought a few more. And of course you had to bring back the ones’ you didn’t sell. So you walked cattle both ways irrespective.’
When he wasn’t helping his father out, Mick was driving cattle for other farmers, such as the man with the thirteen cows. One of the icons of the road in those times was a Scottish drover called Paul Clements. Known as ‘Scotty’, he was considered the finest man in the game and he was never short of work. One day, young Mick got a job helping Scotty drive forty cattle down the bog roads of Offaly. Scotty kept sending the boy ahead of the herd like a sheepdog, with instructions to ensure the cattle did not break through any of the gaps. ‘Young Moore, there’s another little side-road up there … will you go on up and fill it?’ When they arrived at their destination, the farmer and his wife cooed, ‘Oh Scotty, how do you manage it!’ and the wily old Scot would stroke his grizzled chin manfully and chuckle, ‘I’m the Daddy of them all.’ Seven decades later, Mick is still aggrieved by Scotty’s tactics. ‘I was the Daddy of them all, not him,’ he says. ‘I was doing all that running and racing in the short trousers. But Scotty knew his onions, that’s for sure!’
By the time Mick was seventeen, he had come to the conclusion that he was damned if he was going to spend the rest of his life driving cattle.[iii] ‘It nearly broke my fathers’ heart when I told him “I’m going to no more fairs.” “Ah Michael”, he said, “how will I manage?” “That’s up to you”, I said, “I’m out.” ’
His timing was spot on. The days of the driver and the jobber were at an end. More and more farmers were transporting their cattle by truck and the big cattle marts were taking over from fairs as the main place to buy and sell.
Mick may have quit the driving but he continued to be the main breadwinner for the family.[iv] He had been working almost full-time on the 40-acre farm since his 13th birthday. The farm lay on the Ballycumber Road just outside Ferbane. His family had lived there for as long as anyone could remember. In fact, Mick is only four generations removed from the French Revolution; his great-grandfather Peter Moore was born in 1789. Peter married late in life and his son John, Mick’s grandfather, was born in about 1840. John also took his time marrying and had two sons and three daughters.[v] Mick’s father Peter was the youngest of these children.
Mick’s mother’s people were the Whitfields, a family of English origin who lived in the foothills of the Slieve Blooms in a series of farmsteads running between Killoughey, Kilcormac and out towards Birr and Geashill. ‘In the 1850s there were nine Whitfield families living along that periphery,’ says Mick. ‘But there’s not one left now and the Whitfield name has gone from Offaly.’
Mick’s zesty attitude to life served him in good stead in 1958 when Macra na Feirme, a voluntary organization for young farmers, approved his application to spend six months working in the USA, primarily in Arkansas and New York State.[vi] The experience gave Mick a lifelong passion for travel. ‘For so many people around here, Tullamore was the farthest they ever got. But I’ve always loved getting away.’ After he retired he took his wife Claire on a round the world tour that saw them traipsing up the Grand Canyon, feeding kangaroos in Australia and dodging bullets in Israel amongst other adventures.
Anything for an active life. Mick reckons younger generations will suffer the consequences of spending so much time sitting on their bums. ‘I had walked thousands of miles by the time I was fourteen. Every day we walked three miles to school in Pollagh and three miles back. And when I came home from school, I’d say that every second evening my mother would want something from town. The nearest shop was Ferbane which was maybe six modern miles from where we lived. So I would walk there and back three days a week for the shopping. And when I wasn’t at that, I‘d be wheeling turf and driving cattle! I was a very good worker. I had to be. And it was a hard slog. But today, all of my family - with the exception of my brother who died of paralysis when he was young - all of us are still hail and hearty and very fit. None of us got fat! Touch wood and thank God, we’re all exceptionally fit for our ages.’[vii]
It helped that none of the Moores smoked or drank. ‘We hadn’t the money and, although my father would take a drink, we were discouraged at home. I found it hard when I was seventeen or eighteen and the beer was becoming more and more common. I’d go into a dance and maybe I‘d ask a girl to dance. But when the fellows came in from the pubs, they took over the place. They bulldozed their way in and I was left sitting in the corner!’
Perhaps that is why Mick waited until he was 37 before he married. His bride was Claire Murphy from Carlingford, County Louth.[viii] ‘I met her one night at a dance in the Metropole Ballroom on O’Connell Street in Dublin,’ he says. ‘The first thing she spotted when I asked her to dance was the pioneer’s badge. All her family were pioneers and she was a good citizen too, so the badge was a plus! Things kicked for us then and that was it.’
The couple raised two sons who now live in Ballinasloe and London respectively. In 1999, Mick sold the farm to one of his nephews and he and Claire now run their home as a Bed and Breakfast. He derives his present day pleasures from traveling, writing his memoirs, watching sport, especially Gaelic Football, and chatting about the ‘auld times’ with his good friend and neighbour, Sonny Egan.[ix]
With thanks to Annette Egan.
FOOTNOTES
[i] From subsequent correspondence, May 2011: 'You may wonder why I sold my farm rather than pass on same to my sons which would be in keeping with tradition. This was indeed a major consideration for myself and Clair to work out. Well one of the lads had no interest whatsoever in farming as a way of life. So he ruled himself out from an early stage, physically he would seem to have all the right credentials. But no he wouldn't budge.
The second fellow was interested and stayed with the job until he was 21 years old. He did the Green cert. course which was necessary for any new entrant into farming. He however had a joint problem (bones) which showed up in the simplest of ways. For instance when affixing the milkers on a cows udder if the cow gave the simplest of kicks which connected with his had a certain joint would dislocate. This happened many times over say a four-year span. On the advice of a bone specialist who said this could not be allowed to continue or very soon it would not stay in place for ever. So a hard decision had to be taken. A changed life style had to be found. With a new way of life fourteen years has passed and no dislocation. Tough luck on the old boy, I had to find a new way of life also.
A further problem had caught up with me like a thief in the night. This was a monster called tax. Having spent a lifetime of hard work on a small farm, doing my work in the most economic way. Such as doing with the bare necessities in machinery. Renting land locally rather than going heavily into debt buying extra land, in other words running a tidy ship. Lo and behold the revenue authorities had me snookered into a further outing matter. A big change indeed from the long and lonely cattle drive for a £1 reward for which I was grateful on a distant day long ago'.
[ii] ‘I went to a lot of fairs from the time I was 10. To Ferbane every month. To Clogahn, a few miles over, two or three times a year. To Kilcormac, 10 miles away, almost every month. To Moate, 15 or 16 miles, maybe 3 or 4 times a year. We’d be in Tullamore a couple of times a year. Clara was nearer, 12 miles, and we’d be there possibly monthly. Every area had its own fair every month or twice a year or whatever. But the really hard thing was it entailed my father taking six cattle and driving them to, say, Clara in the morning, up at five o’clock, into Clara at nine. Now, you might sell four of the six or all of the six and if you did that my father would buy a few more. And you’d walk them 12, 13 miles there with the cattle in the morning and then you’d drive them all back on the return journey. So you walked cattle both ways irrespective.’
[iii] ‘Driving cattle like they did back in the 1940s would be an impossible task nowadays’, says Sonny Egan. ‘It couldn’t be done. There’s also a new strain in the cows since my day and I think they have gotten more dangerous.’
[iv] The older four got less education than the younger three on Mick’s suggestion. One of his brothers’’ family runs Moore Nurseries on the Ballycumber Road.
[v] My grandfather was born in about 1840. He married late in life, aged 49. He had five children, including my father and his brother and three sisters. My father had three sisters and a brother who died young. He got married late in life and produced us. I am at the top of this generation.
[vi] This was part of the Iffe scheme. He was 10 weeks in Arkansas, 10 weeks in New York State and stopped in Illinois and Washington DC along the way. ‘Americans say you seen more of America than we have’. He was very involved in Macra na Feirme beforehand which was ‘the main plank’ he walked to get in. And the fact I was a pioneer and a non-drinker was a big plus’
[vii] Mick was walking up Croagh Patrick seven years ago, when a fellow passed him by with his socks over his boots at a fine pace. I said ‘hello, you’re going a great stride.’ And he was a cattle jobber too who spent his life walking the roads –they were fit men!’
[viii] By chance his brother married another Miss Murphy from Kilcurley, County Louth.
[ix] He recalls a time when he saw Mick O’Connell live in the 1959 Munster final. ‘He absolutely dominated the match like no man I saw before or since. After the match we went round the Ring of Kerry and an hour after the match who arrives in Caherciveen but O’Connell with the football under his arm from the game. We got a quick photo with him and then he was into the boat and rowed back to Valentia. He also recalls Sean Ryan, an Offaly man who tried to bring O’Connell to heel. O’Connell caught him by the neck and held him out like a cartoon character. When tough Jim Lucey from Cork tried to take out O’Connell, O’Connell put him to sleep.