Some of the hawkers who had done a roaring trade in pre-war Callan Fair days were severely restricted by the Emergency cutbacks. These men engaged with their customers from donkey carts, which had tarpaulin covers supported on sally sticks on the side of Green Street that had the pubs and shops.
The standings, as they were called at the time, were jam packed before the war with fruit, biscuits, and sugarstick. The sugarstick was deemed a special delicacy for decades in Callan and was prepared by the stall owners in advance of fair days. The sticks came in two colours: blue and white.
Unfortunately, the main ingredient of this treat that all children loved- sugar- was no longer as widely available in the 1940s due to rationing. Even sadder, in the estimation of people who lived through the war years, is the fact that the technique involved in the manufacture of sugarstick apparently disappeared during the Emergency. After the war, nobody bothered to make it any more.
The future local newspaper correspondent, Seamus O’ Brien, lamented this loss of what he considered an integral part of Callan’s heritage, though of course the same restrictions bore down on the rest of the country, with similar consequences.
On a cheerful note, the vibrant and life enhancing entertainments associated with the fair days survived wartime shortages.
Proving the truth of the old adage that the best things in life are free, musicians and street singers still appeared in town to regale locals and visitors alike. All day long, as dealers and farmers thronged Callan, these twentieth century versions of the medieval strolling players brought the bustling market town to life.
Good-humoured folk danced in the streets in time to the music, or sang along, especially when soulful ballads were being belted out by stony-faced or merry-making crooners who knew the words off by heart.
Their wives or children collected pennies and half pennies while they entertained, though there was no pressure on anyone to part with their money.
All that remains of Callan’s Fair Day tradition is the little toll box opposite the entrance to the green. Some locals also knew it as the “sentry box” because of its use by the Black and Tans in the early 1920s for guard duty and later for sentry training purposes by the LDF.
When Father John Kennedy’s big fund-raising carnivals were held on the Green in the 1970s, the box saw service again…as a convenient ticket office
The Fair Toll Box has been preserved as a reminder of a town’s Golden Age that now exists only in memory and old photographs.
As if rationing and belt-tightening weren’t challenging enough, another headache lay in store for neutral Ireland…twenty- seven months into the war. In the winter of 1941, as the German Army shivered and froze in the snowy wastes of Russia, Irish agriculture was ravaged by an outbreak of foot and mouth disease.
Meat exports were halted. Farmers panicked. Farms were closed down. The entire economy seemed threatened. The government called for calm. And both the LDF and LSF were ordered to assist in an all-out national effort to beat the bug.
This emergency within an emergency caused more worry to farmers than even the threat of invasion. Callan was hit by the deadly affliction, the first traces of it in the district having been discovered in Killaloe.
The district figured prominently in the national scare. Catherine Morris was distraught and inconsolable when the presence of the deadly disease was confirmed on her farm at Kylenaskeogh. Department officials informed her that her livestock would have to be slaughtered and that not a single cloven-footed animal could remain alive on her farm...
(Excerpt from Are We Invaded Yet? By John Fitzgerald
