Young, old, brave and bould keep coming to Spancilhill

“She’s rough and ready. She’s not shampooed.”

Mid-afternoon at the rain-sodden Spancilhill horse fair and trader Derry O’Donoghue isn’t sugar-coating his sales pitch ! to a prospective buyer examining the teeth of his three-year-old mare.

“She is looking her worst. She’s hungry. She needs grass. She will only get better.”

Derry explains that as the mare’s bottom teeth are only growing, she hasn’t been able to eat properly recently.

“Once she has her bottom teeth, she will be different in a month’s time and in two years’ time, she will be a proper mare.”

Derry is looking for €1,000 for the mare. “I’ve had lots of bids, but a customer is what you need,” he says.

Coming to Spancilhill for half a century, Derry says that if he doesn’t sell, “I’m not going to lose a night’s sleep”.

“I will still have my mare and the man will still have his money.”

On Saturday, thousands made the annual trip for the 23rd of June fair at Spancilhill outside Ennis, Co Clare, and the rain showers failed to dampen the enthusiasm of the horse-traders.

Across the Fairgreen, following the slump of the last few years, business was brisk once more at the fair and prices were up.

Surveying the scene, buyer Miley Cash said: “Prices are up and there are customers there for most of the horses.

“There are a lot of horses and a good lot of English and French buyers.”

Having purchased 21 ponies in the morning, Miley was now on the lookout for more in the afternoon. Prices may be up, but Miley said: “The market had fallen as low as it can fall and there is only one way it can go and that is up.”

The Kildare man attributes the rise in prices to thinning out of poor horses that were in the market.

Coming to Spancilhill for the past 65 years, Miley recalls visiting the fair when it would start at 2am, with much of the business conducted in the dark.

Elsewhere in the Fairgreen, Lahinch man Peter Paul Hayes admits to having mixed emotions as he stands beside his for-sale one-year-old filly Zelda.

Standing metres from a stall selling blow-up Spider-Mans and other superheroes, Peter says that Zelda was rejected at birth by her mother.

To keep her alive, Peter fed up her with bottled formula milk every two hours during the night for the first number of weeks.

“I wouldn’t know a whole lot about babies, but I believe that they have the same problem needing milk every couple of hours during the night,” he says.

Zelda was then put on feed. Peter adds. “It was expensive, but if you have love for an animal, you never worry about cost.”

Peter says that the going rate for a yearling filly is €100 “and I have refused three offers of €100 today. I am looking for €400. I will wait another hour. I come to sell, but selling isn’t the main thing. If you sell, it is a bonus. If you don’t, it means you have another day out”.

Looking to buy, Jimmy Killilea from Maree, Oranmore, says if he missed Spancilhill “it would be like missing the All-Ireland”. Sean Martin from Athenry is downbeat about the prospects of selling his Connemara pony and four-year-old half-bred pony.

“I was expecting to ‘put them down my pocket’, but it is not looking good.

“When people come out of the pub and they have a couple of drinks, they might loosen up a bit and start to spend a bit of money, but I don’t know if it is going to happen.”