From a farmer’s shed in east Cork to the picket line at Rossport

THEY were called ‘the Mayos’ on the farms around Youghal, Co Cork, in the 1950s.

With brawny or wiry frames and weather-beaten faces, they rose from outhouse and shed before 6am and spent many the long, hot day until dusk bent over the drills, moving with metronomic precision, the spuds flying into all sorts of tin containers.

They would break for the ‘tae’ and grub. Some names seemed so exotic to us then — Concannon, Kilbride, Lavelle. There were Jarlaths and Endas, too.