A Fair to Remember

Ballinasloe, just an hour's bus ride east of Galway and the third largest "city" in the county, is home to one of Europe's oldest fairs. The Ballinasloe October Fair is mainly an equestrian event where people from all over the country come to show and sell horses. Surely you can see why this would appeal to me. This past Sunday, I convinced my roommates to join me on a day excursion to see just what this horse fair was all about. We grabbed the bus at 10:30 and when we arrived in the town an hour later, we hopped off the bus and promptly landed in horse shit. It was all over the sidewalks! Horse trailers were parked all along the streets and mounted riders shared the road with the cars. Basically, this was heaven.

The fair green in the center of town was literally swarming with horses of all shapes and sizes: tiny miniature horses, the characteristically dappled gray Connemara ponies, feathered draft horses, and donkeys as well! You'd think it would have been absolute chaos with so many animals packed so close together, but, like the humans of this country, most of the horses were relaxed and docile. Amber, Beth, and I carefully maneuvered our way through the hordes, ogling the crates of puppies on offer and the miniature donkeys all hitched together in a row.
There were market stalls lining the roads through town selling mostly horse-related wares like harnesses, halters, blankets, and bridles. Also to be found was plenty of knock-off designer bags and sunglasses, sparkly jewelry, Wellingtons, clothes, and 99s (soft serve vanilla ice cream cones with a Flake chocolate bar sticking out of it). However, we often found our gazes distracted by the shocking numbers of scantily-clad women roaming the streets. It was by no means a warm day, but there were countless numbers of women wearing little more than belly shirts and mini skirts with heels. Was there some memo we'd missed about how people dress for country fairs? It just didn't make sense. And, worse than the women sporting slutty Halloween costumes, were their children. Twelve-year-old girls in high heeled boots and fur trimmed leather jackets? There simply aren't words to describe our horror. Suddenly, all those jokes my friends and I made about going to "whore shows" rather than "horse shows" were frighteningly real.

Aside from this frightening spectacle, we enjoyed a delicious lunch at the Crumb & Cream Cafe (best brown bread I've had yet!) and had a fun perusing the market and checking out the horses (and the cute men riding them!).
Still, we returned home with a mystery still unsolved. Fortunately, our friend Kristi came over that night and Beth showed her the pictures she had (not so sneakily) taken of some of the outfits the women at the fair were wearing. "Oh, they're knackers," she informed us. "The traveling people." If you didn't know, Ireland is home to a group of traveling folk, like gypsies in a way. According to Kristi, this is just how they dress and they always show up at fairs and festivals. This also happened to be the reason our land lady laughed when we told her we were going to Ballinasloe in the first place. Ah ha! Mystery solved. And I must say I was relieved to at least have an explanation for the things we saw that day...otherwise the visions may have haunted me for some time.

P.S. You should also know that "knackers" is a very derogatory term, so don't use it openly.