Book celebrates 40 years of moynalty steam threshing

Launch of ‘Celebrating Forty Years of Threshing at Moynalty’

Steam Threshing Museum, 31st July 2015

Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.

Thank you very much for your kind invitation to join you in Moynalty tonight for the launch of this marvellous work marking 40 years of threshing at Moynalty, and indeed celebrating those 40 years.

Not alone are we celebrating those four decades of a great community event, but tonight we also celebrate a fine publication which shows how the level of involvement of you, the people of Moynalty, have made it such a success and one of the best known festivals in the country.

Willie Daly, in his piece, recollects how the late Tommy Sheridan, after travelling to see a steam threshing in Clonbullogue, declared how it wouldn’t be hard to hold a better parade than the one they had seen that day – one steam engine leading to a mill with a small stack of oats, and the threshing over in an hour.

Well, Moynalty did go on to create a better parade, and threshing event, one which, like the village itself, is the envy of the country.

My first visit to the event was as a young teenager in the mid to late 1980s, on a family day out, as probably every family in the county, north east and further afield have done before and after.

I think that day we were the model for the scene in Fr Ted where the MC at the carnival is announcing a missing child – my eldest sister got lost that day in the huge crowds and became the subject of an announcement, probably by Paddy Murchan or Paddy Duff – long before Anthony Clinton’s time - over the loudspeakers.

We eventually found her, and our family photo album includes pictures of us with threshing machines, horses, and getting pony rides. Dan the Street Singer was the star attraction back in those days before Nathan Carter wooed the crowds. And for years afterwards, we had a knitted cottage tea cosy bought at the threshing as a souvenir, gracing our kitchen table.

Ours was a kitchen table in a farmhouse, which long before my time, had fed the men coming to do the threshing. And not only the kitchen, but the rarely used dining room was dusted down, and the table extended for the team working the mill.

Phillie Smith, in his contribution to the book, recalls such a scenario, the busy farmer’s wife having to feed 10 men, the day off school for the youngsters. In our case in Dunsany, the mill came from Preston’s in Kilmessan, with two of Preston’s men, as well as a plethora of local lads on bicycles after it looking for a bit of work for the summer. Prestons had a second mill which went in the other direction from Kilmessan, towards Bective and Navan.

My father recalls that the last threshing in our yard took place around 1958 or ’59, before the combine harvesters appeared up the driveway. Phillie’s piece in the book mirrors both of my parents’ recollections of the threshing at their places when they were younger, and not enough can be said to acknowledge how important the role of Moynalty Steam Threshing has been in keeping both the memory and the actual operations of these major events of the past alive.

Like everything in Moynalty, the threshing is all about the community pulling together. Theresa and Betty have managed to draw together the recollections of the many people in the village and parish who have made the event what it is over the past 40 years.

You know how it all began – the community council looking at ways to fundraise for the extension to the parish church. How many parishes even had a community council at the time? Other events around the country were visited for ideas, mills were sourced, as well as oats to thresh. The original location was Bellair, and after a few years, it moved to its present site at Donore.

And as it grew over the years, so did the attractions and input from all over, with much of this recorded in this book. Apart from the threshing, there was vintage cars and machinery, a two man fire tender, scythe cutting, tea and sandwiches, marching bands, churning, the thatched cottage, arts and crafts, baking and boxty, the Clydesdales, the trotting, the wireless displays from Farrells, the music and dance, pig roasting, various displays over the years, cutting the mud turf, the steam organs, high nellies, and countless other displays, and involvement from clubs and organisations.

Monksfield even played his part, and the good offices of Douglas Gageby were tapped. Frances Hutchison’s account of her lift with Biddy White Lennon is most entertaining, and Sean Gilsenan doesn’t explain how his JCB was after he drove it into the Borora to hold up a dam. And when Eamon O’Brien proposed to Maire, the wedding had to be scheduled around the threshing!

The Meath Chronicle has been delighted to be provide coverage of the threshing since Garrett Fox penned that first mention in his Royal Meath Album in 1976, reproduced in the book.

The book also carries a number of songs and poems composed about the Moynalty Steam Threshing.

Of course, apart from the event itself, the other great achievement of the threshing is that it has allowed you to build this fantastic facility we are standing in tonight, creating a permanent monument to the people and way of living of the past.

I’m not sure how many of you frequent Eddie Rocket’s diner in Navan, but there’s a sign on the wall saying that they didn’t invent the burger, but that they perfected it. The same could apply to Moynalty and the steam threshing festival, which sees 200 volunteers working and 30,000 people attending every year.

Congratulations to Theresa McKenna and Betty Smith, and to all who contributed material, and to Offex in Kells for producing the publication. I hope it is a tremendous success, and I hope that next week’s threshing is also a fitting one to mark the fortieth anniversary of threshing in Moynalty.

 

 - John Donohoe, News Editor, Meath Chronicle