Robert Lynd, that splendid writer, mostly known as a polished and entertaining essayist, visited Puck Fair nearly a century ago. The goat, he described thus: "Like an object of worship, it stands on its lofty two-storeyed platform of boards, a creature of monstrous horns, a prisoner bound with cords for all the clumsily arranged laurels and green things that are there to do it honour. A number of red storm-lanterns hang among the decorating leaves to give a country illumination in the darkness . . ."
He noted with pleasure the arch of greeting, with Irish language mottoes of morality or welcome, including Cead mile failte go hAonach an phuic. And Go saoradh Dia Eire. "These were some of the signs that gave one a welcome, not only to the fair but to an awakening Ireland." But, as to the Irish language, "my vanity got a blow. I noticed a public house with a long poem in Irish scribbled in paint along the face of its upper storey."
Here is his account: "I went inside and asked for something to drink in what I believed to be the Irish language. The woman of the house, thin of face and dark of brow, looked at me suspiciously. `What is it you want, sir?' she said. Crushed, I repeated the order in the Belfast dialect of English. When she had given me what I wanted, I thought I would try to practice my Irish again, so I said to her: `Nach labhrann tu Gaedhlig?' She looked at me curiously again, as she wiped the lead-covered bar with a soaking cloth. `Labhrann [I do],' she said shortly; then with a sharp directness she demanded `Are you English, please? ...
I thought by your accent you must be English.' I remained in the shop in silence for a minute or two longer to finish whatever I was drinking, and then, raising my hat with chill dignity, went forth into a clouded world."
He had a good time, though, among the crowds. Struck by an uproarious blind man with grey beard who knelt on "a bottle of straw". Round his neck was a printed legend: "Pray for the repose of the departed souls of your friends." To do this, you made a contribution to him. "Give a penny to a poor stone-blind man and he without sight." Lynd spoke to him and he lamented the bygone days "when there would be five or six blind men like myself at the fair".
Then "the fairest game in Ireland". Back a card with your penny. One farmer backed spades and the dealer cut the pack. Sure enough, spades. So the farmer got two-pence. A second time and he lost. Still one penny up, he went away. Lynd, however, found the card-dealer so amusing and good-tempered that "I will not you tell how much I lost to that hearty young man just because he had an irresistible sense of humour." Lynd's piece on Puck appears in his book Ramblers in Ireland, with fine illustrations in colour by Jack B. Yeats. Published, you might be interested to know, in 1912 - by Mills and Boon.