‘Did you do any smuggling in your youth, Petie?’

 

I did to be sure.  I smuggled cattle across the border for the McMahons amongst others.  And for John (Jock) Quinn.

 

I mind the time we driv thirty fine cattle from the State to Crossbroad.  They belonged to Peter Joe Quinn.  He was a famous boxer.  He was very fond of he’s food and drink.  He paid well, mind.  The best of them all. 

 

We did this trip in daylight.  We hadn’t bought the road.  The police barred the road to us.  We driv the cattle on into them.  One policeman was knocked down.  In the confusion we got the cattle turned and back into the Free State.  They couldn’t follow us. 

 

The local police didn’t need the trouble.  We had the bother with the new ones comin’ in.  I mine the time there was six heifers taken aff us and being held in a field be one of them.  We called for help from a few neighbours who were savin’ hay nearby.  We rescued them.  It was the quare blow to lose cattle then worth maybe £50 each!  That was ten or twelve good weeks’ wages for a man.

 

We were up to all sorts of tricks.  But so were the police.  There was an open shed down the road from the Barracks where the men might gather to play cards.  The gate on the road there was the meeting place.  Inside in the Barracks the patrol schedule would be posted on a Tuesday morning.  One of the cops – P. C. King (who was a B-man), or Telford or whoever – would stroll up, like for a bit of a chat, you know.  He’d tell what road would have no patrol on what night.  Then he’d ask if you had a light.  You’d hand him over a box with a few matches in it.  But also a folded-up £5 note.  That meant you had bought that road for the night.

 

These were the days before all cattle were tagged.  Other people smuggling cattle across the border would occasionally ask you to drive their cows into Cross fair.  The police would monitor the street transactions.  But you’d be told to drive them into certain yards.  If the deal wasn’t done on the street, the police couldn’t interfere.  I mine Mrs Carragher pushing a pillow down her jumper, like she was pregnant.  So they wouldn’t then stop and ask her whose cattle they were.  If they did, they were her own: she reared them from sucklings.  

 

I mine there’d be a dance in her house at night.  She’d put on a big pot of rice for us all.  Sergeant Taylor who was the plain-clothes policeman in the area at the time was afeared of her.  She might have a yard full of cattle: two for each of the four fairs about, Cross, Culloville, Cullyhanna etc.  There was some difference in cattle prices North and South: they might be worth twice as much in the North.  We’d get £2 for our night’s work.  They were driv on the hoof: no cattle trucks then.

 

The police then would check the numbers of cattle coming away from the (Cross) fair.  But they were bought at this end too.  For a price they’d record ten times the numbers actually purchased.  The Free State cattle could then be accepted at the abattoirs.   

 

Jock Quinn went buck mad one night when we were caught with six lovely heifers on the Mullaghduff Road.  An’ no wonder.  He had already bought the road for £5.  But there was a policeman called Telford stationed there that time, who had a girlfriend across the border.  He was off that night and cycled over to see her.  He pushed his bike back by the Mullaghduff Road, where he had no business to be.  And he was off duty, but that didn’t stop him. 

 

‘Well, Jock, you’ve been a long time at this and I never caught you till now!’

 

Jock took him aside and asked did he want all the bother of filling out forms and attending court.  Would he not settle for a small gift of a £5 note?  He did.  They were all at it.  Indeed this Telford was caught be his own, his name turned up in papers when some local pub that was a smuggler’s meeting place was raided.  Telford didn’t wait for the formal dismissal procedure.  He took off his policeman’s belt and threw it at them.  Later he got work in Newry with Martin & Nesbitt’s.

 

Still, on the night of the six heifers, Jock couldn’t be calmed or appeased.

 

‘That’s twice I bought this road tonight!’ he fumed.