pie

The word fairings starts to turn up in English around the mid-1600's. It means something you buy at a fair -- sometimes as a present for someone else -- and specifically, food bought at a fair. In Ireland, these regional fairs -- which started out as periodic horse and cattle markets and expanded into general excuses for meeting and celebration -- were normally tied to the great holidays of the old Irish calendar, or to the major feasts of the Christian religious calendar that supplanted it.

One such holiday was Lammas Day, August 1st. ("Lammas" is a worn-down version of the Old English word hlaefmaesse, "loaf-feast": this festival, celebrating the grain harvest, is closely tied to the ancient Celtic summer / harvest festival of Lughnasagh.) Among many Irish Lammas fairs, one of the most famous was the one held in or near Dingle during the first week or ten days in August. People would flock to the Kingdom of Kerry from miles around to buy and sell their cows, horses and other goods, and to eat and drink and have a good time. The Dingle fair was particularly famous, and is still remembered in folksongs like the one about Red-Haired Mary. Other Lammas fairs in the area had such curious traditions as making a goat King of the Fair (this tradition is still carried on yearly at the Puck Fair in Killorglin, Co. Kerry, just south of the Dingle peninsula -- click here for the Google map), and they also still carry on the Dingle Fair's old tradition of serving fairings like the Dingle pie.

Once made with mutton, Dingle pies are now usually made with lamb. They're small individual pies that could easily be bought from a stall and carried around the fair while you had a look at the cattle or thought about where you might stop for your next pint.

Click on "read more" for the recipe.