The question of entertainment was not one which would have been rated very high in the minds of the people of Ballyrashane before the 20th century. Life would have been concerned only with work. In the winter time when it would not be possible to work on their land the people would have amused away the long hours in a quite different fashion from today. In Ballyrashane today most families are self-contained and do not visit each other'shouses on the scale which they used to.

There was little time for leisure in the 19th century and on the rare occasions when the opportunity arose, the people were prepared to turn out in large numbers for whatever was offered. This included church soirees and lectures. One lecture in 1881 in the Presbyterian church was on William III.

The Ordnance Survey Memoirs list the following:- amusements were reading clubs, psalmody practice and occasional dances, hurling was played at Christmas and in three houses spirits wer sold without a licence. Cock-fighting had ceased.

It would be very interesting to know in whose house the spirits were sold, but no-one can remember having heard this story. On occasions, of course, poteen was drunk but I have not heard of anyone making it for sale in such a way as the above.

Ballyrashane Orange Lodge started in 1893 and originally met in the gatehouse lodge belonging to the Rectory. It then moved to Gorticloughan to an old barn belonging to Curry's farm which was demolished in 1975. As a memorial to the First World War the present building was erected. A large number of the men of the parish attended this.

In the first half of the twentieth century there was little improvement in the amount of leisure time available. There was no such thing as a nine to five job. The flax mill opened at seven and people worked at least until six and on a Saturday night too. Farm labourers had even longer hours.

In the 40s the chief entertainment in the evenings would be visits to each other's houses for supper, which was tea and home baked soda scones and wheaten and Indian bread which was a scone made of yellow meal. Many of these visits were used for story telling. The older folk (mainly those born around the turn of the century) were still believers in stories of the little people.

They would talk about their experiences in this field and pass on yarns told to them by their parents. No doubt this included the story of Betty Sayers of Ballindreen who always had buttr on her milk when the rest did not. She was supposed to have put a charm on their cows to stop them from producing cream. Another famous local 'witch' ws Highland Kate who was supposedly employed to cure the cows of the minister. She was not paid for the job and as a result brought the minister to court.

Young people who were old enough to go visiting on their own would often go to unoccupied houses to play cards. Gambling was frowned upon and so this activity left the participants feeling guilty, with the result that many going home felt the devil was with them. One man remembers his father telling him of such an evening. For some reason the door of the house would not open and the gambler tried to leave by the window but he could not get out because something was pulling him by the coat-tails. It took a supreme effort to get free and the man was convinced it was the devil trying to get him.

The people were great believers in ghost stories and as a result they were often frightened to go home on their own, past Brookhall where Lady Jamison was burned, causing her death. She was said to still haunt the place.

Some of the male inhabitants had a successful tug-of-war team inthe forties and it was renowned for its prowess. For training purposes they would tie a rope to the back of a tractor and try to hold it back. The farmers too had their own clubs.

The population of Ballyrashane was big enough in the first three or four decades of this century to produce a football team. They were called the Ballyrashane Reds and they played in the summer league. Home matches were played in a meadow in Knocknekeeragh.

Other sports which went on in the parish were hunting and trapping hares. Needless to say it was not the poorer people of the parish who hunted but it was through their land that the rich horsemen chased the hares. This still occurred until some time in the seventies when objections began to be raised. The poorest people, anxious to make some money were prepared, however, in earlier times, to trap the hares for coursing and to keep them in their houses even though it was illegal even then.

The game of marbles was very popular, with the men as much as with the children. It was commonly played at the crossroads along with throwing of horseshoes. Another game played was 'hawing' that was the throwing of pennies to try and achieve a certain combination of heads and tails. The winner claimed everybody else's losses. The children who lived in the thirties and forties had very few toys. What they had were things they made for themselves out of pieces of wood and articles which were lying around the houses. Sledges and bogeys were the usual toys. In winter when the snow was on the ground, the children would sledge down the manse brae. It is hard to imagine children being able to do such a thing now with the huge amount of traffic on the same brae. Since not everybody had a sledge the solution was to join two together with a ladder running between them. The children sat all the way along the ladder.

A special treat for one family of children in the 1940s ws to be allowed to play the gramaphone in the evening.

1950s' boys would go fishing in the streams for newts which they kept in jars. The burn was a favourite stop on their way home from school to 'coddle' eels. They would try to catch them with their hands.

The orchard at the Glebe was a favourite place for the childrne of the parish. Mr Anderson told me that they would climb over the wall and steal strawberries or apples and as they were climbing back out again they would throw the buckets that the Reverend Magill had left near the trees. This of course alerted the minister and he chased them but of course never caught them.

Boys would have spent hours climbing trees and jumping over streams and generally roaming the countryside.

Children rarely ventured far from home. An elderly resident remembers that the highlights of their year were two trips to the White Rocks by their father's horse and cart.

House ceilidhs would have happened spontaneously. Ten or twelve people would gather at somebody's house. They would tell 'yarns' (some say that they were usually lies) and try to outdo each other with stories of their exploits. Someone might play the mouth organ or accordion and they might have a bit of a sing song. These went on until all hours of the morning. At these ceilidhs there was often a bit of 'porter' or poteen about. Sometimes there would be dances in the Orange halls and these were often the scenes of drunken fights. It cost 2 shillings to enter for the night aand 6d for half the night inthe early 40s. Despite the numerous fights which broke out and the surprisingly high degree of violence which occurred, no-one would have thought of going to the police. All disputes were sorted out amongst themselves, no matter how long it took to resolve. It is said that people would go and hit someone for something done years before which had not been avenged.

Despite the fact that people were very poor, poteen always seemed to be available in the parish. This is not so surprising, since it was an open secret that it was being made in Lisnagalt. The manufacturer was so business minded that the was able to sell it to a pub in the town for 1 pound a bottle and its reputation was so good it was said that those who drank it would be drunk within 10 minutes of taking the first sip. Eventually the man was caught and Ballyrashane no longer produces poteen, to our knowledge at least.

Food was not so freely available as was poteen and the young people would walk to the town to get a fish supper, if they could afford it. Needless to say this did not happen very often.

The dances in the hall were so popular with the people that they were prepared to pay to learn to dance. Mr McAfee is well remembered for his ability to teach people to dance. They were held once a week and cost 1 shilling.

At certain times of the year a visiting player would become resident for a couple of weeks and he would organise and play at concerts in the Orange Hall. Local talent would take part inthis and the locals state that the Mullan girls from Articrunnagh were very popular singers.

As well as the above concerts, others were held during the second world war. The Home Guard trained at the Orange hall and their commander provided the cigarettes and the drink for smoking concerts.

As things improved slowly the younger people began to acquire bicycles and this helped them to become mobile. They could not go to the pictures on a Saturday night or to a dance as far away as Ballycastle. This took them around and hour and a half each way but they reckoned it was worth it. Occassionally someone with a car would gather up several people and take them to the pictures in Coleraine.

The bicycle, too, meant that the young people could go to Magilligan to get the boat to Donegal. In these days the service was available on demand and a signal was given across to those on the other side. A fishing boat came across and the men waded to shore, picked you up on their backs and took you out to the boat.

The availability of this service was used for things other than day trips during the second world war. Scarce items such as sugar were aquired in this parish through the medium of smuggling it from the Irish Republic. One member of the parish considered it worth the risk of a shot in the leg which he got for his troubles.

The first television to be aquired by a working class family was a big event for many months in Ballyrashane. All the neighbours were regular visitors to the house concerned.

Ballyrashane today is quiet at night. No longer do you see people at the crossroads but there are still meetings and the very occassional dance in the Orange hall. The children all play in their own gardens or they are inside occupied with television, video or computer. None of the children are poor and they have everything which they could ever need but one wonders if they will have such fond memories of their young days, as today's older generation have.