"That’s the way things were, there’s no point in denying it..."

Joey: Well, the border, my relatives used to all work for the local Protestants, here all the big farmers, all the respectable people. They weren’t involved in anything, but they were all involved in smuggling.  What they had was the Catholics doing the smuggling for them.

I remember one story it was hilarious, a man who’s dead now so it doesn’t matter.  A man called George Coulter and the wife and they had no family, and uncle of mine and other man called Packie Dowd. They used to bring the cattle across the border and all. George was a big farmer, a hundred and forty acres. They eventually moved to Tyrone, and they divided and sold the farm into two bits. He used to go up around the south and all the rest of it and he used to buy the cattle and the two boyos would be brought along with them and they’d come within about two mile of the border and then they’d be left there until dark. They’d be left there with a hurricane lamp and would head then across the mountain with the cattle.

The bit that I wanted to tell you about, when they arrived at Coulter’s house which was down the road there about two miles, the local police were waiting in the street in a hay shed and they had a flash lamp, and they counted the number of cattle and they got paid the bribe money for clearing the road and that was the way things were. That’s the way things were, there’s no point in denying it, the police were taking the bribes for the smuggling.

What happened was, I remember Johnny telling me this and he was real venomous about it, he said “meself and Dowd were put into the scullery with the tea and margarine and the boys, Coulter and the police and all of them were all in the kitchen drinking whiskey and butter”. I never forgot that one I thought it was hilarious.  He was all venomous about it, they had done all the work and they were put in the scullery with the bread and the margarine and the cops, Coulter and all they were in the kitchen with a bottle of whiskey on the table being passed around. Smuggling like that went on here, what I call the big Protestants, the wealthy sort of Protestants they were all at it. The Catholics were doing the skivvy work, they were running the roads and running the ditches and hedges and all the rest of it.

When I was growing up here twelve or thirteen years of age, Sunday was the big day, smuggling, everybody knew it.  Everyone knew such a one was bringing the cattle across today. There’s patches on the river there in summertime. The water would be low only about that depth you know, and the cattle were just driven across, pigs and everything.

Interviewer: I think everyone was just used to there not being a border so when everything happened people just carried on doing what they were doing or else bent the rules to their advantage.

Joey: Well, you see, there was just a few cops down around Derrylin and they couldn’t say too much with what they were at, they’d just turn a blind eye. That’s the way it was and what I can recall when I was growing up here there seemed to be a good relationship between the RUC and Catholics and Protestants, when I was young.