RECENTLY, when I motored between Cononley and Kelbrook, the high roads along which I drove were firm but fairly narrow. Some tracts were flanked by tall hedges. Others had views of open moorland. I gloried in the sight of tracts of purple heather and white patches of cotton grass which looked at their best under a blue sky adorned by a few fluffy white clouds.

On the other side of the road were extensive fields, bounded by more drystone walls than hedges. It was haytime. Farmers and their men were not readily visible as were the Irishmen of old. Modern haymakers spent much of their time in the cabs of tractors or seats on mechanical devices. I was impressed by the neatness of it all. Grass fell in orderly swathes. When it had dried out and become hay it was collected by machine in the form of bales.

I have pleasant memories of a time when there was no television to give weather updates. A farmer would rap the barometer with the fervour of a woodpecker tapping out a drum signal in sprig. Summer in the Yorkshire Dales was floriferous. In my young days a meadow was thick with flowers and as colourful as a Disney film.

Hay was gathered loose, and stacked as such in a barn until bales became normal – and The Silage Age dawned. Ploughing and re-seeding gave every dale a uniform green appearance. It also removed the damp or wet patches – and we had the loss of nesting birds. When did you last see a corncrake – or hear it calling?

At the edge of my memory was a time when, haymaking being largely handwork, I expected to see a few Irishmen gather in the High Street of Skipton, my native town. The men were making their haytime services available to local farmers. Irishmen who sought temporarily employment in the Yorkshire Dales were mostly from County Mayo. Donegal men tended to head for Galloway, in south-east Scotland.

In either case, because Irish farms tended to be smaller and families larger than those in the dale-country. An Irishman would leave the running of his farm to his wife and, with any big sons, might earn extra money by travelling to Yorkshire, via the ferry to Heysham. He would be heading for Skipton, Bentham and Hawes. The visiting Irishmen spent so much time in hayfields that they came to be known as the July Barbers.

Respectable Irishmen wore good blue suits. Others were roughly dressed. An Irishman was paid what would be regarded today as a pittance. Before the Great War, a likely lad would receive a modest £4 to £5 for the month, though “bed and meals” would be “thrown in” to the deal. At one farm I knew well, a couple of Irish labourers spent their non-duty hours in a wooden hut situated in the farmyard.

Irishmen were regarded as good workers, preferring the old ways of doing things, which meant that they excelled as scythesmen. Their scythes had blades up to six feet long and were given a fresh edge using a “strickle” – a piece of wood, pitted with holes, greased with bacon fat and sprinkled with a hard sand to give it an abrasive edge.

Small teams moved rhythmically across a meadow, felling the grass in neat swathes. In poor weather, the Irishmen were expected to use a scythe for thistle-mowing in the farm pastures. A common job in wet weather was white-washing the interiors of shippons.

The Irishmen were, by and large, very religious. On Sunday morning, they emerged from their quarters, tidily dressed, with best suit, white shirt, smart tie and cap. The only time they took a cap off their head was when they were in church. They strode to the nearest Catholic church for the morning service – and might return to the farm where they were quartered, late in the day, slightly worse for drink.

Some Irishmen who were born and reared in County Mayo and sought work in Yorkshire were not especially interested in farming. On Achill Island, the largest island off Ireland, I met a man whose dress and manner was distinctly Irish. He smiled when I asked him about his island life. He told me he was back in his native area - after working in Harrogate for a quarter of a century.