Lucky Bags

In Doorly Park, where I grew up in Sligo, we had two shops where the local residents bought their daily groceries. One, was Paddy Gilmartin's and the other was Tony Molloy's. We tended to go to Molloy's and I was often sent by my mother for a batch loaf for the evening tea. It was wrapped in a large sheet of golden brown tissue paper. On many occasions it would arrive at the house with a hole in the side of the loaf, where I had picked away at the freshly baked bread. My father only ever sent me for two specific items: twenty Sweet Afton and a Silver Gillette (blue) blade. Waiting to be served you would hear all the news of the day from the many assembled customers, ninty five per cent housewives, who were gathered to get something for the dinner.
On Saturday I would get my pocket money: 6d, which was six pence in old money. The coin had a greyhound in profile on one side and a harp on the other. I was amused in later years when someone told me that "The harp was the symbol of Ireland because the country was run by pulling strings". For some reason I nearly always spent my sixpence in Gilmartin's. Molloy's, in my mind was for business but Gilmartin's was for pleasure ! What to buy was always a time consuming decision but in the end I usually emerged through the shop door with the same two items: a trigger bar and a thrupenny lucky bag and a penny change to buy a penny toffee at some later stage. The trigger bar had a blue foil wrapper with a small silhouette of Roy Rogers and his horse Trigger to the side of the Wild West style lettering. The bar was creamy toffee covered in ridged milk chocolate. The chewy bar was lovely but there was always an air of expectation in opening a lucky bag and that was it's magical allure. Its contents were always the same: a small toy and a few sweets. I would return home happily chewing my trigger bar and examining the contents of my lucky bag.

This small plastic toy reminds me of those sunny Saturday mornings in Doorly Park.


This colourful little trinket rolls along freely and because it is weighted at the bottom the horses head bobs forward and back but eventually returns to the position in the photograph. I would love to build a huge, two metres high, version of it that could be wheeled about on a village green or town park....health and safety issues permitting of course !