DOI Artikel:
Lucas, A. T.: Irish ploughing practices, 2
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.48999#0073
IRISH PLOUGHING PRACTICES
A. T. Lucas
PART TWO
The Change from Ox-Draught to Horse-Draught
When, towards the end of the sixteenth century,
data about ploughing relating to the country as
a whole become, for the first time, available in
any quantity, we find that the horse only was
used by the Irish as a plough animal. In attempt-
ing to establish when the change took place
from the ox-draught, which was virtually uni-
versal down to about the twelfth century, to the
horse-draught, which had become characteristic
of Irish ploughing by the sixteenth century, we
must rely for information on legal and admini-
strative documents of Anglo-Irish origin as no
comparable documents exist in Irish and as few
references to ploughing occur in factual con-
texts in the Irish literature of the period.
The compiler of the fanciful list of tributes
due to the various Irish provincial kings known
as the ’Book of Rights (Lebor na Cert)’, which
dates to the eleventh century, still thought of
plough teams in terms of oxen alone. The dues
paid by Connacht to the king of Cruachain in-
cluded one hundred and fifty oxen ’to supply
the husbandry’ (Dillon 50) and those of the Fo-
hairt to the king of Cuala in Leinster ’two hun-
dred rough oxen for the yoke’ (Dillon 113). The
plough animal familiar to the Cistercians, who
were introduced into the country in 1142, and
to the Anglo-Normans, who arrived in 1169, was
the ox and plough teams of oxen appear in the
Irish Pipe Roll of John for the years 1211/12,
which is the earliest of the Anglo-Norman doc-
uments to afford any information on this point.
The Roll records the distribution of a total of
896 oxen to 25 separate localities in counties
Meath, Westmeath, Dublin and Monaghan for
the purpose of providing plough teams. The
teams allocated to the individual localities vary
in number from two to twelve but in every in-
stance the number of oxen allotted to a place
divided by the number of teams assigned to the
same place amounts to eight, indicating that an
eight-ox team was regarded as the standard one
(Ulster Journ. 1941, 39-41). A plough team of
eight oxen is also mentioned in an extent of the
manor of Cloncurry, County Kildare, in 1304
(White 28). Unfortunately, there is nothing in
the contexts of these references which would
allow us to conclude that the eight oxen were,
in fact, harnessed simultaneously to the plough
or which would preclude the interpretation that
the eight-ox team was ’the animal strength con-
ventionally required to get through a day’s
work with the plough’ (History 293).
Already by the end of the thirteenth century,
however, the horse begins to appear in plough
traction. In all the earlier documents the term
used for the animal is afer. The writer knows
no context in these sources in which an afer
can be identified as an animal other than ahorse
and there is at least one in which it can be posi-
tively identified as such: court proceedings at
Cashel, County Tipperary, in 1313, where a
man is described as riding an afer which he had
stolen a short time previously (Griffith 301). If,
as seems to be the case, afer always connotes a
horse in the terminology of the Irish documents,
horses were in use in ploughing in County Wex-
A. T. Lucas
PART TWO
The Change from Ox-Draught to Horse-Draught
When, towards the end of the sixteenth century,
data about ploughing relating to the country as
a whole become, for the first time, available in
any quantity, we find that the horse only was
used by the Irish as a plough animal. In attempt-
ing to establish when the change took place
from the ox-draught, which was virtually uni-
versal down to about the twelfth century, to the
horse-draught, which had become characteristic
of Irish ploughing by the sixteenth century, we
must rely for information on legal and admini-
strative documents of Anglo-Irish origin as no
comparable documents exist in Irish and as few
references to ploughing occur in factual con-
texts in the Irish literature of the period.
The compiler of the fanciful list of tributes
due to the various Irish provincial kings known
as the ’Book of Rights (Lebor na Cert)’, which
dates to the eleventh century, still thought of
plough teams in terms of oxen alone. The dues
paid by Connacht to the king of Cruachain in-
cluded one hundred and fifty oxen ’to supply
the husbandry’ (Dillon 50) and those of the Fo-
hairt to the king of Cuala in Leinster ’two hun-
dred rough oxen for the yoke’ (Dillon 113). The
plough animal familiar to the Cistercians, who
were introduced into the country in 1142, and
to the Anglo-Normans, who arrived in 1169, was
the ox and plough teams of oxen appear in the
Irish Pipe Roll of John for the years 1211/12,
which is the earliest of the Anglo-Norman doc-
uments to afford any information on this point.
The Roll records the distribution of a total of
896 oxen to 25 separate localities in counties
Meath, Westmeath, Dublin and Monaghan for
the purpose of providing plough teams. The
teams allocated to the individual localities vary
in number from two to twelve but in every in-
stance the number of oxen allotted to a place
divided by the number of teams assigned to the
same place amounts to eight, indicating that an
eight-ox team was regarded as the standard one
(Ulster Journ. 1941, 39-41). A plough team of
eight oxen is also mentioned in an extent of the
manor of Cloncurry, County Kildare, in 1304
(White 28). Unfortunately, there is nothing in
the contexts of these references which would
allow us to conclude that the eight oxen were,
in fact, harnessed simultaneously to the plough
or which would preclude the interpretation that
the eight-ox team was ’the animal strength con-
ventionally required to get through a day’s
work with the plough’ (History 293).
Already by the end of the thirteenth century,
however, the horse begins to appear in plough
traction. In all the earlier documents the term
used for the animal is afer. The writer knows
no context in these sources in which an afer
can be identified as an animal other than ahorse
and there is at least one in which it can be posi-
tively identified as such: court proceedings at
Cashel, County Tipperary, in 1313, where a
man is described as riding an afer which he had
stolen a short time previously (Griffith 301). If,
as seems to be the case, afer always connotes a
horse in the terminology of the Irish documents,
horses were in use in ploughing in County Wex-