Tools & tillage: a journal on the history of the implements of cultivation and other agricultural processes (2.1972/1975)

150

A.T. LUCAS

Ulster:
County Antrim (Carrickfergus district), 1811
(M’Skimin 120); County Monaghan (Barony
of Farney), 1801 (Coote: Monaghan 122).
The present data can, probably, be considerab-
ly augmented by future research but even as
they stand they are sufficient to demonstrate
the extensive use of the four-horse plough and,
in view of those already cited which state that
the four abreast arrangement was the norm, it
is reasonable to conclude that it was to be
found in most of these districts as well. The
fact that Young, writing of the Monivea area,
County Galway, in 1776, noted, as if it were


Fig. 1. Method of tackling three horses to a plough
{Coote: Cavan 61).
Wie man drei Pferde vor einen Pflug spannen kann.
rather exceptional, that the horses there were
harnessed ’two and two’ seems to strengthen
this inference (Young 275).
If the standard team consisted of four horses,
the custom of using six to a plough seems to
have been far from uncommon. A calculation
of the expense of ploughing an acre on farms
eight or ten miles from Dublin in 1730 em-
braces payment for four operations: breaking
up lea or first fallow, the second ploughing,
the third ploughing or back-stirring and the
last or seed ploughing. In each operation allow-
ance is made for six horses and two men. As
one of these must have been the ’driver’ who
was engaged in leading the horses and the other
the ploughman proper, it is evident that the
calculation is based on the use of a single
plough drawn by six horses (Pierson 26). At
Furness in County Kildare in 1776, Young

found that six oxen or six horses to a plough
were used in summer work (Young 421-22)
and at Ballycanvan, County Waterford, he
noted that the poor people ’plough with four
horses, sometimes six’ (Young 411). In 1800,
Tighe stated that in County Kilkenny, the
clumsy plough generally employed in ’break-
ing and turning fallows, ley ground or burnt
land’ was sometimes drawn by six horses
(Tighe 293). O Suileabhain of Callan in the
same county recorded in his diary in 1828
that he had seen six horses ploughing summer
fallow (MacGrath 266,267). The summer cross-
ploughing of fallows in County Meath also
called for six horses, according to Thompson,
writing in 1802 (Thompson 108, 145), while
Dutton, rejoicing at the introduction of the
Scotch plough into County Clare in 1808,
declared that ploughing was now done with two
horses by many ’who formerly used never less
than four, sometimes six’ (Dutton: Clare 51).
A traveller in 1813/14 recorded that on his way
from Collon, County Louth, to Slane, County
Meath, he saw ’six ploughs with six horses
each at work in one field’ (Gough 72).
Three-horse ploughs were also in use but
all the information about them known to the
writer relates to the early nineteenth century
and to the north of the country. They were
recorded in County Monaghan (Baronies of
Cremorne, Dartry, Farney and Monaghan) in
1801 (Coote: Monaghan 69, 95, 122, 161); in
County Cavan (Baronies of Castlerahan, Clan-
mahon, Clankee and Tullygarvey) (Coote: Ca-
van 151, 180) in 1802 and in County Sligo in
1802 (M’Parlan: Sligo 13) and 1816 (Shaw
Mason 381). In some of these districts, however,
the two-horse team was also employed, the
three-horse kind being the commoner (Coote:
Cavan 180; Coote: Monaghan 95, 161) and in
one district two horses were generally used in
lowland country and three in the hills (Coote:
Monaghan 161). In all three counties the horses
seem to have been worked abreast (Coote: