DOI article:
Lucas, A. T.: Irish ploughing practices, 4
DOI Page / Citation link: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.48999#0209
IRISH PLOUGHING PRACTICES
A. T. Lucas
PART FOUR
(concluded)
Ploughing Tackle. The earliest information
about the ploughing tackle in use at popular
level is that provided by Lithgow who-, in 1619,
saw somewhere in Ulster ploughs drawn by the
tails of horses: “wanting garnishing [harness],
they are only fastned with straw, or wooden
Ropes to their bare Rumps” (Lithgow 433).
The “wooden ropes” in question were made of
twisted withies and were in widespread con-
temporary use. They can be traced back to- an-
cient times. A type of spancel, called mr-
chomal, used on the forelegs of animals, chiefly
horses, is referred to- on a number of occasions
in early texts. One law tract states that it was
used on yearling calves (Ancient Laws, vol. 4,
87) and another that it was made of rods or
twigs (Ancient Laws vol. 5, 483, 485). A span-
cel of the same type and of the same material
was still in common use at the end of the seven-
teenth century, as Dineley, 1681, relates: “Yet
the vulgar and most usuall way of spanceling,
not onely of Horses, but black cattle, viz.,
Cows, etc., in this Countrey, is by joining their
fore leggs together by Gads or Withs twisted”
(Dineley 130). Another early text refers to a
large dog which was tied by means of a withy
rope, selan gadraigh, (Meyer & Nutt appendix
67, 81). Gadraigh is an adjectival form derived
from gad, the Irish word for a rod or withy,
which was freely adopted into the vocabulary
of persons writing in English about Irish affairs
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Farewell, 1689, in his verse burlesque The
Irish Hudibras, testifies to the universal use of
withy ropes in the Ireland of his time. When
the hero of the poem, Nees, and his com-
panions disembarked from their boats:
“He bound his Fleet with Twists of Wattle:
Obsequious Gad, that serves instead
Of Cables, Cords, Hemp, Flax, and Thread”
(Farewell 1-2).
So characteristic of the country did Farewell
consider these ropes that he depicted the mak-
ing of them as one of the chief pastimes of the
Irish denizens of the underworld whom Nees
encountered on his visit there:
“The Lay-men Box, and Fight, and Wrestle,
And some make Ropes of Twisted Hasle”
(Farewell 102).
Indeed, like ‘bonnyclabber’ (thick milk),
‘brogues’ (shoes) and ploughing by the tail,
they became part of the stock-in-trade of Eng-
lish authors writing in comic or derogatory
strain about Ireland. John Michelburne, in a
play about the siege of Derry written about
1705, refers to them in this tone:
“Your English Customs shall no more prevail
And Gads instead of Ropes do never fail”
(Bartley 121).
In keeping with the belief that the use of ropes
made of withies was a typically Irish custom,
there were anecdotes in circulation which re-
lated that Irishmen about to be executed beg-
ged to be hanged with “gads”, according to the
custom of the country, and not with ropes
(Bartley 11).
A. T. Lucas
PART FOUR
(concluded)
Ploughing Tackle. The earliest information
about the ploughing tackle in use at popular
level is that provided by Lithgow who-, in 1619,
saw somewhere in Ulster ploughs drawn by the
tails of horses: “wanting garnishing [harness],
they are only fastned with straw, or wooden
Ropes to their bare Rumps” (Lithgow 433).
The “wooden ropes” in question were made of
twisted withies and were in widespread con-
temporary use. They can be traced back to- an-
cient times. A type of spancel, called mr-
chomal, used on the forelegs of animals, chiefly
horses, is referred to- on a number of occasions
in early texts. One law tract states that it was
used on yearling calves (Ancient Laws, vol. 4,
87) and another that it was made of rods or
twigs (Ancient Laws vol. 5, 483, 485). A span-
cel of the same type and of the same material
was still in common use at the end of the seven-
teenth century, as Dineley, 1681, relates: “Yet
the vulgar and most usuall way of spanceling,
not onely of Horses, but black cattle, viz.,
Cows, etc., in this Countrey, is by joining their
fore leggs together by Gads or Withs twisted”
(Dineley 130). Another early text refers to a
large dog which was tied by means of a withy
rope, selan gadraigh, (Meyer & Nutt appendix
67, 81). Gadraigh is an adjectival form derived
from gad, the Irish word for a rod or withy,
which was freely adopted into the vocabulary
of persons writing in English about Irish affairs
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Farewell, 1689, in his verse burlesque The
Irish Hudibras, testifies to the universal use of
withy ropes in the Ireland of his time. When
the hero of the poem, Nees, and his com-
panions disembarked from their boats:
“He bound his Fleet with Twists of Wattle:
Obsequious Gad, that serves instead
Of Cables, Cords, Hemp, Flax, and Thread”
(Farewell 1-2).
So characteristic of the country did Farewell
consider these ropes that he depicted the mak-
ing of them as one of the chief pastimes of the
Irish denizens of the underworld whom Nees
encountered on his visit there:
“The Lay-men Box, and Fight, and Wrestle,
And some make Ropes of Twisted Hasle”
(Farewell 102).
Indeed, like ‘bonnyclabber’ (thick milk),
‘brogues’ (shoes) and ploughing by the tail,
they became part of the stock-in-trade of Eng-
lish authors writing in comic or derogatory
strain about Ireland. John Michelburne, in a
play about the siege of Derry written about
1705, refers to them in this tone:
“Your English Customs shall no more prevail
And Gads instead of Ropes do never fail”
(Bartley 121).
In keeping with the belief that the use of ropes
made of withies was a typically Irish custom,
there were anecdotes in circulation which re-
lated that Irishmen about to be executed beg-
ged to be hanged with “gads”, according to the
custom of the country, and not with ropes
(Bartley 11).