Tools & tillage: a journal on the history of the implements of cultivation and other agricultural processes (3.1976/1979)

THE »GOWL-GOB«
AN EXTINCT SPADE TYPE FROM
COUNTY MAYO, IRELAND
By
A. T. Lucas

This note deals with a two-bladed spade, now
extinct, which was formerly in use in some
districts in Co. Mayo (fig. i). It has been
briefly discussed by O Danachair and Gailey
(O Danachair 1963, 113; Gailey 1970, 45), the
latter of whom illustrates schematically the
two surviving examples in the National Mu-
seum of Ireland. In view of the unique charac-
ter of the implement and of the unsatisfactory
nature of the literary evidence relating to it, a
detailed account of the two extant specimens
and a review of all the contemporary informa-
tion on record about it seem desirable.
The earliest known reference to it is by
James M’Parlan when writing about the Erris
district in the north-west of Co. Mayo in
1801:
But very peculiarly singular indeed is their spade;
a two-bladed or double spade, which the natives
call a gowl-gob. To form an idea of it, we must
conceive two iron blades, each about three inches
broad, with an interstice of one inch and a half
between, fixed on a two-forked socket like two
separate loys; this answers for their light sandy soil,
and is more hardy [almost certainly a misprint for
‘handy’] and light than a solid spade of the same
breadth without an interstice. (M’Parlan 1802,
U9)-
He supplied an illustration of the imple-
ment (Fig. 2, a).
The next reference to the tool known to the
writer occurs in an account, written in 18 3 2 by
P. Knight of the Mullet peninsula in the same
district:

Ploughs are only to be found at Major Bing-
ham’s, Rev. Mr. Dawson’s and Rev. Mr. Lyons’s;
the whole work being done by the spade of which
there is a very curious description here, called a
gowel. It consists of two small spades on separate
soles of wood, in the shape of a fork, joined in one
at the handle; each about 3V2 inches [c. 8.8 cm]
broad, with a space between of about two inches [c.
5 cm]; the whole breadth being 9 inches [22.8 cm]
and 15 inches [38 cm] long in this shape (see fig. 2,
b). The handle is the usual length of the common
spade. This shape of spade I conceive to have orig-
inated in a departure from the English spade, prob-
ably introduced by Sir Arthur Shaen’s settlement,
... but owing to not having sufficiently good smiths
to make them in their original shape, or the scarcity
of iron, they contrived the present one as a substi-
tute. It suits very well in the light sandy soils, but,
in bog reclaiming, where it is also used, it is but a
weak and awkward instrument (Knight 49, 50).
Later in his account, Knight, who was a
civil engineer engaged in drainage and other
reclamation work in the area, again refers to
the gowel. He states that one local landlord
who had settled a number of poor cotters on
bogland on his estate, had supplied each with
an English spade, while another landlord:
has got made for them strong spades suited to the
work to be done, neither the broad English spade
which he thinks too broad for the sod to be cut, nor
the foolish tool of the country, the gowel, or
two-pronged spade (Knight 1836, 73).
The attention of the Rev. Caesar Otway
was caught by it in Achill Island in the same
county in 1839: