Tools & tillage: a journal on the history of the implements of cultivation and other agricultural processes (4.1980/1983)

54

J.BELL

Fig. 8. Asymmetrical drill plough in use near Annalong, County Down.
Asymmetrischer Reihenpflug in Gebrauch in der Nahe von Annalong, Grafschaft Down.


This explanation of changes in Mourne
plough design has been limited to the tech-
nological level. Even at this level it can be
seen that the Mourne plough tradition can-
not be regarded as the working out of tech-
nical difficulties by the people of a small area
in isolation. Changes in Mourne plough de-
sign resulted from competition with imple-
ments imported from elsewhere, which
either took over some of the erstwhile func-
tions of the local ploughs or suggested poss-
ible refinements of local designs to their
makers. Why the vigorous local tradition
developed in an area relatively accessible to
outside influences, on an island generally
thought of as a receiver rather than a source
of recent agricultural technological innova-

tion would require a complex analysis of all
the factors in the social and material environ-
ment which induce technological change.
Such an analysis would depend on much
more rigorous research. This research
should be attempted however as it may re-
veal more of the forces which led to the
‘improving’ development of the Old Scotch
plough in Scotland, and the tangential ‘folk’
development of the same sort of plough in
Ireland.
Holzpfluge aus den Mourne Mountains
in Irland
Der Artikel legt die theoretische Rekonstruktion
einer Entwicklungsreihe von Pflugtypen aus den
Mourne Mountains in der Grafschaft Down in