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Some background to the rebellions against English rule.
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In east Munster, there were the fortified towns of Waterford, Youghal, Cork, Kinsale and a few others and again the lands of the English rebels. The great valleys of the Blackwater and the Lee were still filled with dense oak-woods. This view stopped in west Munster where the soil got poorer and the hills crowded more closely together. It was cut off again at the Shannon basin, where woods and bogs lay on both sides of the ill-defined river channel.
If they looked north, Ulster was hidden by the broad belt of drumlins that stretched south-west from Strangford Lough to the headwaters of the Erne and then followed the valley of that river north-west to the sea in Donegal bay. Dense woods on the drumlin slopes and tops and lakes, bogs and sluggish streams between them made this very difficult country for the military man, as it also had been in the Iron Age.
"However, land-patterns were changing in the Pale. In some communities, the medieval strip-holdings with scattered plots in common fields still survived, but enclosure and the disappearance of small plots held by labour-service in favour of large leasehold farms worked by almost landless labourers were rapidly under way. The staple crop was wheat, but barley and rye were also grown.
"Conditions were very different in the marchlands beyond the Pale and still more so in the Irish areas. There scrubby forest, lakes and undrained bog were still widespread. There was some tillage, mainly on a shifting or long-fallow basis, in small plots cultivated with a spade. The lands were constantly redistributed to co-heirs and so there was little incentive to intensive land-use, improvements or substantial buildings; even chieftains sometimes lived in cabins.
"What impression of Irish farming and food can we form from the reports of the Tudor observers, steeped in prejudice as most of them were? Cattle made the most impact. Milch-cows were prized; "they will not kill a cow, unless it be old and yield no milk." Milk products of all kinds continued to be eaten. Booleying was in full force; the people in summer lived in booleys; "pasturing upon the mountain and waste wild places and removing still to fresh land....driving their cattle continually with them and feeding only on their milk and white meats (milk products); it was a good thing that in this country of Ireland, where there are great mountains and waste deserts full of grass, that the same should be eaten down and nourish many thousands of cattle".
Surplus cattle were readily killed and eaten and the large quantities of meat eaten without any accompanying bread was a constant source of surprise. Meat was eaten raw, boiled, roasted and used as an ingredient in soup. Blood was drawn and consumed after mixing with milk, butter or grains. Mutton, pork, hens and rabbits were also eaten. Venison appeared in pasties".
From "Reading the Irish Landscape" by Frank Mitchell and Michael Ryan.
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and may not be reproduced without written permission. Last updated February 2001. |
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