DES KEENAN'S BOOKS ON IRISH HISTORY online version |
Pre-Famine Ireland LINKS TO INDIVIDUAL CHAPTERS CLICK PRE-FAMINE TO RETURN TO BOOK LIST; CLICK HOME PAGE TO RETURN TO HOME PAGE Pre-Famine
The Primary Sector I: AgricultureSummary of chapter. The Irish economy, like almost every other economy at the time was based primarily on agriculture. Every branch of the livestock and tillage industries were being developed as farmers in the British Isles strove to improve their seeds, their breeds of animals, and their methods of agriculture. Though in some limited areas there were large numbers dependent on the potato and casual labour, this was not typical of the Irish economy as a a whole.
(v) Tillage: Cultivation of the Soil
(vi) Tillage: Fertility and Crop Hygiene
(vii) Tillage: Seeds and Crops **************************************************************************** By
the beginning of the eighteenth century the improvement of livestock had been
undertaken in The
traditional Irish cow was small and black like the Welsh or Kerry breeds. The
terms 'black cattle' and 'horned cattle' applied to cows, for the word 'cattle'
itself could apply to horses. The Irish cow had a reputation for hardiness and
an ability to survive, if not actually to fatten, on poor pastures. Some of the
improved breeds were considered delicate and needing to be stall-fed. The rough
grazing on the mountains and bogs was used in summer to pasture the cattle in
common. But by 1820 it was complained that much of this traditional mountain
grazing was being divided into potato patches (IFJ 3 Mar 1821). By
the year 1800 Only
around But
the No doubt the smaller farmers used the cheapest
bull and his cows would be a mixture of this and that. Also the further inland
one went the less emphasis would there be on improvement. [Top] It
proved difficult to produce a dual-purpose sheep, one that produced abundant
fine wool and fattened well. The flesh of the mature sheep was called mutton.
It was always eaten fresh as it had proved impossible to salt in a satisfactory
manner. At the beginning of the century over most of Sheep
usually produce different kinds of wool on different parts of their bodies. For
manufacturing purposes two were important, the woollen or clothing type and the
worsted type. Woollen yarns have shorter wavy fibres. These are spun loosely
with little twist and are loosely woven. The cloth is then washed causing the
fibres to mat or felt with each other. Worsted wools were longer and straighter
with a lesser felting quality. In spinning they were given a high twist which
produced a thin smooth thread. This was then closely woven to produce a light
smooth cloth. Lowland
sheepwalks seem to have reached their greatest extent in the 1690's before the
export of woollens was prohibited. There were several Irish sheep breeds known
by name like the Roscommon and Wicklow sheep but it is not clear what were the precise differences between them. The Roscommon, in
the eighteenth century, was considered the best in From
the late eighteenth century onwards experiments had been carried on in the
north of The
keeping of pigs and poultry followed on the spread of tillage chiefly to use up
the by-products of milling such as bran and pollard. The
pig was important in Irish agriculture both for consumption on the farm and for
sale to the provision merchants for curing or salting. Before refrigeration
meat of any kind could rarely be eaten fresh except in the big cities where
animals could be slaughtered daily. The flesh of the pig was called pork, and
it was eaten either fresh or salted. The native Irish pig, an ugly bony animal
that fattened well, was remarkably suitable for salting and it was discovered
on Captain Cook's voyages that Irish salted pork could be taken on a three year
cruise in the Tropics and still remain edible if not exactly palatable. During
the Napoleonic Wars the army and navy placed great contracts in By
the year 1800 the native Irish pig was being replaced by the improved Dishley
pig which matured and fattened earlier. By mid-century the Black Berkshire was
being preferred. Nowadays Large Whites and Landraces predominate. The
egg and poultry industry virtually owes its existence to the introduction of
the steamship on the
A
wealthy gentleman could afford to keep a variety of horses, farm horses,
hunters, hacks, and carriage horses, but the ordinary farmer wanted an
all-round horse for all these purposes. Following the example of George III,
some attempt was made to improve farm horses by importing Hanoverian and There
was nothing peculiar about the Irish thoroughbred early in the nineteenth
century, for it had much the same bloodlines as the English breed. By 1800 the The
same is true with regard to beekeeping where the efforts made in the eighteenth
century were not kept up. However after 1800 the use of beehives rather than
the straw skeps which were destroyed annually became more general. These hives
were cylindrical in shape and made of straw. They were placed one on top of
another and separated by lattices. [Top]
(Only
systems of cultivation are described in this section; systems or tenure will be
treated elsewhere. One
of the great objects of patriotic gentlemen in the eighteenth century was to
increase the area under tillage for large amounts of corn and even potatoes
were being imported while labourers were going abroad to seek work. Tillage, or
the cultivation of the land, probably reached its greatest ever extent in 1845
just before the repeal of the Corn Laws. It is difficult to be precise about
the number of acres under the plough for one never knows if fallow land is
included or not. Lands actually under crops, including temporary crops of hay,
plus land left fallow, should give the total area under cultivation. The rest
was either permanent grassland or else wasteland (unimproved land). Figures
from before the Famine claim that a quarter of all land, or a third of improved
land, was under crops. If we can add a fraction to cover fallow lands we can
conclude that more than half of all agricultural or improved land was regularly
cultivated. Mr Griffiths, the chief valuation officer, estimated that 15
million acres out of a total of 20 million acres could be regarded as improved
land. Of these 15 million acres 6½ million acres (he estimated) were under
grass, 4 million under oats, 2 million under wheat, and 1½ million were under
potatoes. (Of the remaining approximately 1 million acres a good deal was
probably under barley, but all the figures are very rough. Tillage declined
after the repeal of the Corn Laws, and there were 10½ million acres under grass
in 1910. The nutritional yield of potatoes per acre was twice that of wheat but
the market value was much less. They were too bulky to transport, and there was
no known way of preserving them. Each family therefore just grew enough for its
own use. There were two principal instruments used in tilling the soil, the spade and the plough (plow). The
common spade at the beginning of the century more resembled our shovel, but
there was also a narrow spade in use for breaking the ground, after which the
shovel-like spade was used to make drills or ridges. Cultivation with these
spades was inevitably very shallow, consisting merely of turning over the sod.
Improving agriculturalists insisted on the necessity of deep digging, so two
types of spade were developed. The true spade is intended to be driven into the
ground with the foot. Every Irish spade is therefore provided with a footrest
on the top of the blade. In Where
ploughing was done the 'great plough' or medieval plough, drawn by a team of
oxen, was commonly used in Agricultural
improvers turned their attention to the plough, and a Scotsman named James
Small concluded that the most important thing was to completely invert the sod
to kill all the weeds. To do this he made the mouldboard curved, and made it of
metal that was easier to shape. The new Scotch plough could now be made smaller
and lighter, requiring only two horses or oxen and one ploughman. In a
well-ploughed field not a blade of grass should be visible, but it was some
time before single ploughmen began to win prizes in the annual contests. Horses
gradually displaced the oxen. They were faster, and could also be used for
riding and for drawing the new 'Scotch cart'. It was considered that a pair of
horses became economical if a man had twenty acres of his own or neighbour's
land to plough. Oxen were cheaper to buy and feed, and could later be sold to
the butcher. Oxen had virtually disappeared from the The
Scotch cart was gradually displacing the Irish 'low-backed car' As the name of the latter implies it had small wheels, so
that the shafts ran down at an angle from the horses neck until they almost
touched the ground at the rear. In the Scotch cart (apparently of English
origin) the wheels were larger, so that the shafts were horizontal. Heavier
loads could be carried, and the cart could be unloaded by tipping. By 1815 the
new cart was universally used in Agricultural
machinery was being improved and developed as more emphasis was placed on the
use of the horse. The increasing use of the horse in the first half of the
nineteenth century meant a decline in the need for agricultural labour. A new
form of harrow was imported from Threshing
machines were coming into use on the larger farms. As they were powered by
horses they were much smaller than the later steam-powered machines. They could
be powered by up to four horses. Nevertheless they were considered better and
cheaper than using teams of men with flails. But the reaping machine did not
catch on until McCormick's model was exhibited at the Great Exhibition in 1851. The
sickle continued to be used for reaping cereals, and the scythe for grass.
Straw was of little importance, and it was easier and less wasteful just to
collect the heads, and bind them into tiny sheaves for threshing. The land was
then cleaned and fertilised by burning the straw as it stood. The reaper caught
a handful of stalks high up with one hand and sawed through them with saw-tooth
sickle. This minimised the shedding of the grain. The scythe began to be used
for cutting cereals about mid-century. It was therefore necessary to cut the
crop when not quite ripe and allow it to ripen in stooks or shocks.
An
advertisement in an Irish newspaper in 1798 lists machinery of interest to
farmers: machines for carding and spinning wool and cotton, for threshing corn,
for cutting straw, winnowing, churning, and washing, hand rollers for grinding
malt or bruising oats for horses, wire machines for sieving flour, mangles,
etc. They were driven either by hand or horsepower.
[Top] (v) Tillage:
Cultivation of the Soil In
general, improving farmers in northern The
usual system of draining the fields in pre-Famine There
were two systems for preparing the seedbed, one done with the plough and the
other with the spade. The
system of spade cultivation was usually called the 'lazybed' system because of
the bad practices of many lazy farmers. But when well-done it involved much
hard work, and produced excellent results. When done properly the soil was dug
over first to a depth of nine inches with a straight spade. Then parallel beds
five feet wide and separated from each other by a space twelve to eighteen
inches wide were marked out and the manure was spread on them. The seed was
placed on top of the manure, scattered by hand in the case of cereals, or
placed in rows across the bed in the case of potatoes, this latter to
facilitate weeding. The soil from the interspersed spaces or strips was then
dug out and placed on top of the seed to cover it, and the same time making
drainage trenches between the beds. Later still, as weeds began to appear, more
soil could be dug from the trenches to cover them and keep them down. This
method produced deep drains and was very useful in the mountainous regions of
the west. Opponents
of the system were scathing in their criticisms, and said it was well named.
The old shovel-like spade was used, so there was no preliminary deep digging.
Manure, if used at all was placed on top of the undug ground. The weeds were
not killed. The seed was placed on the ground, and lightly covered with soil
shovelled up from the trenches, but not enough was shovelled up to kill the
weeds. Digging the potatoes was more expensive from beds than from drills (Farmers' Gazette Feb. Mar. 1846). .
The system of ploughing was somewhat different from that in use at present,
whether done with the great plough or Scotch plough. With the drains now under
the soil the modern farmer tries to plough his field as flat as possible. The
aim in the old days was to use the plough to form ridges with valleys for
drainage in between them. The ploughman therefore ploughed along the length of
the field for about 220 yards, a furrow-long or furlong. The next furrow was
ploughed right beside the first one, going back in the opposite direction. The
sod was therefore always thrown inwards. The third furrow was alongside the
first and the fourth alongside the second, and so on. The statute acre
represents a strip 220 yards long by 22 yards wide, or 22 times up and down
with an 18 inch furrow. In practice, the strips were only 6 yards wide, or in
wetter ground 5 yards wide. When the ploughed strip was sufficiently wide the
ploughman began another similar strip beside it. (No doubt, in practice, the
ploughman worked two strips simultaneously, going up one and going down the
other as this would avoid tight turning on the headlands.) When it was finished
the two strips were separated by a shallow drain two furrows wide. The ploughed
field therefore presented an appearance of parallel ridges about 220 yards long
by 6 yards wide, separated by shallow valleys one yard wide. (The ridges were
not quite straight, but slightly S-shaped at least when an ox-team was used.
The reason for this was that the team was veered slightly as it approached the
headland in order to make the turn.) Harrowing was then done along the ridge,
and if drills were used, as they increasingly were, they too were made along
the length of the ridge. In the following year the ridges were, or were
supposed to be, shifted sideways, by half their width. When undersoil drainage
was introduced cross ploughing was done to produce level fields.
This
ploughing was done on the larger farms. When oxen were used the fields had to
be large, but with a smaller lighter plough and one or two horses, much smaller
fields could be cultivated. No villages jointly ploughing large open fields
with oxteams seem to have survived in The
smaller plough allowed smaller fields. The changeover to grazing also tended to
produce smaller fields for more intensive grazing. Where small fields are
common it is reasonable to date the hedges or fences to the nineteenth century,
but fencing of large fields or parks was common in the preceding century. For
preparing a seedbed for wheat a single ploughing was considered sufficient after
a crop of potatoes, but three after a fallow. More preparation was required for
flax that needed a finer seedbed, but it is probable that spade culture was
widespread in flax-growing areas.
[Top] (vi)
Tillage:
Maintenance of Fertility and Weed Control The
next problem was the maintenance of fertility. This largely meant adding or
restoring nitrogen. This could be done in various ways, by leaving the land
fallow, by planting clovers or leguminous plants, and by adding manures
especially farmyard manure. Nitrogen
is fixed naturally in the atmosphere during thunderstorms and falls on the
land. Exhausted land therefore naturally restores itself after a few years. In
primitive 'slash-and-burn' systems the land is cultivated for a few years and
then natural vegetation is allowed to grow on it for several years. The
undergrowth is then burned and the ashes provide a fine
manure. A great disadvantage of this system is that weeds are allowed to seed
freely. Though this system was not used in Another
system was known as the 'infield-outfield' system. This was very ancient and
was known in classical and Biblical times. In the The
third system was the 'champion' or 'open-field' system, or more properly the
'two (or three) field system'. Champion (champagne) and open-field (the terms
are equivalent, one from French one from Anglo-Saxon roots) referred to the
large unfenced fields ploughed communally with the great plough and oxen as
described earlier. The three-field system referred to the system of rotation.
The principle of rotation produced two good effects. Firstly, the nitrogen
level could be naturally restored by leaving one field fallow, while at the
same time, the whole summer could be devoted during the fallow year to
ploughing and rooting out weeds. A three-field system allowed for a three-year
rotation, a cereal crop, a leguminous crop, and a fallow year. In the fallow
year the land was ploughed several times during the summer to eradicate the
weeds, and then sown in the autumn. This simple medieval system was rather
inflexible and was limited by the great size of the fields necessary for the
oxteam and great plough and the need of each villager to get his strip in the
ploughed field. This system was widely used in The That
animal manure was a valuable fertiliser for soils was known from ancient times.
It was spread on the land either by folding animals on it, i.e. by confining
them to particular parts by means of hurdles, or by carting out the manure from
the sheds and yards. The bulk of the manure was increased by using straw for
bedding and by spreading it around the yards and the roads approaching the
farmstead. In places near the sea, wrack and even rotten fish were used. At the
beginning of the nineteenth century chemists studied the composition of manures
and this led to the development of artificial fertilisers like superphosphate
from bones. Guano was imported from It
was also noted that the fertility of acid or bog soils could be increased by
the application of lime. Limestone was widely available in eastern The introduction of clover, which was a
nitrogen-fixing crop, enabled the cycle to be extended, and also it was
recognised that wheat and potatoes took different nutrients from the soil, so
that potatoes could follow the wheat. But if potatoes and a
cash crop of flax were added, or a crop of hay, a six-year rotation
would result. In
Weed
and pest control was largely done by the system of the fallowing and was closely
bound with the system chosen for restoring fertility. In the fallow year the
land was intensively ploughed in the summer, a least three ploughings being
recommended. The hotter and drier the summer the better for
killing the weeds. Crops were also weeded by hand, the only way possible
on lazy beds. Hoeing with the horse hoe was possible with drill cultivation.
When the In
flax growing districts the flax should have been fitted into a proper rotation
with proper fallowing. The smaller the holding the less easy was it to take
land out of cultivation. But the observation that fields in Standards
of agricultural practice varied widely. According to
As
most of the information we have comes from improvers who were describing either
the latest trends or the worst aspect of the old system it is not easy to get a
picture of traditional agriculture at the beginning of the century. No region
in It would be quite large, from fifty to a
hundred acres, enclosed in one or more large fields, and would include some
waste or bogland. The most fertile part would be cultivated more or less
continuously in ridges formed by a great plough and oxen that formed ridges. A
rotation would be confined to cereal crops, wheat, oats, and barley, followed
by fallow. The varieties would be disease-resistant, hardy, short-stocked,
late-ripening, firm-husked, but fairly low-yielding, and would be cut with the
sickle midway up the stalk. Some of the straw would be used for feeding, and
some for bedding. Between crops the land would be partially cleaned by
stubble-burning and the inefficient great plough so would have numerous weeds.
Half-rotted manure and straw would be spread on the fields. Only sufficient
potatoes for the farmer and his servants would be sown, as there was no market
for potatoes or anything else except wool and butter. The barley would be
purchased by the local brewer or distiller. On the permanent grasslands and the
rough grazing and on the ploughed fields during winter unless there was
autumn-sown wheat cattle and sheep would graze. The cattle and sheep would be
the hardy native breeds that could survive the winter on very little
out-of-doors. Their numbers would be cut down to a minimum by slaughtering when
the grass failed. The yield of milk or wool would not be great but would fetch
in some useful cash. Within
the parish would be at least one gentleman's demesne with gardens, orchards,
horses, and some stall-fed cattle to produce tender meat. Also within the
parish would be numerous smaller farmers following much the same programme but
with spade cultivation and lazybeds. The nutritious potato would occupy more of
their land.
It was often noted that the further down the
social scale one went the less was the knowledge of agriculture, and the less
the care. It was observed that the lands cultivated by Lord Clancarty at
Ballinasloe were among the best cultivated in (vii) Tillage:
seeds and crops Improving
farmers paid as much attention to improving their seeds as they did to
improving their animals. They looked for hardy, easily-germinating, disease
resistant, heavy-cropping varieties. When buying seed the careful farmer took a
handful to see that the grains were full and not shrivelled, and then he tested
the seed on his own land. The best farmers used only clean selected seed, but
other farmers were content with what was cheapest locally. The use of poor seed
was prevalent in the inland counties. Potatoes
presented a special problem. They do not breed true from their seed, so they
are propagated by taking the swollen underground tubers and planting them.
After this has been repeated for a number of years the quality of the variety
declines, so improving farmers constantly try to develop new varieties. Before
the great potato blight there was a much wider variety with regard to size,
colour, flavour, and texture of potatoes sown. In the 1820's potatoes were
classified as blacks, whites, and pinks, but any crossing of
these was considered inferior. The Apple potato, supreme for half a
century, was in decline, but was being replaced by the White Apple and the Red
Apple. The Cup potato was also in decline but was being replaced by the Yam
potato that was expected to yield 15 tons to the Irish acre. Yams were very
coarse and given to pigs and servants. Potatoes, unlike turnips, were boiled
before being fed to animals. Lancashire Pinks, Tartans, and Early Champions,
were other esteemed varieties (IFJ 4
Dec 1824). The
Farmers' Gazette ( Potatoes
were widely grown in potato gardens for home consumption but because of their
bulk and perishability made a poor cash crop. At the end of the eighteenth
century The
Dublin Society in the eighteenth century made great efforts to improve the
growing of flax, the great cash staple crop of Of
the cereal crops, wheat was grown commercially chiefly in south and east Haymaking
seems to have been introduced at a comparatively late date into Some
authors felt after the War that light soils had been exhausted by excessive
monoculture of wheat and would be more profitable under grass especially for
sheep-grazing. For
laying down fields in grass the Farming Society in 1806 recommended meadow
foxtail (Alopecurus pratensis), great
meadow grass (Poa pratensis), and
meadow fescue (Festuca pratensis)
(SNL 2 July 1806, Latin names as in original). Experiments with perennial ryegrass
(Lolium perenne) showed its
advantages especially in the length of its growing season. Italian ryegrass (Lolium multiflorum) was introduced
later. A clergyman, one of many with a strong interest in improving
agriculture, the Rev. William Richardson, the Rector of Moy, Co. Tyrone,
promoted the cultivation of the very nutritious fiorin or Irish winter hay. It
grew well on poor wet soils, but had to be planted by means of rhizomes or root
cuttings, and it could not be trampled by animals. By mid-century interest in
it had ceased. The intersowing of clover with hay was widely adopted in the
commercial sector from the end of the eighteenth century. It extended the
grazing season and restored nitrogen to the soil.
Several
other crops found their place in various rotations. Oil seed rape (Brassica napus), turnips, (Brassica rapa),
cabbage (Brassica alba capitata magna),
and kale or borecole (Brassica laciniata
rubra) were mention from time to time. The growing of turnips was advocated
during the Famine as an alternative to potatoes, and cultivation increased from
that time onwards. Horticulture
was fully developed in the eighteenth century including the use of sheltering
walls, glass frames and hothouses, and hotbeds, and all the large estates at
least had both vegetable and flower gardens. Large numbers were employed in the
gardens. In the absence of shops and refrigeration the head gardener was
expected to provide a wide variety of vegetables fruits and herbs throughout
the year. Among these were salsafy, shallots, savoys, turnips, brown Dutch
cabbage, green Dutch cabbage, Silesian cabbage, purslane, radish, common and
French sorrell, cress, mustard, green and white cos lettuce, hardy green cos,
black-seeded cos, black American cress, Indian cress, chervil, basil, borage,
caraway, fennel, marigold, majoram, mint, sage, tansy, tarragon, and thyme (IFJ 14 Mar 1818). A similarly wide
variety of fruits and flowers was expected. Re-afforestation
was a particular concern of the Dublin Society from its origin early in the
eighteenth century, but only the great landowners took the matter seriously.
Most of the mature woods in The collection and drying of kelp was an important industry on the coasts. When burned the ashes of the seaweed were little inferior to those of imported barilla for bleaching. As it was rich in soda it was also used in the manufacture of soda, glass, and soap. |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Copyright Desmond J. Keenan, B.S.Sc.; Ph.D. ;.London, U.K.
|