54 Histoiy of Animal Plagues. 



palaces for the summer season), and they were laying the found- 

 ations, it was reported that there was found a marble ox's head, 

 which the finders having broken up, cast into the lime-kiln. 

 From that time, and up to the present, the breeds of cattle have 

 not ceased to be destroyed in all parts of the earth wheresoever 

 the Empire of the Romans extends.' ^ 



In Ireland, '^ A great [plaigh) upon cattle, with snow and 

 diseases {galar).' ^ 



A.D. 975. A severe winter and scarcity of food in London, 

 and also in Italy. A comet was seen. ' In the time of this 

 Edward (the martyr) appeared a blazing star, after which en- 

 sued many inconveniences, as well to man as to beasts, such as 

 hunger, sickness, murrain, and other like calamities, but none of 

 these things happened in the days of this Edward, but after his 

 death.' ^ 



A.D. 981. A inoilgarh, or epizooty of a cutaneous character, 

 previously unknown in Ireland until 770, began, and preceded a 

 most severe form of colic, called ' pestilential.' ' This year began 

 the murrain of cows, called, in Ireland, the Moilgarbh.' * 



A.D. 986. ' In this year first came the great murrain {yrf- 

 cvalm) among the cattle into England.'^ 'A great sudden de- 

 struction, which caused a loss of people and cattle among the 

 Saxons, Britons, and Gauls.' ^ ^ And the same year there was a 

 great murrain (morei/n) of cattle through all Wales.''' 



' Godfrey, son of Harold, with the black host, devastated the 

 isle of Mona, and two thousand men were blinded (captured ?), 

 and the remainder Maredudd, son of Owain, took with him to 

 Ceredigion and Dyved. And then a mortality [uara-olyaeth) 

 took place among all the cattle over the whole island of 

 Britain.' * 



What the nature of this very prevalent and destructive epi- 

 zooty may have been it is difficult now to conjecture ; but from 



1 G. Cedremis. Synop. Historiarum. Edit. Bonn, ii. p. 343. 



- Chronicon Scotorum. The edition of 1867 gives 959 as the date. 



3 Grafton. Chronicles of the History of England. London, 1569. 



* Annals of Clonmacnoise. ^ Chronic. Saxon. ^ Annals of Ulster. 



' D. Powel. The History of Cambria, 1584. 



8 Brut y Tywysogion, or Chronicles of the Prince of Wales. 



II 



