5 2 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



some degree by the Congested Districts Board, and most signs of the earlier 

 systems have been obliterated. Thus, we are forced to depend very largely 

 upon what can be inferred from other places to which we believe Clare Island 

 may be comparable. 



And at the very beginning we run into a crucial problem : How far were 

 the older Clare islanders true Celts, and how far were they modified in blood 

 and in economy and custom by the Norsemen ? If we could eliminate the 

 Norsemen, which, on the west coast of Ireland, is very difficult to do, our 

 problem would be simplified in some degree. For then we could say that the 

 old Clare islanders had no other cow than the little black cow of Western 

 Europe and no other horse than the old Celtic pony till a few hundred years 

 ago. And we could also say that the probability of their ever having culti- 

 vated their fields on the two-field or three-field system typical of Teutonic 

 and old English agriculture was highly improbable. 



Being unable to solve the problem as between Norseman and Celt, we can 

 only begin by giving a very incomplete account of the agriculture of the 

 Celts, and then indicate how far it might have been modified by contact with 

 the Norsemen and with other people who may have influenced the Clare 

 islanders since the Norsemen's times. 



Far enough back in the history of any nation, we come to a time when 

 that nation took to tilling the soil. That time, for the Celts in Britain, is 

 placed as far back as the fourth century before the Christian era by Pytheas, 

 who sailed the North Sea as far as Orkney in the time of Alexander the Great. 

 At one time many of Pytheas's stories were deemed incredible ; but so many 

 of them have turned out to be true that he is now treated with a higher 

 degree of respect. Strabo was one of the early unbelievers ; but he admits 

 that Pytheas " appears to have reasoned correctly, that people bordering on 

 the frozen zone would be destitute of cultivated fruits, almost deprived of 

 domestic animals ; that their food would consist of millet, herbs, fruits and 

 roots ; and that where there was corn and honey they would make drink of 

 these." 1 The construction of the original Greek indicates that, while the 

 herbs, fruits and roots were wild, the millet was cultivated. 2 



At the first attempt we should not guess millet to have been the first 

 grain cultivated by the Celts ; but we have only to consider how great were 

 the facilities for isolation in those ancient times. Besides, Herodotus tells 

 us it was grown by the Callipidae, a tribe of Greek-Scythians, and by the 

 Alazones; Maurikios tells that the Slavs were rich in products of the soil, 

 especially in millet ; Hehn shows it to have been grown by the Aquitanians, 



1 Holm's translation, book iv, chap, v, $ 5. 



2 Kiyxpy 5r nut uypiois Kuxavois ital Kapirtm «al ^i£an TpecpeaOaL. — Strabo, book iv, 201. 



