Clare Island Survey — Agriculture and its History. 5 1 7 



a cow or ox, a full vat of mead 9 handbreadfchs in its depth diagonally and 

 as much in breadth, seven thraves of oats of one band for provender, a 

 three-year-old swine, a salted flitch of 3 fingerbreadths in thickness, a vessel 

 of butter 3 handbreadths in depth, not heaped, and 3 in breadth." 1 



Of the servile class little is known excepting that they consisted chiefly 

 of deserters from other tribes, criminals, and their descendants. They were 

 people with no pedigree and therefore unlikely to get much mention in 

 any document. They were the property of the chiefs and higher tribes- 

 men and lived in huts or cubicles about their masters' houses. They 

 performed the most menial services : they were horse-boys, errand-boys, 

 messengers, swine-herds, and so on ; and, in the case of a chief with a home- 

 farm, they were his farm-labourers. Many of them had a garden in which 

 to grow food and vegetables. 



It need scarcely be pointed out that, as each full tribesman and aspirant 

 had only about four acres of arable land, of which it is unlikely that more 

 than two were under crop at one time, and, as the average crop, reckoned in 

 wheat, could scarcely have been more than ten or twelve bushels to the acre, 2 

 the tribesmen must have depended very largely upon the produce of their 

 flocks and herds. Nor is it likely that their farming was good enough to 

 make wheat their chief crop ; while oats and, in some cases, barley, with less 

 trouble and care, would have yielded them an equivalent grain-supply. 

 Judging by the data collected in Seebohm's books, oats were the chief grain- 

 crop. One or two quotations from Giraldus Cambrensis, a relative of 

 some of the men that came over to Ireland with Strongbow, who wrote 

 in the twelfth century, will show the case to have been as suggested: — 

 " In the months of May and April only the soil is once ploughed for oats, 

 and again in the summer a third time, and in winter for wheat. Almost 

 all the people live upon the produce of their herds, with oats, milk, cheese 

 and butter ; eating flesh in larger proportions than bread. 3 ..." 



"The higher class go to battle mounted on swift and generous steeds, 

 which their country produces ; but the greater part of the people fight 

 on foot, on account of the marshy nature and unevenness of the soil. 4 



" They neither inhabit towns, villages, nor castles, but lead a solitary 

 life in the woods, on the borders of which they do not erect sumptuous 

 palaces, nor lofty stone buildings, but content themselves with small huts 

 made of the boughs of trees twisted together, constructed with little labour 

 and expense, and sufficient to endure throughout the year. They have 



1 Quoted in Seebohm's Tribal System in Wales from Ancient Laws of Wales, i, 197. 



2 See article " Agriculture" in Science in Modern Life. vol. v, p. 8. 



3 Giraldus Cambrensis, Bonn's edn., p. 490. ' Ibid., p. 491. 



R.I. A. PBOC, VOL. XXXI. C 5 



