Clare Island Survey — Agriculture and its History. 5 25 



(eorna) fidbach, oats (corca)." 1 Flax is not mentioned directly, but someone 

 is described as " putting a linen apron about him,"- and there is a reference 

 to rye : " I advanced vehemently . . . like . . a deer to the cropping of 

 winter-rye (gemshecoil) in the month of June." 3 



Before the evidence from " MacConglinne " can be accepted, however, a 

 number of points have to be considered, of which these might be mentioned 

 as suggestive : — 



(i) Is the mention of buckwheat by the author of such a work as 

 " MacConglinne " proof that buckwheat was grown in Ireland in the twelfth 

 century ? Or is even the circumstantial reference to rye proof that rye was 

 grown ? Buckwheat is grown in western Europe, most of all, perhaps, in 

 Brittany, whence, if it had been grown there long, it might have come to 

 Ireland. But does any other early author mention it in Ireland ? Rye was 

 not grown by the early Egyptians, Greeks, or Romans. It spread from 

 eastern Europe, and is first mentioned among the Latins by Pliny 4 as having 

 been grown by the Taurini. They called it asia, but Pliny called it secale- 

 Do the Latin name secale and the Celtic names, segul in Irish, secal in Breton, 

 and cehela or zehhalea in Basque indicate (a) that the Celts brought rye 

 westward with them from Central Europe, (b) that they got it through Roman 

 channels in later times, or (c) that they got it in medieval times and gave it 

 the Latin name ? 5 



(ii) Is the translator justified in identifying serudn, a sourish grain, with 

 wild oats ; maeldn, a sweetish grain, with bere ; and ruaddn, a reddish grain, 

 with buckwheat ? What is usually known as the wild oat, Avena fatua, is 

 not worth gathering. Another inferior oat, Avena strigosa, was cultivated till 

 the eighteenth century in Scotland and the north of Ireland, and is still found 

 in some parts as a cornfield weed. This oat may be meant ; but it is not sour. 

 Buckwheat is not reddish : it is rather brownish. 



(iii) Did cruithnecht, wheat, mean the same grain ten or fifteen hundred 

 years ago that it means now ? The word originally meant ' the Piets,' whence 

 it came to mean the Pictish corn. 6 If Pytheas is to be trusted at all, the 

 Pictish corn was millet (xtyxpoc). Can cruithnecht have been transferred 

 at some time from the one grain to the other ? 'Corn' to a southern Englishman 

 is wheat, to a Scotsman oats, to an American maize. In view of the fact that 

 there is frequent reference to " red wheat " in Irish, it ought to be mentioned 

 that one variety of millet, Panicum sanguineum, has reddish grain : much 

 redder than the trrain of the modern " red " wheat. 



1 Dr. Kuno Meyer's translation, p. 98. -Ibid., p. 62. 3 Ibid., p. 84. 



1 xviii, 141. 5 See De Candolle's Origin of Cultivated Plants. 



6 This is on the authority of Professor Marstrunder. 



K.I. A. PROC, VOL. XXXI. D 



