5 42 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



the days of congestion at any rate, employment with the planter was hy no 

 means an absolute, or, at any rate, a constant necessity. At the same time 

 it forced, or, at any rate, accustomed, the farmer to that casual and uncertain 

 labour living outs'ide his boundaries and beyond his control which has had, 

 and still has, so much to say to the inefficiency of Irish agriculture. 



A few quotations set down in chronological order will show how 

 widely and how quickly the potato came into cultivation in the seventeenth 

 century, while a glance back at the rotations quoted from Arthur Young 

 will show that, in his day, the potato was a comparatively unimportant crop 

 with the larger farmers. It had not yet become an article of commerce. It 

 was the crop of the people : the anchor that held them to the soil. 



1649-53. Cole: In England potatoes "have been planted in many of our 

 gardens, where they decay rather than increase ; but the soyle of Ireland 

 cloth so well agree with them, that they grow there so plentifully that there 

 be whole fields overrun with them, as I have been informed by divers souldiers 

 which come from thence." 1 



1654. General Fleetwood, in a letter to Secretary Thurloe, speaks of 

 " The condition of Ireland being to live much upon their potatoe-gardens." 2 



1672. A Writer [Dr.Beale ?) in the " Philosophical Transactions" of 1672, 

 after referring to a dearth in London in 1629-30, says : " But potadoes were 

 a relief to Ireland in their last famine ; they did yield meat and drink." 3 



1672. Sir William Petty : "Six out of every eight of the Irish feed chiefly 

 on milk and potatoes." 4 " The diet of these people is Milk, sweet and sower, 

 thick and thin, which also is their drink in Summer-time ; in Winter, Small- 

 Beer or Water. But Tobacco taken in short Pipes, seldom burnt, seems the 

 pleasure of their Lives, together with Sneezing, inasmuch that f- of their 

 Expence in Food, is Tobacco. Their Food is Bread in Cakes, whereof a Penny 

 serves a Week for each ; Potatoes from August till May, Muscles, Cockles, 

 and Oysters, nere the Sea ; Eggs, and Butter made very rancid by keeping in 

 Bogs." 5 



Beferring to their " lazing," Petty says : — 



" For what need they to Work, who can content themselves with Potato's, 

 whereof the Labour of one Man can feed forty." 6 



" There being every where store of Fish and Fowle ; the ground yielding 

 excellent Boots (and particularly that bread-like root Potatoes)." 1 



1699. Haughton : The potato "has thrived very well and to good purpose, 



1 Quoted in a paper by Sir William Wilde in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. vi, 

 from Cole's "Adam out of Eden," published 1657. 



2 Thurloe Papers, ii, p. 602. 3 Quoted from Wilde's paper. 



1 Political Anatomy, in Hull's edition of Petty' s Economic Writings, page 156. 

 5 Ibid., p. 191. s ibid,., p. 201. ' Ibid., p. 273. 



