Clare Island Survey — Agriculture and its History. 5 48 



for in their succeeding wars, when all the corn above ground was destroyed, 

 this supported them ; for the soldiers unless they dug up all the ground 

 where they grew, and almost sifted it, could not extirpate it." 1 



1699. John Dunton: "Behind one of their cabins lies the garden, a piece 

 of ground sometimes of half an acre, or an acre ; and in this is the turf-stack, 

 their corn, perhaps two or three hundred sheaves of oats, and as much pease ; 

 the rest of the ground is full of their dearly beloved potatoes, and a few 

 cabbages, which the solitary calf of the family, that is here pent from its 

 dam, never suffers to come to perfection. '" 



Having brought this rough sketch down to comparatively recent times, we 

 may now return to Clare Island. Unfortunately, the island itself affords very 

 few data from which a history could be written. Practically the oldest sure 

 and reliable foundation is to be found in the early Ordnance Survey maps, 

 published about 1840. On the six-inch map the island is dotted with fifteen or 

 twenty little hamlets lying round the eastern and southern slopes near the 

 junction of the mountain and the arable land at a considerable distance from 

 the sea. What were these hamlets, and why were they so placed ? The 

 scattered clustering of the houses and the irregularity of the small fields near 

 the hamlets, with no sign of any attempt to set-off the land in rundale or 

 stripes or squares, carries one back to early Celtic times, in which the plough 

 was not thought of. But it may be that Clare Island is a comparatively 

 modern settlement, in which the need for a plough did not arise in the minds 

 of the settlers. If they had been pushed out from somewhere on the main- 

 land even as late as the first plantations, it must not be assumed they would 

 have carried ploughs along with them. 



The story of Queen Granuaile, however, prescribes an earlier date than 

 the one just suggested, although the peculiar inland position of the hamlets 

 becomes a disturbing element. Had the settlement taken place long before 

 Elizabeth's time, the people must have relied to some extent upon the 

 sea for a food-supply ; or, if they were not originally a fishing people, then- 

 natural increase must have driven them downwards towards the shore. To 

 explain the case, it might even be suggested either that the people were driven 

 inwards as a protection against the Norsemen or other sea-rovers, or that the 

 chiefs had appropriated the land near the shore and driven the people up 

 towards the mountains. Still more plausible it might be that a planter had 

 acquired the low-lying land and allowed the people to exist along his 

 boundary, or that, on the advent of the potato, the people had deserted the 

 sea and built their hamlets on spots that would be equally convenient to the 



1 Quoted by Wilde from Haughton's " Husbandry and Trade Improved." 

 - Errors and Life of Jolin Dunton, vol. ii, p. 606. 



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