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XVIII. 



ON THE INTKODUCTION OF THE ASS AS A BEAST OF 

 BUEDEN INTO lEELAND. 



By EEV. J. P. MAHAFFY, D.D., O.V.O. 



' Read Febbvarv 26. Published March 30, 1917. 



Quite recently our valued raeiuber, Mr. Garstin, who not only makes 

 researches himself, but promotes them in others, sent me a query he had 

 received on this point— on the introduction of the ass as a beast of burden 

 into Ireland — with the suggestion that of course the use of asses in Ireland 

 would be found in Arthur Young. There was no reference, however, given, 

 so I took down the book to verify it. To my great surprise I was unable 

 to find it, and also in the index (which, like most indices, is untrust- 

 worthy) there was no mention whatever of the animal. I searched the book 

 up and down, especially the many details regarding the life and habits of the 

 poor, and I have been unable to find any allusion to this, now their almost 

 universal companion. We all know that the country was full of small horses, 

 so far back that most of us believe this species to be here indigenous. We also 

 know that all through the eighteenth century the gentry were importing 

 sires from England, and so was produced the famous Irish hunter — one of the 

 best products of the country. But how comes it that Arthur Young, who 

 mentions the hobbies or ponies in Ireland, and the barbarous habit of using 

 them for ploughing by the tail, never mentions the ass? It was easy to 

 find out that the Eoyal Dublin Society, about the middle of the eighteenth 

 century, offered prizes for the importing of the Spanish ass, but only as a sire 

 to breed mules, never, so far as I can find, to improve the breed of the asses 

 already in the country.' There seemed to me something so strange in this 

 blank iu the observations of a careful author, studying Ireland thoroughly in 

 the years 1773-6, that I began to look for other evidence on this social and 

 economic question. And I may dispose at once of the possibility of finding 

 ass-bones in ancient deposits, or of any use of the animal in the Middle Ages. 

 The original word for ass in Irish is asal, evidently borrowed from the current 

 name in Latin ; and except perhaps in artistic representations of the Flight 



' Twiss saw a good many mules about Dublin in 1773. 



