MEANING OF "BAWN."
Bawn (Vol. i, p. 440.) has been explained as "the outer fortification, inclosing the court-yard of an Irish castle or mansion, and was generally composed of a wall with palisadoes, and sometimes flankers."
The word bawn or bane (the a pronounced as in the English word hat) is still applied in the south of Ireland to the spot of ground used as a place for milking the cows of a farm, which, for obvious reasons, is generally close to the farm-house. Before the practice of housing cattle became general, every country gentleman's house had its bawn or bane. The necessity for having such a place well fenced, and indeed fortified, in a country and period when cattle formed the chief wealth of all parties, and when the country was infested by Creaghadores and Rapparees, is obvious; and hence the care taken in compelling the "undertakers in Ulster" to have at least "a good bawn after the Irish fashion." In Munster the word bane or bawn is used to express land that has been long in grass; tholluff bawn being used to signify grass land about to be brought into cultivation; and tholluff breagh, or red land, land which has been recently turned. To redden land is still used to express either to plough land, or, more generally, to turn land with the spade.
Now the milking field was, and is always kept in grass, and necessarily receiving a good deal of manure, would usually be white from the growth of daisies and white clover. Hence such a field would be called the white field: and from this to the general application of the phrase to grass land the transition is easy and natural. It may be proper to add, that in Kerry, particularly, the word is pronounced bawn, in speaking Irish; but the same person will call it bane, if mentioning such land in English. The a in the latter word is, as I said before, pronounced like the a in hat.
The Irish for a cow being bo, the phrase may have had its origin therefrom. On this matter, as on all relating to Irish antiquities, the readers of "Notes and Queries" may be glad to have a sure person to refer to; and they cannot refer to a more accomplished Irish scholar and antiquarian than "Eugene Curry". His address is, "Royal Irish Academy, Grafton Street, Dublin."
Kerriensis.