Fighting in Ireland was the serious business of life, but soldiers, officials, and settlers found some time for amusement also. Irish hawks, hounds, and horses were all thought worthy to be sent as presents to great men in England; and hawks were often made the subject of treaties with Irish chiefs. Falconry no doubt was practised in Ireland, but we hear much more of hunting, and the game was plentiful. Irish wolf-hounds were famous, and were considered handsome presents; the Great Mogul, Jehangir, being glad to accept some in 1615. Perrott sent a brace, one black and the other white, to Walsingham. ‘This great white dog,’ said Sir S. Bagenal when sending one to Cecil, ‘is the most furious beast that ever I saw.’ These hounds were of great size, but doctors differ as to their points, and it is not even certain whether they had rough or smooth coats. A modern club, which has tried to restore the breed, lays down that the Irish wolf-hound should be ‘not quite so heavy or massive as the Great Dane, but more so than the deer-hound, which in general type he should otherwise resemble.’ Red deer abounded all over the country; and martens, now almost extinct, were so plentiful that the Earl of Ossory, in Henry VIII.’s time, kept a pack of hounds for them alone. As many as twelve dozen marten-skins could sometimes be sent as a present, and even Strafford hoped to get enough to line a gown for Archbishop Laud. The ambling nags called hobbies were also much valued in England. Wolves were very common, and neither they nor the hounds which pursued them died out until the eighteenth century. Wild fowl, of course, abounded, and Moryson says he had seen sixty pheasants served at one feast; but partridges were scarce. Magpies seem to have been introduced late in the seventeenth century.[422]
Agriculture.
Cattle.
About the towns, and in the parts settled by Englishmen, tillage was carried on as in England. Many of the Irish chiefs also encouraged corn-growing, and in time of war the soldiers were much occupied in destroying these crops. No doubt the husbandry was rude, as it long continued to be, and the barbarous custom of ploughing by the tail was restrained by order in Council in 1606, but was still practised in remote places as late as Charles II.’s reign, when it was prohibited by Act of Parliament. The custom of burning oats from the straw, and so making cakes without threshing, was equally long-lived and had also to be restrained by authority. But the chief wealth of the Irish was in their cattle, and the following statement of Moryson is sustained by innumerable letters:—
‘Ireland, after much blood spilt in the civil wars, became less populous, and as well great lords of countries as other inferior gentlemen laboured more to get new possessions for inheritance than by husbandry and peopling of their old lands to increase their revenues, so as I then observed much grass (with which the island so much abounds) to have perished without use, and either to have rotted, or in the next spring-time to be burned, lest it should hinder the coming of new grass. This plenty of grass makes the Irish have infinite multitudes of cattle, and in the late rebellion (Tyrone’s) the very vagabond rebels had great multitude of cows, which they still (like the Nomades) drove with them, whithersoever themselves were driven, and fought for them as for their altars and families. By this abundance of cattle the Irish have a frequent, though somewhat poor, traffic for their hides, the cattle being in general very small, and only the men and the greyhounds of great stature. Neither can the cattle possibly be great, since they eat only by day, and then are brought at evening within the bawns of castles, where they stand or lie all night in a dirty yard, without so much as a lock of hay, whereof they make little for sluggishness, and that little they altogether keep for their horses. And they are thus brought in by night for fear of thieves, the Irish using almost no other kind of theft, or else for fear of wolves, the destruction whereof being much neglected by the inhabitants, oppressed by greater mischiefs, they are so much grown in numbers, as sometimes in winter nights they will come to prey in villages and the suburbs of cities.... The wild Irish feed mostly on whitemeats, and esteem for a great dainty sour curds, vulgarly called by them bonnyclabber. And for this cause they watchfully keep their cows, and fight for them as for religion and life; and when they are almost starved, yet they will not kill a cow, except it be old and yield no milk. Yet will they upon hunger in time of war open a vein of the cow, and drink the blood, but in no case kill or much weaken it.’
Sir Nicholas White has recorded that the first red cattle were brought to Dingle from Cornwall, and it is probably from the cross between these red Devon or Cornish beasts and the black cattle of the country that the famous Kerry breed is descended. The butter commonly made in Ireland in the sixteenth century is described as very bad.[423]
Exports. Fish.
Guicciardini says the Irish exported hides, fur, and coarse linens and woollens to Antwerp. The consumption of wine was great; and for this the chief article sent in exchange was fish. In 1553 Philip II. agreed to pay 1,000l. a year for twenty-one years to gain for his subjects the right to fish on the Irish coast. Fishermen of all nations resorted to Berehaven, paying O’Sullivan Bere for leave. In the North O’Donnell was called the King of Fish, and he owned the salmon-leap at Ballyshannon. A Norse writer, older than the Tudor period, had already noted that Lough Erne contained salmon enough to feed all the people in Ireland. The fisheries of the Bann and Foyle were also of great importance, and Spenser says that both the Suir and the Barrow were full of salmon. As to sea fish, we hear more of foreign than of native vessels. The few port towns certainly produced good sailors, and among native clans the O’Driscolls, O’Flaherties, and O’Malleys loved the sea. About the famous sea-Amazon, Grace O’Malley, many legends have been preserved; but of her, and of all the other Celtic rovers, it may be said that they were rather pirates than peaceful traders or fishermen.[424]
Manufactures.