Social change and everyday life in Ireland, 1850–1922

Caitriona Clear

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780719074387
• eBook ISBN: 9781847796653
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: French History
• Index: History

Men and women who were born, grew up and died in Ireland between 1850 and 1922 made decisions - to train, to emigrate, to stay at home, to marry, to stay single, to stay at school - based on the knowledge and resources they had at the time. This, the first comprehensive social history of Ireland for the years 1850-1922 to appear since 1981, tries to understand that knowledge and to discuss those resources, for men and women at all social levels on the island as a whole. Original research, particularly on extreme poverty and public health, is supplemented by neglected published sources - local history journals, popular autobiography, newspapers. Folklore and Irish language sources are used extensively. All recent scholarly books in Irish social history are, of course, referred to throughout the book, but it is a lively read, reproducing the voices of the people and the stories of individuals whenever it can, questioning much of the accepted wisdom of Irish historiography over the past five decades. Statistics are used from time to time for illustrative purposes, but tables and graphs are consigned to the appendix at the back. There are some illustrations. An idea summary for the student, loaded with prompts for future research, this book is written in a non-cliched, jargon-free style aimed at the general reader.

1

Agriculture

As far as major trends and changes in Irish agriculture after 1850 are concerned, the bog (so to speak) has been so skilfully, ably and comprehensively stripped that it would be an insult to the hardworking historians who performed this back-breaking task to clamp their sods of evidence in different patterns to make them look somehow new. What follows is a brief summary of their findings, but the bulk of the chapter is a discussion of change and continuity in everyday farm-work in Ireland between 1850 and 1922 for men, women and farm labourers.

Summary of existing research

The most obvious change in Irish agriculture over this period was the gradual transfer, between 1870 and 1909, of ownership from landlords to tenants. The most vigorous phase of the popular countrywide movement led by the Land League, known as the Land War, 1879–82, was succeeded by the less high-profile but arguably more effective (because more irritating and consistent) Plan of Campaign, 1885–91. Successive Conservative governments, meanwhile, gave more and more concessions to Irish tenant farmers. Owner–occupiership was established by the Conservatives in 1903 and was fully completed by the Liberals in 1909. Donnelly and Turner agree that the change from tillage to pasture-farming can be dated to the early 1860s, and that bigger farmers had built up enough prosperity and confidence by the 1870s to unite and challenge the British government and the landlords by 1879 – though Moody, Vaughan, Solow, Clark, Donnelly and Bew differ as to the crucial precipitating factor in the land movement. Other important changes in agriculture over these years were an increase in the average size of holdings, or farms, the overall swing from tillage-farming (crops) to pasture-farming (beasts), the decline in the number of agricultural labourers and assisting relatives on farms and the commercialization of farming. Farmers’ contact with the town – the fair, the market and the shop – became more important. ¹ The policies of constructive unionism in the 1890s led to a distinct improvement in Irish agricultural practice, produce and profits; Horace Plunkett’s Irish Agricultural Organization Society (1894), the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction and other initiatives around the turn of the century raised the standards for breeding, dairying and other farming activities. The First World War created a big demand for Irish agricultural produce at home and abroad.² Before this, farmers’ standard of living had risen, but the rise was uneven. Smaller farmers, in the west in particular, managed to survive only through seasonal migration to Britain or to other parts of Ireland, remittances from emigrants abroad and whatever supplementary work they could pick up locally.³

Fields, crops and beasts: mainly men’s work

The switch from tillage to pasture was never total. All farmers kept some fields of potatoes (for the family and for sale) and oats, wheat or barley. Even in parts of the country where pasture would seem to be the only possible option – the relatively barren land in Glengowla, between Oughterard and Maamcross, Co. Galway, for instance – farmers had a few fields in oats and, of course, potatoes: an acre of potatoes and an acre-and-a-half of oats, in Corr na Mona, according to Padraig O Suilleabháin; while every farmer in Glengowla would sow barley as well as oats and potatoes, according to Sean MacAodhagáin, referring to farming from the 1860s onwards.⁴

Early winter marked the end of the agricultural year. It was at this time of year that the big tillage farmers of Ulster and Leinster polished their shoes and went into town to sell their corn⁵ and that pasture farmers stored their hay and turf, dug their potatoes and threshed their corn, usually oats. In some parts of the country – north Cork, Kilkenny and Wexford – cattle were stalled for the winter, but in Ireland’s comparatively mild climate it was not always necessary to stable beasts for the winter months.⁶ The size of a herd was also a determining factor: a makeshift byre against the side of the house could serve for one or two beasts – in small farmer Connell Boyle’s house in Donegal in 1898, the main entrance to the house was through a byre. There were also cowhouses in the south-west by the 1880s.⁷ Cows were still kept ‘tied down there at the end of the kitchen’ on one farm on the Sligo–Roscommon border in the 1860s, but not by the early twentieth century. The Public Health Act of 1874 made it illegal for animals to share accommodation with humans; this would have been impossible to enforce, but there was an enhanced public health awareness among the general public.⁸ Bigger herds left out all winter were foddered daily and looked after in extremes of temperature. Sheep were seldom stalled. Some farmers ploughed in early winter, before the frosts set in, and corn was sometimes sown at this time, according to an older system of ploughing.⁹

Deep winter was the quiet time: fences and agricultural implements were maintained and mended; ditches and drains were dug; potatoes were pitted. The quiet did not last long, however. In January turnips were ‘snagged’ – very hard work, often in brutal conditions. Early in February fields were prepared for potatoes, oats and other crops, and for hay. Potatoes were sown before St Patrick’s Day, but before this could happen, as soon as possible after Christmas manure (made, variously, of animal droppings, seaweed, kelp, turf mould and old animal bedding) was spread on the fields. Artificial fertilisers came into use towards the end of the nineteenth century, for bigger tillage farmers in the north and east in particular. Once manured, the fields were left for two or three weeks, and then the sod was turned. This could be done with a plough on bigger farms, but on small farms a spade or loy was used, and the task could take up to three weeks.

Potatoes were sown in ridges, later in drills. Drills were more modern, but ridges made sense in the kind of uneven ground which many Irish farmers worked. Sowing the seed potatoes – sciolláins – had to be done carefully, three across, according to one account, leaving a foot between each row, making sure they were buried deeply but not too deeply. Once the potatoes were in, the corn was sown. It was considered lucky, in places as far apart as Fermanagh and Kerry, to sow the corn on Good Friday.¹⁰ Again, the level of intensity of this work depended on the tools available. Where farms were small – as in the west – or labour was cheap and plentiful – south Tipperary and east Cork – setting or sowing crops was done with the spade or the loy. Setting oats involved, as well as ploughing, rolling and ‘hacking’, or harrowing, to ensure that the seed was not buried too deep. Bigger farms had ploughs, of either wood or iron. Ploughing with horses could take three people – one to guide the plough, one to throw the seed (often an elderly man with experience) and one to guide the horses.¹¹

There were over half-a-million horses in Ireland by 1901. The small, sturdy, Kerry bog pony and the Connemara pony are the most celebrated, but the native breed of heavy horse, the Irish draught, was a hardy all-purpose animal, highly valued in rural and urban settings.¹² Horses, being sensitive creatures, are upset by shouting and sudden movements, and the story was told that one year no crops grew on the spot where a farmer had cursed his horses. Expensive to buy, horses were also costly to feed: a ploughing horse needed 7 máums (two palms together) of oats three times a day; if a team of 3 horses were ploughing, this adds up to 63 máums a day – easily a 4-stone bag.¹³ Horses were considered men’s business – however women may have been involved (albeit in the background) in the buying and selling of cattle and other beasts, they never went to horse-fairs.¹⁴ Many farmers relied on the ass, mule or jennet for work and transport; the number of these humble creatures rose from about 100,000 in 1851 to nearly 250,000 in 1911, the growth most marked after 1881.¹⁵ Pasture farming also boosted the number of dogs, needed to round up cattle and sheep.

New hayseed was sown after setting the corn, but that hay would not mature until the summer after next; meanwhile second hay, grown from the remains of the previous year, would be growing. Cows, geese and other animals had to be kept away from the hayfield – this was work which devolved to the younger members of the family.

In April and May, turnips, cabbage, beet and onions (the soot from the spring-cleaned chimney was very good for these) were sown.¹⁶ The trenches of the potato field were dug and the earth thrown up over the top of the ridges (‘the first earth’). This was done again a month later or whenever the stalks appeared. From about the 1870s, in June and July the potatoes were sprayed with ‘bluestone’ – copper sulphate – to protect them from blight.

In late winter and early spring, cows calved, sheep lambed, pigs had their litters. Sheep usually managed on their own, but the farmer had to be vigilant for frost and snow, and delicate or orphaned lambs were bottle-fed by the fire. Cows did not need as much intervention as they do today, because the calves of cattle breeds at the time were smaller and easier to deliver. On dairy farms calves were weaned straight after the ‘beestings’ (colostrum, or pre-milk) and fed artificially thereafter; cattle being kept for stock fed their own calves. Throughout most of Munster the sight of a cow suckling her young was very unusual; on small farms in Connacht, where calves were reared for stock, it was more common.¹⁷ Sows, by all accounts good-natured and intelligent animals, were so large that they had to be watched for the first few nights in case they accidentally trampled their young. ‘Staying up with the bonavs’ was a great treat for children in some parts of the country, the sow and her brood being brought in near the fire for the duration.¹⁸ Milking and the feeding of calves were usually women’s work, and I discuss them in the next section. Meanwhile throughout the winter and early spring stock in the fields were fed with hay, turnips and other root crops grown especially for them.

Fuel was always a labour-intensive matter for farmers. Wood, which simply had to be chopped and stacked, was easiest of all, but making or ‘dancing’ the culm (a fuel derived from coal-dust mixed with other materials) which was burned in some of the mining districts – the Leitrim–Roscommon border, Ballingarry, Co. Tipperary, Castlecomer, Co. Kilkenny – was hard work and could take up to a week.¹⁹ Turf, the fuel of most Irish rural people, took even longer. Work began with the first burst of fine summer weather in May. Cutters ate lightly: too heavy a breakfast or mid-day meal would make them trom agus tartmhar (heavy and thirsty), even sick; soda bread and buttermilk or a drink made out of oatmeal and water (said to be excellent for quenching thirst) were brough...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Chronology of Irish politics, 1800–1922
• Religion: an explanatory note
• Introduction
• 1 Agriculture
• 2 Non-agricultural work
• 3 Education
• 4 Emigration and migration
• 5 Marriage
• 6 Public health
• 7 Institutions
• 8 Extreme poverty: vagrants and prostitutes
• 9 Houses, food, clothes
• Conclusion
• Appendix
• Bibliography
• Index