You're the one claiming to have made certain specific comments when you did not...nowhere did you say, "Game, set and match Mr Merrick" or even, more charitably, "Game, set and match"
and let them into the orchard to eat the grass. After a week, they had eaten the bark off the trees. It was such a disaster that I didn't even get into trouble. Goats are the most contrary animal I have ever known.
cannot remember eating 'meat' - lots of milk and butter though - salt port was the big treat. I cannot agree your presumption that only the rich and powerful could afford cattle; perhaps a political pre- conception on your part. Every family had a cow.
There was an old couple who lived in a remote spot and had no children. The Man of the house died and the Woman of the house made a decision. She abandoned the holding and wandered the road with the cow. She would visit her extended family in turn where the cow grazed and gave milk. I'd like to write a full account of it as Ban Aon Bho - much as I dislike speaking Gaelic in Christian Irish. I heard the story from people who knew her and were young kids at the time.
Of course not. I am merely stating that you cannot b;lame the English for the deforestation. They only were to blame in a small way. See Allan Connanchie's post whci says much the same, Quote: "> As Ireland had no coal, the needs of 8 million people for charcoal and
Plus I'd imagine that Ireland must be the same as Britain in that whatever deforestation took place in the second half of the second millenium was deforestation of what little remained of the woodland cover. Most of Britain's had already gone by 1500AD because of pastoral agriculture; the need for resources; and even possibly natural climatic effects within the last 5000 years or so. This website claims (I imagine it can only be guesswork) that the original forests had been halved by 500BC and was down to around just 15% by the 1080s. Perhaps degree may have been different but surely Iron Age and first millenium Ireland couldn't have been that different from Britain at that time?
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So, the deforestation of Ireland was due to natural causes and actually started centuruies earlier than any English occupation.
How so?
I am in very good company here then, since your own efforts have been far from well received and are definately hot air!. Ignorance is as ignorance does!
Agreed - generally for milk and butter. As there usually was no fodder available for winter, most cattle were slaughtered and the meat was salted. After a while it had a terrible taste and spices were used to disguise this - hence the spice trade and the outrageous sums charged for spices, which generally only the better off could afford. Only with the introduction of root vegetables - turnips and the like - was it possibly to winter cattle - which put an end to the high profit margins of the spice trade.
I hesitate to agree with that. Cattle were also central heating and a lot cheaper than going to the bog for wet turf in the winter Cow in the house is no stranger to me.
I'm a bigot, but for most people, except the Christian Ascendency, didn't use spice. .
And you have a source with that date for the deforestation?
If the entirety of the British Isles was deforested in 1588 then where did they get the lumber to fight Napoleon? Had it all grown back plus much more in 200 years?
I agree that it would be feasible to keep one or two cows over the winter, but they would be no use for meat, just for dairy product. It was presumably much more important to keep hay for horse or donkey. Large herds of beef cattle only became available in Europe during the late 18th century. After the land enclosure animals could also be bred larger. Modern animals weight about two to three times more than they used to.
Apparently the taste was awful and there is a well established economic link between spice sales and cattle wintering in Europe.
Famines were very common then as now. You could have starvation in one part of the same country and food in plenty in the other. Transport links, organisation and education were the main problems in the famines of old.
Aha, there you go, all *practical* considerations, not aesthetic, which is the kind of thinking I can see screamin out from most (by no means all) of rural irish homes : ) whereas in Blighty, once you've got the house in the country (or even if u were born there) you'd have a job keepin most householders away from the ornamental shrub and tree section of the local garden centre !? It's just that this is one curious little thing that distinguishes the cultures a bit. The 'garden-centre' culture is ultra- rampant in England, and one thing i think the English are second to none on is parks and gardens. Having said that, I'm sure my very rude imputation of horticultural philistinism onto the Irish is somehow deeply flawed...for a start, one of the panel on Radio 4's Gardener's Question Time is Irish, then there's that Dermot Gavin on the telly doing gardens (though he seems to spend most of his time building very ambitious non-vegetable garden architecture), plus my ex-boss from Kerry who apparently knew the Latin and common names for all known plants....
Still, surprises me a bit that more people don't want to see a tree or two ?!?
God almighty. Just when I thought things couldn't get sillier, we have a debate in which a 'scientist' actually claims to explain deforestation by blaming hundreds of years of ecological damage on the building a couple of hundred ships.
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