Another aspect of the cattle trade which occurs to me is the labyrinthine system of now overgrown lanes throughout the countryside, along which the animals were driven long distances to other areas to be fattened, before being driven off again to the ‘ranchers’ who after the end of the war were themselves driving trucks. According to an elderly relative in east Clare, the initial smalltimers couldn’t afford trucks until the ’60s and by that stage, they were considered superfluous by the ranchers who were starting to rear the calves from scratch (more or less). If this is true, it’d be interesting to look at sales at individual marts and fairs to see who was buying from whom. I suspect though that these records don’t exist pre-EEC?

Getting back to the laneways, I’ve recorded some in Clare and west Cavan and I think Tim Robinson has recorded them in the Burren and Connemara. They don’t benefit from any sort of legislative or statutory protection unless a) they’re associated with a saint or an ecclesiastical centre or b) you can prove they were in use before 1700 (yeah, right). Anecdotal evidence, again from east Clare, suggests they were extensively used by the IRA to get around the countryside undetected, as few are on maps (except on early Ordnance 6″ editions) and entrances to public roads were disguised by local sympathisers. A lot of information may have been collected by folklorists, but little is in the public domain.

The archaeological angle is interesting where on many occasions animals and drovers over-nighted together in fields close to sites known as cilíní, generally with a much earlier origin as small ecclesiastical centres, forgotten as the church centralised itself around the parish system. These are isolated, lonely sites where unbaptised children or ’strangers’ were buried until the 1960s. Any linkages are of crucial importance when considering how people got around the place in the 6-7th centuries and indeed in the early ’20s and into the ’60s.

Ok, rant over.

On a different note entirely and a cheeky one this, would anybody be able to scan me a hi-res version of the shot of Phil Lynott, Eric Bell and Brian Downey walking through St. Stephen’s Green in September 1972? It’s on the inner sleeve of Shades of a Blue Orphanage but I can’t find it on the web… Thanks!

Paul Rouse makes that point, and does it brilliantly, with overwhelming evidence from the British archives. I really am so impressed with that book. The research is outstanding.

so yeah, it’s a crucial point about exporting live cattle , instead of exporting actual shop-ready products. I mean, it’s a colonial relationship, or at least the continuation of an economic colonial relationship. But even in 1995 when O’Toole wrote his book, if he mentioned ‘colonial’ or ‘post-colonial’ he would have been labelled IRA.

Interestingly enough, O’Toole talks about the rise of the Irish Catholic Middle Class and the ranchers, something that is never talked about in mainstream/media discussions about Ireland in the 19th century. It’s all land wars and landlords. But O’Toole pretty much nails it, so kudos there alright.

But I think the essence of where O’Toole misses the point is in his blending of cattle and beef industries. Certainly up to the 1970s, the reality is of live cattle exporters not wanting much truck with an indigenous Irish beef industry as it would affect their sales, and up to the 1950s at least, with Britain doing what it can to curb the development of an indigenous beef industry in Ireland as its development would affect their own beef industry. O’Toole merges these two spheres together when really one of the defining narratives of the Irish cattle trade is the tension between live cattle and beef.

Having said all that it is a useful book and well worth picking up again if you see it around. I got mine for €3 in Oxfam last year.