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Irish Food History: a companion is an academic and comprehensive look at the history of food in Ireland. Edited by Dorothy Cashman and Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire, it’s nominated for TheJournal.ie’s Best Irish-Published Book of the Year. Here, the authors share a chapter from the book:
FOOD PERMEATES EVERY aspect of life and society, from birth to death — from the new-born’s first suckle to the food traditions associated with Irish wakes and funerals.
Essential for survival, it has historically proven academically elusive, hidden in plain sight. Entangled with the domestic and the feminine, it was perhaps traditionally regarded as too mundane and too quotidian for consideration.
Yet, consider what can be revealed by applying the ‘food lens’ to something as fundamental as our sense of place, our basic grounding in townland and byway. Consider the etymological richness of ‘Bóthar’, the Irish word for road (from ‘bó’—cow), defined in width by the length and breadth of a cow, a signifier of the long affair of our bovine past; extending also to our ‘buachaillí’ (boys) and ‘cailíní’ (girls), meaning, respectively, cowboy or herd boy and little herder, the suffix ‘ín’ denoting the diminutive.
The true meaning of placenames such as Clonmel, Cappataggle, Glenageary, and Kanturk, all food-related, can only be unlocked through an understanding of their Irish language origins. All are instances of what Martin Doyle succinctly explains as ‘a transliteration from the Irish, preserving the sound but obliterating the meaning’.
In a form of reverse colonisation, there are many Hiberno-English words for food we regularly use without ever considering their etymology. For example, we have made the much loved ‘spud’ (potato) our own, descending to us from ‘spuddle’, a small cheap knife, through to ‘spud’, an instrument for weeding, as wielded by Swift:
My love to Sheelah is more firmly fixt
Than strongest Weeds that grow these stones betwixt:
My Spud these Nettles from the Stones can part
No Knife so keen to weed thee from my Heart.
Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill memorialised her husband, Art, in the famous poem ‘Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire’, re-rendered for the modern reader by the bilingual writer, Doireann Ní Ghriofa as A Ghost in the Throat.
Food was one of the touchstones by which her late husband expressed his love and devotion to Eibhlín Dubh. She never repented that love, and expressed it thus:
I never repented it:
You whitened a parlour for me,
Painted rooms for me,
Reddened ovens for me,
Baked fine bread for me,
Basted meat for me,
Slaughtered beasts for me;
I slept in ducks’ feathers
Till midday milking-time,
Or more if it pleased me.
The name ‘Art’ means bear in Irish. In ‘The Solace of Artemis’, the poet Paula Meehan is comforted by the realisation ‘that every polar bear alive’ in the world has a trace of mitochondrial DNA from a brown bear that lived in Ireland during the Ice Age.
Our food history lies in the folds and crevices as much as in the grand narratives. Take, for example, the butchery marks that were found on the kneecap of a brown bear from a cave in Co. Clare, dating back to c. 10,500 BCE.
We know that permanent human settlement in Ireland began c. 8000 BCE: however, again those butchery marks, this time on a reindeer bone found in Co. Cork, reveal traces of what have been presumed to be casual visitors (hunters) from as far back as c. 33,000 BCE, prompting J.P. Mallory to argue that the ‘earliest known item on an Irish menu was venison’.
Irish Food History: A Companion is out now, published by Royal Irish Academy and edited by Dorothy Cashman & Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire. It is nominated for TheJournal.ie Best Irish-Published Book of the Year. More at irishbookawards.ie.
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It’s a disgrace.
@Seamus Gallen: Norway and Iceland are also not in IWC.
@Seamus Gallen: we should start Harpooin the People involved in the murder of these great Wales.
If Japan does this, the rest of the World should boycott every Japanese product.
@Brendan: Norway and Iceland do not abide (opting out) by the IWC rules around commercial whaling, so are we boycotting them too?
It makes no sense. Japan has been propping up the whale industry by $400m a year in subsidies in recent years. Nobody eats whale meat. They would be better off turning to whale tourism.
@Sean: Thanks for the very interesting article.
@Sean: was the industry hurt by the IWC rules though?
I’m just speculating, but if the caps are removed would it increase supply, meaning prices of whale meat goes down and thus more people can afford it leading to greater consumption and no need for Government subsidies.
@Hellenize Dublin: I really hope they don’t end up fishing for €400m worth of Whale meat. There aren’t that many of them left.
Sounds like one of those areas that has a strong lobby group that puts pressure on the government but doesn’t have a whole lot of actual support across a society – that’s my guess why they are restricting the hunting to their territorial zone. Widespread mass whale hunting would probably be unjustifiable for the population in general. Still rubbish though – some traditions should be let die.
@John McSweeney: it’s a criminal organisation that supports the trade. The meat is useless as its toxic. Whales are an essential species in all our oceans. For the Japanese to unilaterally take s decision like this is a flagrant disregard of international law and there should be consequences. #boycottjapan.
@Pat O’Brien: Norway and Iceland are not abiding members of the IWC either, are we boycotting them too?
I do believe in Whale conservation, so to address the original commentators point – the action of restricting lobbying groups should be the goal of most democracies. I’d like to see an outright ban on lobbying in Ireland or for it to be done in a public setting (town hall meeting format for instance).
@Hellenize Dublin: the town hall idea is a very good one.
It’s our culture boss!!!
@Doz: Just because something was ok years ago doest not mean its ok now the ocean have enough problem as it is without this too
@ross guilfoyle: faux outrage
@Doz: Brilliant lol!
600 under the guise of scientific research. How many from open hunting? Dreadful practice.
Think twice about buying another Toyota
If anyone thinks that the Japanese will limit Whale hunting to Japanese territorial waters then they believe in the fairies too!
The Japanese will hunt whales across any open seas over 1000’s of KM. They will not restrict themselves during a hunt at all!
They won’t be happy until Whales are extinct!
Anyone who gets in there way will bfind there boats rammed by the Japanese whaling fleet who are almost military in there organization.
Needs to be nipped in the bud
Why not start with the Rugby World Cup and the Olympics (and I’m a rugby fan).
Sounds like the whaling industry has a strong lobby group that puts pressure on the government but doesn’t actually have much support across the general Japanese society (perhaps most people are opposed or indifferent to it) – hence why they are self- restricting their hunting zones. Hopefully it’s one of those things where the market will eventually kill it as people decide not to eat it. A lot of whales will be hunted in the interim though which is BS – some traditions should be forced to die out.
Toyota, Nissan , Sony three brands to boycott. If you can think of anymore please add them. This is a despicable.
D!ckhe@ds
If only Whales had nuclear weapons!
The whalewars lads will be busy again.
@All A Big JOKE: They won’t be chasing them around Japanese waters
Often it feels like our government sells conservation and saving the planet as an Irish responsibility. Meanwhile the rest of the planet doesn’t give a hoot. Anything Ireland does isn’t going to make a difference other than restricting and taxing us into oblivion while other countries carry on regardless.
And when there’s nothing to kill,will we again turn on ourselves…
Some Japanese see it as part of their culture, and place great emphasis on this pathetic excuse when challenged about the ethics of the practice.
So these magnificent creatures will continue to be hunted down by human predators even as their numbers dwindle in the oceans of the world.
It’s about time culture was rejected internationally as an excuse to engage in the tormenting or senseless killing of animals.
Bull fighting continues in Spain and a few other countries under the same pretext.
The deliberate torturing to death of an animal is deemed a “heritage gem” and endorsed by successive Spanish governments despite all the evidence of extreme cruelty and suffering.
Hare coursing clubs in Ireland also claim their fun and games at the expense of an endangered mammal must be allowed because it’s part of a cultural asset without which Ireland would a mere shadow of itself.
Burning people alive as sacrifices and throwing virgins into volcanoes in homage to assorted gods and goddesses were once deemed cultural activities too. We have dispensed with these traditions. We should also consign attacks on endangered species and deliberate cruelty to animals masquerading as “culture” to the dustbin of history.
Trump hates sharks and is about to introduce seismic blasting in the ocean, producing noise the sound of a rocket launcher that will torture and kill many marine species, Humans kill over 100 million sharks a year – at that rate they will disappear and become extinct in the very near future. Boycott Japan for what they are going to do.
@GO GREEN: Seismic blasting in Arctic already happening – every 10 seconds, every hour every day. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IK4O8FLv8dY&feature=youtu.be
They should grow whale meat at this stage… I’m joining Sea Shepherd :P
Not all cultural persuits are worth keeping, head-hunting and female genital mutilation spring to mind as well as whale-hunting.
No! No! No! It’s has got to be stopped!!!!!
Absolutely disgusting!! Killing these majestic animals for human commercial use is totally wrong and unethical!! The Japanese in general should feel so ashamed by this activity.
Whale meat is so laced with heavy metals that it’s virtually toxic. This is purely being forced by elitists whitin Japan as the average Joe has never even tasted it. At least there’s a likelyhood that the big knobs pushing for this poison themselves through consumption.
Boycott Japanese goods like their cars for starters? But aren’t the whales full of Fukushima cancer causing radiation as is much of the Pacific ocean. So the Japanese wants to get radioactive plutonium into their diet now? Sounds like those in the government there are doing a sideline in that toxic mammal meat now?
Any thing they produce and sell should shunned by the world
Their tourism sector should be boycotted
Money’s talks, wake up call needed, time to stop districting every thing around us
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