Byrne's Dictionary of Irish Local History Read online

  baile. (Ir.) Homeplace or townland preserved in placenames as Bally. Over 5,000 townland names in Ireland commence with Bally. See townland. (Hughes, ‘Town and baile’, pp. 244– 58.)

  bailey. Walled courtyard or forecourt, generally rectangular in shape. See motte and bailey.

  bailiff. 1: A senior manorial official who supervised the daily operation and functioning of the manor, including the keeping of surveys and account rolls 2: Bailiffs (Ballivi – always used in the plural form) were borough officials, second in rank to the mayor, who exercised judicial powers as magistrates in the civil courts. The title sheriff was later substituted for bailiff.

  Balfour Acts. See Purchase of Land (Ireland) Act, 1891.

  balister. 1: An archer 2: A crossbow archer.

  balk (baulk). A narrow ridge of unploughed grassland dividing cultivated land in the openfield system.

  ballastage. A toll paid for the right to remove ship’s ballast from the bed of a port.

  Ballast Office. Precursor to the Dublin Port and Docks Board, the Ballast Office Committee was established by the Irish parliament (6 Anne, c. 20) in 1707 to effect improvements in Dublin harbour. The irregular taking on and throwing out of ballast had seriously disabled the port and reduced its capacity to receive larger vessels. It was generally acknowledged that a regulatory office was required to oversee the raising, furnishing and discharge of ballast. Several private initiatives were proposed but the corporation of Dublin successfully resisted these encroachments on its civic authority. When the corporation itself proposed a ballast office bill, the admiralty objected on the basis that this was an infringement of the lord high admiral’s rights. The bill passed the Irish parliament after the corporation acknowledged the admiralty’s authority and agreed an annual payment of 100 yards of best Holland duck (a strong linen cloth). In 1729 (3 Geo. II, c. 21) and again in 1785 (25 Geo. III, c. 64) the Irish parliament legislated for the cleansing of the ports, harbours and rivers of Cork, Galway, Sligo, Drogheda and Belfast and for the erection of ballast offices in each town. From 1786 the Ballast Committee Office was replaced by the Ballast Board which was tasked with cleansing and deepening the port and maintaining the harbour at Dún Laoire. Spoil dredged from ports was retained for use as ships’ ballast. In 1807 the Ballast Board was renamed the Dublin Port and Docks Board. (Falkiner, Illustrations, pp. 186–190.)

  balliboe. Unit of spatial measurement in Tyrone, three of which made a quarter. As a quarter was estimated to contain about 240 acres, the balliboe amounted to about 80 acres and therefore was broadly similar to the tate of Fermanagh and Monaghan.

  ballybetagh. (Ir., baile biataigh, the steading or farmstead of a biatach or betagh) A unit of land measurement comprising four quarters. A quarter was generally considered to contain about 240 acres, Irish measure, so that a ballybetagh may have amounted to about 1,000 Irish acres. Thirty ballybetaghs made a tricha-cét or cantred or barony.

  Ballymote, Book of. A compilation written at Ballymote, Co. Sligo, largely the work of Solomon O’Droma and Manus Ó Duigenann. Consisting of 251 vellum leaves, it contains Lebor Gabála Érenn, chronological, genealogical and historical pieces in prose and verse relating to saints, remarkable Irishmen and important families. It also includes tracts on ogham alphabets, ancient history, the rights, privileges and tributes of the learned and ruling classes together with a Gaelic translation of the history of the Britons by Nennius. (Atkinson, Ballymote.)

  ‘the banker’. In the nineteenth century a pig raised for market to pay the rent. Also known as ‘the gentleman who pays the rent’.

  bankruptcy court. During the eighteenth century cases of bankruptcy were dealt with by the issuing of individual commissions and this continued to be the case until 1836 when a permanent commissioner in bankruptcy (two from 1837) was appointed by the lord lieutenant. The commissioners in bankruptcy were barristers of ten years’ standing and removable only by an address to the crown from both houses of parliament. The court for the relief of insolvent debtors, established in 1821 and headed by similarly qualified barristers, was united with the commissioners in bankruptcy in 1857 to form the court of bankruptcy and insolvency. In 1872 this court was re-styled the court of bankruptcy. (McDowell, The Irish administration, pp. 109–110.)

  Baptist church. The earliest Baptist congregations were established in Irish towns in the mid-seventeenth century by Cromwellian soldiers. The strength of their presence within the army was regarded as a threat to discipline and civil order for Baptists shared a belief in adult baptism with the sixteenth-century radical European Anabaptists, and, by extension, were often pejoratively so labelled. Numerically insignificant in the eighteenth century, Baptist numbers rose to over 7,000 by the turn of the twentieth century, aided by the evangelical revival of 1859. Today there are about fifty Baptist congregations in Ireland. Baptists believe that faith must precede baptism. Since baptism can only be valid after a profession of faith, they repudiate the practice of infant baptism. Organisationally, Baptists are congregationalists; they believe that the local congregation, under Christ, is the sole authority in matters of faith and worship. Local congregations are voluntarily associated with the Baptist Union of Ireland but remain autonomous. See Independents. (Greaves, God’s other children, pp. 25–7; Gribbon, ‘Irish Baptist Church’, pp. 183–191.)

  Baptist Society. An avowedly proselytising body founded in London in 1814. The society was most active in Connacht where it set up schools and provided financial aid to other schools that agreed to abide by its rules. Preaching and teaching were conducted through the medium of the Irish language, accompanied by the usual distribution of bibles and religious tracts. (Rusling, ‘The schools’, pp. 429–42.)

  baptizandi nomen. In Catholic baptismal registers, the baptismal name of the child.

  baptus est/bapta est. He/she was baptised.

  bar. In heraldry, two broad horizontal bands across the centre of an escutcheon.

  barbican. An outer defensive tower or gate.

  bardic schools. The early history of bardic schools remains unclear. In pre-Norman times lawyers, poets and historians were educated in church schools but there may also have been secular academies for poets. The picture is much clearer from the fourteenth century with frequent annalistic references to lay schools for poetry, law, medicine, history and music. Each school was presided over by an ollamh to whom students were apprenticed by fosterage agreements. Although books were used, the core of each discipline was transmitted by verse or prose and had to be learned by memory. Bardic schools flourished until the tide of patronage ebbed with the collapse of the Gaelic lordships in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. (de Blácam, Gaelic literature.)

  Barebones Parliament. The temporary assembly devised by Oliver Cromwell to draft a constitution after the dissolution of the Rump in 1653.

  bargain and sale. A form of conveyance created by the English Statute of Enrolments (1535) as an alternative to the cumbersome feoffment. Unlike the feoffment, the bargain and sale was valid without seisin. In other words, the vendor was not required to physically enter on the land to perform the ceremonial livery of seisin. It is recognisable because the action clause in the deed of conveyance reads ‘granted, alienated, bargained and sold’. The Irish Statute of Uses (10 Chas. I, c. 1, 1634), however, required the bargain and sale to be indented, sealed and enrolled within six months in one of the king’s courts of record. Many landowners disliked the public nature of this form of conveyance. A different form of conveyance, the lease and release – which emerged around 1600 – superseded the bargain and sale and provided a legally valid yet discreet instrument for land transactions.

  bargain and sale, lease and release combined. Often drafted in a single conveyance, the combined ‘bargain and sale, lease and release’ was an attempt by conveyancers to circumvent some of the less satisfactory aspects of each individual form. First, the grantor bargained and sold a lease of his property for a peppercorn rent. Under the 1634 Statute of Uses the grantee
was deemed to be in possession and therefore he did not have to enter the property to take possession. As the estate being conveyed was a lease there was no need to enrol it. Next, by deed of release the grantor conveyed his reversion to the grantee. See use, feoffment to.

  bar haven. A harbour at the entrance to which lies a submerged sand-bank.

  barmkin. An enclosure about a castle which served as a refuge for people and animals.

  baronial police force. A precursor of the Royal Irish Constabulary, baronial policemen or ‘Barnies’ were introduced in 1773 and operated in rural areas in support of the magistrates, executing warrants, collecting revenues and preserving the peace. The baronial force was diminutive – it never exceeded a national complement of 600 men – and notoriously inefficient. Several attempts were made at reformation. In 1787 a police act (27 Geo. III, c. 42) permitted grand juries in disturbed areas to appoint 16 sub-constables for each barony under the supervision of a government-appointed chief constable. In 1792 a new baronial force was inaugurated but that proved incapable of dealing with the widespread agrarian unrest of the early nineteenth century and was replaced in 1814 by the peace preservation force. See Peace Preservation Act (1814), police. (Beames, Peasants, p. 157 passim; Boyle, ‘Police’, pp. 90–116; O’Sullivan, The Irish constabularies, pp. 11–12, 16; Palmer, Police.)

  barony. An ancient division comprising a number of townlands which were thought to have been co-terminous with the tuath or multiples of the tricha-cét (pre-Norman territories occupied by the native Irish). Although some baronies are co-terminous with tuatha, the vast majority are not for there were 97 tuatha and 273 baronies. This suggests that many baronies were the creation of Anglo-Norman colonists. The barony corresponds roughly to the English hundred and was also known as a cantred. Baronies later became subdivisions of Irish counties when the country was shired and were widely used from the sixteenth century for administrative purposes. Both the Civil Survey (1654–6) and the Down Survey (1654–9) were conducted along baronial lines and county rates were paid to the grand jury on a baronial basis.

  Barrack Board. See Board of Works.

  barrel. In Ireland in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the barrel was the predominant unit of measurement for agricultural produce rather than the bushel or quarter. With some exceptions it was in universal use throughout the country. The precise weight of a barrel differed from commodity to commodity. A barrel of wheat or rye weighed 20 stones, of oats 14 stones, of barley or bere 16 stones. The official weight of a barrel of potatoes was 20 stones but witnesses at the Devon Commission gave weights ranging from 20 to 24 stones. (Bourke, ‘Notes’, pp. 236–245.)

  barrow. A tumulus or earthen mound raised over one or more prehistoric burials.

  base court. Any lesser court, such as a manor court, that is not a court of record.

  basinet, bascinet, bassenet. A skull-cap or helmet made of metal or some other hard material, sometimes pointed.

  batter. A sloping wall, narrower at the top than at the bottom, designed to support a house or other building. Batters also served to protect fortifications from undermining.

  battery. A number of artillery pieces assembled in one location for tactical reasons.

  battle, trial by. Introduced into England and Ireland by the Normans, trial by battle originated in the belief that divine providence would ensure victory to the party in the right in any dispute. It was used to settle criminal, property and debt cases. Initially it was the litigants who fought, making litigation a risky business if the opposition was a skilful fighter. Later, champions were usually employed to fight on their behalf. Trial by battle was repudiated as a barbarity by the church and became obsolete by the 1300s although a case of trial by battle is recorded in the 1580s under Perrot. It was not finally abolished in England until 1819.

  baudricke. A belt or girdle.

  bawn. (Ir., bádhún, cattle fort) A fortified cattle enclosure, constructed to ward off the attacks of wolves or cattle-raiders.

  beadle. A mace bearer, parish officer or constable. In the eighteenth century paid and uniformed beadles were employed by the Dublin house of industry to secure vagrants and sturdy beggars and bring them to the house. This duty was discharged at great peril to their own safety for the public sympathised with the beggars and seizures were frequently marked by riots. (Widdess, The Richmond, pp. 12–13.)

  beaker folk. Early Bronze Age people (c. 2000 bc) who used a distinct type of flat-base pottery.

  Beaufort, Daniel Augustus (1739–1821). A London-born Church of Ireland clergyman and scholar, Beaufort was a founding member and librarian of the Royal Irish Academy and was active in the Dublin Society. He was a farmer, an architect and a travel-writer but is remembered primarily for his cartographic work. In all, he produced only three maps: a small map of the country’s river systems (1792), a map of the diocese of Meath (1797) and his astonishing 6-inch ‘Ireland Civil and Ecclesiastical’ which appeared in 1792 and in numerous editions subsequently. (Andrews, Shapes, pp. 214–247.)

  beehive hut. A beehive-shaped, stone building constructed of overlapping stone courses.

  beer, small. A low alcohol beer which was also fed to children where the available water was impure and liable to sicken them.

  beetle. 1: A wooden or metal tool used to pound potatoes for animal feed. Beetles were also used to wash clothes and to break flax before it was scutched 2: A beetling engine bearing a line of wooden beetles was used to pound linen to create a smooth, soft surface on the fabric.

  bellcote, belcote. A belfry constructed like a small house in which the bells are hung.

  Belmore Commission (1897–8). At the request of the commissioners of national education the Belmore Commission was established to investigate the possibility of expanding curricular provision in Irish primary schools which, largely because of the payment-by-results system, had become too dull and mechanistic. Belmore recommended a broader curriculum that would include practical work such as elementary science, drawing and physical drill. The revised curriculum of 1900, which granted greater organisational freedom to schools and incorporated more practical subjects, was heavily influenced by the commission. Its greatest achievement, however, was to undermine the payment-by-results system by declaring such a system to be incompatible with the provision of a rounded educational programme. From 1900 teaching performance was rated by observation and not by pupil examination. (Belmore; Akenson, Irish education, pp. 372– 75; Idem, ‘Pre-university’, pp. 534–5.)

  benchers. The senior governing members of an inn of court. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the benchers of the Society of King’s Inns consisted of the lord chancellor, the judges, the master in chancery, the king’s counsel and the prothonotary of common pleas. See inns of court

  bend. In heraldry, a broad bend from the dexter chief corner to the sinister base. The reverse is known as a bend sinister.

  benefice. An ecclesiastical living. An Anglican clergyman usually held a single parish as his benefice but in many cases two or more parishes were formally united and held by a single individual. Unions were normally effected where the income from a single parish was insufficient to support a clergyman.

  benefit of clergy. The exemption enjoyed by clergy from the jurisdiction of the civil courts in cases of capital felony. From the middle ages a clergyman charged with a felony before a secular court was required to plead his clergy whereupon (if successful) the case was transferred to the ecclesiastical courts. Proof of entitlement to benefit of clergy was determined by a test of the defendant’s ability to read the first verse of the fifty-first psalm. Thus literate laymen could plead their clergy because, being literate, they had the potential to be clergymen. Claims for benefit of clergy were not allowed for misdemeanours and in the eighteenth century were prohibited in cases of murder, larceny and house-breaking. Benefit of clergy was rescinded piecemeal in the eighteenth century and abolished outright in the nineteenth (9 Geo. IV, c. 54, 1828).

  bent gras
s. A shore grass which binds sand and prevents drifting. Bent or Marram grass was formerly employed for a variety of domestic purposes. As thatching material marram was not long-lasting and required regular maintenance. Lengths of braided marram stitched together were used as ceiling material to prevent soot and other small bits of roof debris falling on members of the household as they slept. More commonly marram matting did service as carpeting.

  bere (also bare, bear). Coarse barley.

  besant. A silver coin used in the middle ages worth between one and two shillings.

  Bessborough Commission (1880). A royal commission under the chairmanship of the earl of Bessborough tasked with investigating the working of Gladstone’s flawed Landlord and Tenant (Ireland) Act (1870). Gladstone’s act had introduced a tenant-purchase scheme, legalised tenant-right wherever it existed and provided for compensation for improvements or disturbance. Bessborough’s key recommendation, the concession of fair rent, free sale and fixity of tenure – led to the enactment of the 1881 Land Law (Ireland) Act which gave statutory recognition to the ‘Three F’s’. (Bessborough.)

  betagh. (L., betagius, Ir., biatach, provider of food) 1: Serf, servile tenant on a manor, the lowest social group in the economy of Anglo-Norman Ireland. These were the most numerous group within a manor’s population. They were bondsmen, almost invariably Irish and were similar to the unfree villeins of medieval England. They were unable to seek redress in the king’s courts except through their lord and usually lived in a nucleated settlement some distance from the manor. See advowry 2: The Gaelic law texts describe betaghs as base clients who contracted to provide the lord with food-rent, winter hospitality (cuddy), manual labour and military service in return for an advance of livestock or land. The contractual nature of the relationship meant that the betagh could withdraw from the agreement provided he returned the lord’s advance with deductions for the services he had already supplied. Thus the liberty of the betagh in the Gaelic system was not as circumscribed as that of the betagh on a Norman manor. (Mac Niocaill, ‘Origins’, pp. 292–8.)