Faint pathways through woodland, barely discernible lines winding up hillsides and headlands, paths to small piers, paths to altar rocks, to holy wells, to cillíní (children’s graveyards) to stone circles – ancient paths are everywhere. The daily movement of people and animals leave their traces and chart the directions of need.
The first were certainly rivers, but as communities started to look outside their own communities a network of connecting tracks began to cover the landscape. As herds of cattle were built up, they made their own paths through woods and across open roads, skirting large rocks or mounds and avoiding boggy areas. Naturally the herders followed the same trodden ways, and so did later travellers, turning the animal tracks into a footpath. The Irish for road, ‘bother’, means ‘cow way’. Most of our small country roads wind and turn.
Early Irish laws identified five types of roadway. These are explained in old Irish texts. Fergus Kelly, in ‘Early Irish Farming’ explains them. He states that there were five different kinds of roads in ancient Ireland: highway, road, by-road, curved road and cow track. The highway (slí) was constructed for the meeting of two chariots. Ród (road), was a regional road. ‘Iamraite’ or minor road, connected two major routes. ‘Tograite’ (side lane) led to a forest or a river; it was also called a curved road. The ‘bother’ or cow track was wide enough for one cow to pass another, when one was standing sideways.
Today we call a small path, usually with grass in the centre and two tracks made by vehicles, a bóithrín, the diminutive of bóthar, meaning ‘little cow road’.
We have a deeply indented coastline. In olden times if you wanted to travel from one seaside community to another, you had a choice, sea or land. Often the sea route was quicker. In the early part of the 20th century large schooners brought cargoes of coal, grain, potatoes and so on from Cork, for instance, to all the ports along the West Cork coast before tarred roads, railways, cars or buses began to be used. Gradually communities settled at the mouths of rivers and villages and towns began to grow. The old Irish were used to living in very small communities; the Danes led the way in building larger towns, for example Waterford, wexford, Dublin, Limerick. Other towns grew up where there was a ford (5th) on a river, for example Athlone.
The regular traffic of animals and goods across country areas created many tracks. A farmer took cattle, sheep, pigs and geese to a weekly market or an animal fair across the hills. Householders needing to exchange butter, grain, wool, eggs for other necessities, packed their goods into baskets and trampled the same way. Towns grew up around the biggest fair, such as Ballinsloe or Killorglin.
Cattle have always been a big export form Ireland, mainly to Britain but also to France and Spain. It took a drover many tiring days to get his herd safely to ports and then there was the return journey with only his dog for company. Roadside hostelries catered for these weary workers with food and beds.
One of the products that was always carried on the ancient roads of Ireland was butter. Munster was the biggest producer of butter. The little black Kerry cow, a very old native Irish breed, gave particularly good milk and cream for the purpose. Once churned, salted and packed into creels, it was brought to market in baskets laden on donkeys or ponies. The butter market in Cork city and the old roads used by the travelling butter-carriers can still be seen in places. When better roads were constructed they often built them on the old butter roads. In other places, the new roads followed a different route. When Ireland was under English rule. Cork was the principal food supplier for the royal navy, as well as Crown colonies around the world.
By the early 18t century, Shandon, in Irish ‘Sean Dún’ (old fort) on the north side of the old city had become the focus of the Cork butter trade. Coopers, who made the wooden barrels in which the butter was packed for export, concentrated their business there, as did an increasing number of butter dealers.
In the early 18th century, a geologist, named Richard Griffith, was commissioned to improve communication within Munster. His approach was to attempt to make the roads between towns as straight as possible. One of his routes, opened in 1829, ran from Listowel to Cork. He reduced the distance from 102 to 66 miles. Another, linking Killarney with Cork via Macroom and Glenflesk, came down from 142 to 90 miles. These were all capable of taking wheeled traffic, which vastly increased the amount of butter carried to the city.
There are thousands of old roads all over the country, each with their own interesting story to tell, and many of these are to be found in the School’s Folklore Collection in Dúcas.ie.
