Introduction

Clockwise from top left: Triticum - Wheat Secale cereale – Rye Avena sativa – Oats Hordeum vulgare - Barley © Phelim Connolly

We drift down time, clutching at straws, but what good’s a brick to a drowning man?1

‘To clutch or catch at a straw’, ‘they were only clutching at straws’, ‘a drowning man will clutch at a straw’, etc., are centuries’ old proverbs implying that straws metaphorically gave assistance and optimism. We will grab hold of anything to keep hope alive, even if we know that there is little chance of success. A brick is certainly no good to a drowning man. Neither is clutching at a straw when in that predicament, or in any of life’s more difficult situations, and yet it is something which we instinctively do to get out of trouble.

The ‘last straw’ might be the only hope left, but the ‘last straw’ could also metaphorically destroy resolve, for it is always ‘the last straw which will break the camel’s back’. There is just one final event, one ultimate calamity that leads to acceptance of defeat. ‘A little straw can show us which way the wind blows’, but ‘to throw straws against the wind’ is a useless and futile occupation. It is better to accept that there is no benefit to be gained from contending with what is irresistible. Not to ‘give a straw’, or a rush, for someone is a show of indifference and is an indicator of the low esteem in which another is held.2 A ‘straw man’ is a sham man or dummy; it is also the scarecrow in the field which keeps the birds from eating the seed and crops.3 A ‘straw man’ fallacy or argument, however, is the misrepresentation of an opposite point of view followed by the refuting of the misrepresented viewpoint instead of the real viewpoint – it is an adversarial form of debating.4 A ‘man of straw’ might be a man with no means,5 and refers in a legal sense to someone not worth pursuing because he has no money.

There are other proverbs and sayings using the weakness or strength of straw in

An fear bréige or Coigealach - The scarecrow. © Phelim Connolly

Making a Strawboy’s hat at Carrowmore, Lacken, Tirawley, Co. Mayo in 1980. Pat Loughney was the maker. NMI a metaphorical sense: ‘A landlord of straw will always break a tenant of steel’;6 ní bhrisfeadh sifín cocháin fá’m bhonn, I travel so lightly that a wisp of straw would not break under my foot; cogadh na sifíní, the war of the straws literally, is the English equivalent of ‘a storm in a teacup’; and níl trom an tsifín san argóint sin, that argument is of no consequence, it does not have the heaviness of straw. An sifín siúil a chur faoi dhuine, is to urge someone on his way or encourage him on his travels, and one might look at someone anxious to leave as quickly as possible and say, ‘Nach mór an sifín siúil atá faoi?’ Isn’t he in a great hurry to be off?

It is the uses to which straw, and to a lesser extent rushes and hay, were put over the centuries, from an early historic period in Ireland to more recent decades, that is discussed in the following chapters. These organic materials – sometimes mixed

with grasses, aromatic flowers and leaves – might have been simply spread around the home for cleanliness and sleeping purposes, or made into plaited mattresses and mats, chairs, containers and clothing. They covered the roofs of houses and outhouses, they were formed into ceremonial and festive crosses, knots, hats and costumes, and they were made into horse harnesses and collars. Along with a large array of additional materials, including briars, docks, animal hair, tree bark, the skins of sally rods, and bogdeal, they were made into simple and ingenious restrictions (spancels, tethers and fetters) for farm animals, and put to an infinite variety of uses from insulating water pumps, lining potato pits and straining food, to providing light for dark nights and playthings for children.

Each chapter is followed by catalogue entries describing the objects made from straw, hay and rushes and a range of other organic materials, in the National Museum’s collection. Some areas are very well represented, such as the variety of containers and hens’ nest, ropes, animal restrictions, harness and straw costumes. Other areas are not so well represented, such as the collection of beehives and skeps, only comprising a few entries in the catalogue, with the single example of a beehive, thus failing to represent the tradition of beekeeping, or the importance of beekeeping in Ireland over the centuries.7

It is not surprising, given the immense variety and uses to which it was put, that certain protective powers were attributed to straw. Imbuing such materials as iron,

A drawing of a boy and a girl wearing straw hats. After Richard Thomas Moynan’s painting. The Travelling Show 1892. © Phelim Connolly

stone, wood, clay and water with curative and special properties is not unusual in folk tradition. Cold and hot iron, for instance, were thought to have considerable power. It was lucky to find an iron object, especially a long-lost piece of an old plough such as a soc or a coulter, and take it home for future protection. A heated fire iron – a tongs or a poker – warded off the banshee and detected a butter thief. Iron nails, especially horseshoe nails, had several protective qualities, and in many areas they were tied to a cow’s tail on May morning to protect the animal for the year ahead. The power believed to be inherent in stones and minerals, of many hues and much antiquity, was universal. White stones cured sick animals, green stones cured an ache in the side, red agate was a symbol of health and longevity, and white rock crystal or quartz ensured that a new mother had plenty of milk to feed her child. Amber had a cure for rheumatism and neuralgia, and flint arrowheads were believed to have been shot by fairies to inflict illness on cattle. Formerly, almost every tree growing in Ireland was surrounded by a body of folklore and belief. It was unlucky to use oak in the roof of a house, ash was burned to banish the devil, rods of hazel were carried by emigrants in the event of snake bite, and nine pieces of boor tree were used to cure warts. The clay from around the roots of the tree could ease the pain of toothache and clay from several places, including Tory Island, off the coast of Donegal, and Inishglora, off the coast of Mayo, kept rats from entering the home. The white clay from Gartan, county Donegal, protected the home from burning down. Finally, holy water was believed to have special powers and was sprinkled on everything – crops, animals, people, foundations of new houses, and on the boundaries of land – as a means of deterring evil.8

And so also was straw imbued with curative and protective powers. Singed straw – a small handful of straw lightly burned with fire – had a particular power to influence to the good. Strands of partly-burned straw, for example, placed under the mattress of the newly-wedded couple’s bed, brought luck, and the custom was undoubtedly connected with fertility and children.9 The ends of the arms of St Brigid’s crosses were singed for the same purpose, and in 1934, the archaeologist Seán Ó Ríordáin collected such a singed cross for the National Museum from the floor of a dolmen in Duntryleague, Coshlea, county Limerick. (Cat. 2.147) In this particular case, it was evident that the cross had been brought to the dolmen shortly before its discovery, and while Ó Ríordáin did inquire locally about the meaning of the custom, no further information was forthcoming. In fact, he incredulously reported that most of the people he talked to in the area had never seen a St Brigid’s cross.10

Straws and rushes were burned at certain times of the year, at the time of death, at wakes and especially at the feast of the Epiphany,11 and lighted straws welcomed

the newly-married couple home from the church.12 At the ‘dragging home’ after a wedding in north Galway, for example, there was a great reception along the route from the church to the reception, with guests and others holding burning wisps:

Wisps held by householders in the town if the couple is from the town. In more remote country areas a sheaf of corn was burned and as a couple pass, the man of the house holds the burning sheaf aloft with a hay fork. The wisp is the length from the wrist to the elbow.

The custom was still practised in the district in the early 1960s, when a copy of the Irish Independent newspaper had replaced the burning sheaf.13

Detail of a straw mat – mapa tuighe – from Inis Oírr, Aran Islands, Co. Galway. It was last used to line the wooden door of a house to keep out the wind. NMI

The lexicographer and historian Pádraig Dinneen makes mention of lá an sibhinn, the wisp day, when a lighted straw was carried around the houses in a community to ward off the plague. It is a motif associated with the nineteenth-century political leader Daniel O’Connell, and occurs in the form of an anecdote known as Oíche na sop – The night of the wisps – in which O’Connell made a bet to rouse Ireland in twenty-four hours by getting the people to pass wisps of straw from one house to the next throughout the country under the threat of a plague spreading and taking its toll. The lone mid-nineteenth-century reference in the Ordnance Survey Memoirs to a special turf or straw (‘holy turf and straw runners’) being taken around to the neighbouring houses is connected, and probably had the same desired effect. All references are undoubtedly associated with the threat of plague spreading disease in the early nineteenth century, and possibly earlier;14 and probably allude to a belief that fire and straw would protect from sickness and death. Driving cows so that they would leap over lighted straws or faggots on May Eve is a related custom.15

Singed or lighted straw, and also singed rushes and hay, were further connected with fertility, wellbeing and protection of animals. The cailleach, or last sheaf, was scorched over the fire and then given as feed to the first cow to calf after the harvest;16 and to ensure productivity in hens, a few singed straws were placed in the straw nest to bring luck to the brood.17 The ashes of burned rushes mixed with unsalted butter was a cure for wildfire or shingles;18 the smoke from wheaten straw set alight in the cow shed was believed to cure cattle of ‘muccah’; and a cure for distemper in dogs involved new hay boiled in water and held under a dog’s head.19 A similar cure for strangles,20 in horses, involved preparing a bucket of bran mash, putting it in a sack with hay and tying the sack over the horse’s head.21 Spancels of hay or straw had numerous protective qualities,22 and were also tied around the hind legs of cows being taken to the bull for insemination, to ensure fertility.23 Straw was believed to help cure cows of illness, and straw from the eaves of the house, for example, had a cure for a cow which had been blinked, that is, the cow had a mysterious illness or the cow’s milk yield had dropped significantly.24 A calf was given a rush rope – an sop sughairlín do’n gamhain – to suck, if it refused to drink after being born;25 and a súgán rope put on the cow’s tail helped with the safe delivery of the afterbirth.26

Straw and hay had very useful, if somewhat amusing, functions for those learning to dance. In Kildalkey, county Meath, it was remembered that old step dancers at a time before the Gaelic League Revival, at the end of the nineteenth century, had a dance where a straw was laid on the floor and the dancer doing his steps went over it without touching it. A version of this that evolved into a game or competition was the dancing of the Maggie Picky, when two straws were placed crosswise on the floor.

If the dancer while dancing through the four right angles disturbed the position of the straws, he was deemed to be eliminated.

For the less bright dancing pupils, and the ‘abysmally untaught’27 the dancing master had to employ more pragmatic methods to teach the steps, which he did by tying a straw rope to one foot and a hay or bark gad to the other, to ensure the pupil’s ability to distinguish left from right as he was learning.

I often heard an old man telling about a dancing master going around the country teaching hornpipes and he had one very stupid pupil, so he made a straw súgán for one leg and a gad for the other and he used to tell the stupid boy to ‘sink upon sugan and rise upon gad’. The lad of course did not know which was his right or left foot.28