Kojak

I used to have a doll called Kojak. He had a stuffed body like a pillow with hard plastic limbs, and you guessed it a bald head. My Father brought him from the fair Debating what to call him, an older man, Willie Murphy visited. When he saw him, he said 'Who’s that? Kojack?'. I can't ever remember thinking that it was weird. Kojak  is still around  30 odd years later, but my daughter decided to change ‘him’ to ‘her.’

                                                    

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If you left a bowl of sugar or a tub of butter out on the table, Willie used to take a spoon of either, eat it fast, carrying on talking as if nothing had happened. His Mother was my Fathers Godmother. She was supposed to have believed in a lot of piseogs( superstitions). His Godfather was a nephew of The Tec, a farmer, not a detective so I don’t know where he got that name from. He had big herds of cattle when there was a bounty on the number of animals. Nothing like the numbers that would be in cattle ranches in the US but for rural Ireland he was considered a prominent farmer.

 They lived out, wandering tracts of land. Breeds were hardier, sheltering in hollows and beside stonewalls. Their milk teeth were gone, so they used their second teeth to tear through ferns and bushes. The rule for slaughtering under 30 months had yet to be introduced. This came later, keeping older cattle out of the food chain due to the threat of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). This spread to humans as Creutzfelt Jakob Disease(CJD), which we commonly know it as Mad Cow Disease. These cattle were not given any bagged feed, so the odds of them ingesting bone meal were non-existent.

If there was no price for cattle, they left them run on. There could be five-year-old bullocks in the Mart. The Organic Farmer remembers his Father bringing animals from there hill. They had been checking that none were lame, or losing weight but not seen them, or their huge horns, up close. Horns are not allowed now unless the cattle are rare breeds or you are selling directly to a meat factory. Even though he was used to animals, he was a bit wary as he had never seen any as big.

Cattle were essential to the ancient people of Ireland. The Irish word for a road is ‘Bothar’ directly translated as ‘Cattle Way’. Semi-nomadic, many had a base in a Ringfort, leaving it for periods of time to mind their cattle in the open grassland or woods. The landscape was very different.  It seems to have operated as a collective Commonage without fencing or stonewalls.

The odds are cows were brought from mainland Europe approx. 6,000 years ago. Before we had the Vikings to make cities, bringing us coins, we farmed and traded in the value of cattle. I’ve read of trading in ‘Séts’ which equalled half the value of a milking cow.

There is a Ringfort in my Father’s field which may have belonged to a high-status family. We don’t know exactly as it’s never been excavated. We are presuming it was a base they may have gone back to by night but otherwise were out hunting, farming and gathering in the meantime. My grandmother used to tell me the fairies lived there, mainly to get me to come back down from the field. Most superstitions and beliefs in the fairies had died away by then, but some still held a residual wariness of upsetting them.

Cattle raiding was common, and a new King might be expected to lead his followers in a raid. The ‘Tain  bo Culange’ revolves around the invasion of Ulster by Queen Medb of Connaught because she wanted the stud bull Donn Culange belonging to King Daire in order to have as much wealth as her husband.

Here is a version of ithttp://www.askaboutireland.ie/learning-zone/primary-students/looking-at-places/louth/tain-bo-cuailnge-the-catt/medb-and-ailill/

Even now that hedages are paid on the hectares of land you have, not the number of cattle many still see the amount you have as a symbol of status and wealth. This crosses species, Ray Mears was in Lapland speaking to a Reindeer farmer. He said 'I'm going to ask the question I should not ask, how many Reindeer do you have? '. The farmer replied 'That's like asking me how much money I have in the bank'. 

The Organic Farmer would hold a similar view. I bought John Connell's -no relation -'The Cow Book' for his birthday. I knew he'd appreciate the sentiment but never read it. 
Instead, I did. And it invoked far more in me than I thought it, down to the smell of singed hair from dehorning calves. It is beautiful and ugly, an unidyllic version of farming. The things I think of since my father's death.