Wolves in Irish Folklore. Part One.

  Now a little bit of Irish folklore in two parts

 

Wolves in Irish Folklore Part One.

 

Wolves were once an integral part of the Irish countryside and culture. The earliest radiocarbon date for Irish wolf remains come from excavated cave sites in Castlepook Cave, north of Doneraile, County Cork, and date back to 34,000BC. Wolf bones discovered in a number of other cave sites, particularly in the counties of Cork, Waterford and Clare indicate the presence of the wolf throughout the Midlandian Ice Age which probably reached its peak around 18,000-20,000BC.  The last wolf is said to have been killed in 1786.

Wolves feature prominently in Irish Mythology. Airtech was a mysterious creature whose three daughters were Werewolf like creatures, eventually killed by Cas Corach. The Irish word for wolf is Mac Tire meaning literally the Son of the Country (side) and association with human transformation linger, and whilst some consider this is an imported superstition there are many references in Irish mythology to Lycanthropes/Werewolves and changing to other animal forms through shape shifting.

 

The Morrigan  was said to take on the form of a red-furred wolf, particularly in her battle with the hero Cú Chulainn. Mac Cecht killed a wolf feeding on a still living woman on a battlefield. Cormac Mac Airt was said to have been raised by wolves, and that he could understand their speech. Four wolves would accompany him in his rebellion against Lugaid Mac Con, and he would later be accompanied by them until the end of his life.

Throughout most of the first half of the 17th century, Ireland had a substantial wolf population of not less than 400 and maybe as high as 1000 wolves at any one time. One of the nicknames used for Ireland at this time was “wolf-land”

The first instance of legislation against Irish wolves dates back to 1584 when John Perrot, the Lord Deputy of Ireland, ordered Robert Legge to come up with a scheme to encourage the destruction of problem wolves. Further records of legislation occur in 1610 and 1611. In 1614, an Englishman named Henric Tuttesham was offered £3 for every wolf he killed. The wolf population at the time was high enough for Tuttesham to be authorised to keep four men and 24 hounds in every county for seven years, a total of 128 men and 768 hounds.

Although the Irish had long hunted wolves, it is evident from documentary data that they did not see the same need to exterminate them as the English did. Even though wolves were perceived as threats, they were nonetheless seen as natural parts of the Irish landscapes. The bulk of anti-wolf legislation occurred during the decade following the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. A number of writers from this time period suggest that as a result of ongoing military campaigns in Ireland, particularly the Cromwellian wars 1641-1652 and the devastation of much of the country, wolf numbers were on the increase.

The level of rewards and bounties established by Oliver Cromwell's regime attracted a few professional wolf hunters to Ireland, mostly from England. Politically, the prospect of numbers of armed Irish roaming around the country hunting wolves was not acceptable, given the ongoing conflict between the Irish and the new English settlers, so it was seen as much safer for the English authorities to encourage men from their own country to deal with the wolf problem. The problems caused by wolves were considered serious enough by Cromwell’s government to impose a ban on the exportation of Irish Wolfhounds.

In 1652 the Commissioners of the Revenue of Cromwell’s Irish Government set substantial bounties on wolves, £6 for a female, £5 for a male, £2 for a subadult and 10 shillings for a cub. In the same year, measures were taken for the destruction of wolves in the Barony of Castleknock, county Dublin. A grand total of £243 5s 4d was paid for wolf kills in Galway, Mayo, Sligo and part of Leitrim formerly within the precinct of Galway in 1655 or 1665.

Between the period July 1649 and November 1656 the total amount of bounty paid out for wolf kills in Ireland as a whole was £3,847. Galway, Mayo, Sligo and part of Leitrim had proportionately more wolves than the rest of the country, given that large tracts of this area were relatively untouched by humans. A Captain Edward Piers was leased land over a five-year period in Dunboyne, county Meath on the condition that he kill fourteen wolves and 60 foxes. In the 1690s Rory Carragh was hired to kill the last two wolves in one part of Ulster and was equipped with a boy and two wolf dogs. The last reliable observation of a wolf in Ireland comes from County Carlow when a wolf was hunted down and killed near Mount Leinster for killing sheep in 1786.