Booley huts and booleying on the Commons

The ghostly footprints of ancient sod walls still mark the sites where families once moved with their cattle up to uplands in county Antrim during the summer months (from May to October). They built temporary "booley" huts to live in, usually beside a water burn or spring.
"Booleying" - what the text-books call transhumance in other parts of the world - comes from the Irish "booley" or "boley" that is used to describe either the upland summer grazing place for cattle or the summer hill dwelling used by the herdsmen. These huts were made of sod and timber branches covered with rushes for thatch. Some 400-year-old drawings of these huts give an idea of how they were put together.






























In the 1570 picture-map of Carrickfergus, it almost looks as if they had descended on the town after the summer for a harvest Feast of Tabernacles!

The old custom was for the young folk (sometimes the entire family), to leave the "clachan" (a cluster of farms with solid buildings) in the lowlands as soon as the crops were sown and migrate to summer pastures in the hills. When the lands between Carrickfergus town and the Commons were parceled out in the 1500s into Aldermans Shares (strips of single, dispersed farms within their own fields), the Commons was still intended for summer grazing by these farmers. But it was the farms on the far (northern) side of the Commons that were still "booleying" on the Commons when the practice had died out in the 1800s elsewhere.

When the Commons itself was finally divided up into farms and fields there was serious unrest, with bands of men pulling down the new fences in 1880 and attacking anybody who tried to build permanent houses. There had always been a slight sense of lawlessness connected with cattle on the Commons. In the early days, Bryan O'Neill was cattle raiding on a grand scale here in the 1500s, and cattle stealing remained a problem down to the Steelboys revolts in the 1770 when men from this early secret society of anti-establishment Presbyterian peasants burned down farmhouses and stole cattle belonging to the wealthy farmers (including some of Mr. Dalway's tenants) near Carrickfergus. Ransoms were demanded and the money was to be left at the Priest's Rock (Craignabraher) on the Commons, which is where the Covenanters held their open air meetings. It was soon discovered that the culprits were from the clachan of Raloo just to the north. Among those convicted in 1770 was a Paddy McKenty of Raloo, who almost certainly was from the same family as the ancestors of the modern crime writer Adrian McKinty mentioned in my last posting.

The families that took their cattle to booley places on the Commons like Ardboley (High Booley), Carnbilly (Booley Cairn) or Milky Knowes had their home farms down on lower ground in clusters or villages called "clachans". The arable land around each clachan was shared out between the group in a jigsaw of tiny plots and strips each year, and when the cattle returned before the 1st November, the field markers were torn down and the land around the clachans returned to common winter grazing. The homecoming to the clachan at harvest time (at the latest 1st November) was another great time of celebration and seasonal customs, closely tied up with Halloween bonfires and gatherings on 31st October.















When I was a young student, 40 years ago, I made a study of some of these clachans that had survived in the 1830 landscape north of the Commons in south-east Antrim - Glenoe, Raloo, Mackeystown, Ballylagan, Drummondstown, Lylestown, Uppertown and Browndod. In Scotland, such clachans are also called "farm-towns" (or if they have a church or mill: "kirk-towns" or "mill-towns"). Glenoe was properly a mill-town as it was clustered around a water-powered corn mill near Glenoe waterfall, and Raloo - still a really impressive clachan if you can find it - is a kirk-town with a (Non-Subscribing) Presbyterian Meeting House hidden among the cluster of surviving farms down a country lane.

When the family groups moved from these clachans in May along with their cattle to the summer booley pastures, their tracks up onto the high ground of the Commons cut across the established Dalway cattle trail, as shown on the map. This must have involved strange encounters, if not a clash of cattle herding cultures. And the booleying one was always the "poor cousin": often stigmatised with the idea that their encroachment was trespass. Another perception was that these "booley boys" were involved in cattle stealing, or worse. Not only did the Steelboys from Raloo conspire at the Priest's Rock near Ardboley on the Commons in 1770, but this was also the Commons rallying point for the local United Irishmen in 1798 before joining the Ballycarry Corps on their way to the Battle of Antrim. Of course, as the Commons had no permanent buildings or occupants in the 18th century, these "rebels" were from the radical Presbyterians that had lived in and around these clachans. These were the men who saw the establishment - be it landlords, government or established (Episcopal) church - as the same enemy as had been successfully overthrown in America by their first and second generation Scotch-Irish cousins in the American War of Independence. But the price of failure in Antrim was a dissenting tradition that has been submerged and forgotten for hundreds of years. The landscape north of the Commons is one of a rich, hidden heritage that has to be searched carefully for, off the beaten pad, and certainly off the tourist trail.

So, if you pass through Glenoe (the only clachan which has a surfaced, drivable road through it), try and see beyond the picturesque waterfall to that hidden history of clachans, booleying and a "dissenting" independent spirit that typifies the local folk. I visited Glenoe waterfall again last month and as Helen and I walked up through the village it reminded me of a similar walk we had near Boone, North Carolina some 30 years ago - and then walking through Glenoe 20 years ago with friends from Kentucky. When you add the shared history and heritage together, the "mountain men" of this part of Antrim and the "hill-billys" of the Apalachians have more than genes in common.

Mark Twain - descended from the Dalways of Dalway's Bawn?

When I first read 'Tom Sawyer' by Mark Twain as a boy it gripped me like no other book I had ever read. The stories in my other books were very 'English public school' in their setting and dialogue, but Tom Sawyer's world (actually much further away - in Missouri), seemed just like my own. I can still remember the story when Tom couldn't go out to play with his friends on a Saturday because Aunt Polly had told him to whitewash the garden fence first. When his chums called for him, Tom pretended that he would rather paint the fence as he just loved doing it. So his puzzled friends asked to watch. Then, they asked to have a try with the paintbrush, but Tom said he wanted to do it himself. I think his friends ended up paying Tom to let them paint the fence while he sat and watched. This was a rouse I tried out on my own friends one Saturday, and it almost worked, but not quite!

'Mark Twain' was the pseudonym of Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910), a name he took from the leadsman’s call on the Mississippi river. In 1876 he published "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" followed in 1882 by his story of Tudor England "The Prince and the Pauper". However the popularity of Tom Sawyer had readers demanding more, and in 1885 he wrote "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" and "Life on the Mississippi". Huckleberry Finn has been hailed the first ‘Great American Novel’, a concept meaning a novel which most perfectly represents the spirit of life in the United States at the time of its writing. He wrote more than 30 books and hundreds of short stories and essays.

Apparently, Samuel Langhorne Clemens was of Scotch-Irish descent on both his father's and his mother's side of the family. His mother was Jane Lampton who
married John Marshall Clemens in 1823. Jane Lampton's grandfather was Col. William Casey, an early Kentucky pioneer who, in 1789, established the Casey/Butler Fort. This was the first permanent settlement in what is now Adair County and he settled there with his wife (Jane Montgomery) and about 30 other families. The Casey family had migrated to America from Ulster earlier in the century.


















On his father's side of the family, the Clemens (originally Clements) were also of 'Scotch-Irish' descent, but this time they came from a more aristocratic Ulster background in east Antrim that had an association with an English army tradition before the American Revolution. Samuel Langhorne Clemens' grandfather was a Samuel B. Clemens, the first of Mark Twain's father's family to make an appearance in the historical record in America. The occasion was in October 1797, with his marriage to Pamela Goggin in Virginia.

Here I jump to the Clements (or 'Clemence') family of 'Clements Hill' between Straid and Ballynure. This district is right at the start of the Dalway's Bawn cattle trail, and in an earlier post ("The Rise of John Dalway's Cattle Empire in East Antrim", 10 July 2010) I described how this area around Ballynure - although quite distant from Dalway's Bawn - was a key part of the Dalway land grants from the early 1600s.

I have re-posted the map here, adding in the location of Clements Hill, south-west of Ballynure (click on the map to enlarge).


Every local history book and tourist guide for Ballynure in east Antrim claims Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) as a 'famous son' of the district. Here is a typical entry:

Mark Twain, as he was known to his worldwide readers was christened Samuel Langhorne Clemens. His family roots were on the edge of Ballyclare and the oldest gravetone in the nearby churchyard in Ballynure is his ancestor Elenor Clemens - 1628. A favourite walk in this part of County Antrim is from the Green Road to the Ballynure Road. It is known as the Back Walks and crosses an area called Clements Hill from whose height there were splendid views across the valley of the Six Mile Water. This was the Clemens family home for many years - the 't' being added at a later date. They were an important family and there are records of their contribution to the town of Carrickfergus where some served on the governing bodies. Samuel himself refers to the family living in this County Antrim valley.

These Clements were not ordinary tenant farmers, but they belonged to the same old-established, English landlord class as the Dalways - and indeed they married into the Dalways in the 1600s.
In the old graveyard of Ballynure Parish Church are two large family vaults belonging to the Dobbs family of Castle Dobbs (who by also marrying into the Dalway family, came to be in possession of much of the former Dalway estate at Ballynure). But the oldest gravestone in the burying ground is that of Ellinor Clements, dated 1698. Here is the full inscription (with the Dalway connection highlighted):

Clements
Here lyeth the body of Ellinor,
the wife of Edward Clements of Mvlligan-Hill gent.
and eldest daughter of Alexander Dallvay of Bally Hill Esqr.,
who departed this life
03 Mar 1698 aged 35 years.

The historical connections between Ballynure and Dalway's Bawn at Ballycarry - although they were at opposite ends of east Antrim and separated by the County of Carrickfergus - were extremely close because of the Dalway cattle trail. It is a bit like the close connections between two trading ports at opposite sides of a sea. This came home to me when I visited the graveyard at Ballynure Parish Church last week. On a ruined stone wall near the Dobbs' family vault, is a blue plaque erected by the Ulster History Circle to "JONATHAN SWIFT author of Gulliver's Travels, Prebendary here 1695-97".













Jonathan Swift's period as Church of Ireland Prebend of Kilroot is described in another earlier post ("The original Yahoos at Kilroot", 28 May 2010), but I was unaware then that his ecclesiastical duties extended beyond the 'East of Eden' parishes of Templecorran and Kilroot, to include this distant parish of Ballynure. Swift's literary importance is enormous as he has been described as the greatest satirist of English literature. So it is interesting to speculate about the possible closeness of Swift's friendship, not only with the Dalways and Dobbs at Kilroot (as they were the leading Episcopalian families in a district which was otherwise almost wholly Presbyterian), but also in Ballynure with Alexander Dalway's daughter Ellinor and her husband Edward Clements of Clements Hill (from whom 'Mark Twain' is believed to be descended).

THE CLEMENTS OF CLEMENTS HILL
King John in 1210 granted a charter to Henry Clemens and Roger de Preston to lands near the present town of Larne in County Antrim. By the 1600s, the family (sometimes spelled 'Clemence' and sometimes 'Clements') were living in the Ballynure area of the Six-Mile-Water valley.
In 1609, Edward and John Clements settled at Straid, which was then called Thomastown because it had been possessed under Elizabeth I by Thomas Stevenson of Carrickfergus. Edward Clements had just obtained a deed from John Dalway of the townlands of Ballythomas, Straidballythomas, and Ballymenagh. At the same time his brother John Clements is noticed as also holding lands near Straid.

About 1640, Henry Clements of Straid, who is believed to have been son of the above Edward, was deputy recorder of Carrickfergus. In 1648, we find him a captain in Sir John Clotworthy's regiment of foot, and in the following year in garrison at Carrickfergus, of which town he had been chosen an alderman. He died soon after.

Henry Clements (Junior) and his brother Edward, were among those who signed the Antrim Association in 1688. In 1692, Henry was one of the representatives in parliament for Carrickfergus. On the death of Henry, his brother Edward succeeded to the family estates. In 1707, he resided at Clements-hill, in which year he served the office of high sheriff of the county of Antrim, and in 1715 he was appointed major of a regiment of militia dragoons belonging to the same county, commanded by the Hon. John I. Chichester.

Edward Clements married Ellinor, daughter of Alexander Dalway, Ballyhill who died March, 1696, and by her had seven sons, and two daughters: Edward, Henry, Hercules, Francis, John, Dalway, Anne and Millicent. In 1716, Edward Clements was high sheriff of the county of Antrim. He died 1733.

The children of Edward Clements and Ellinor Dalway included several that had distinguished military careers. Francis was appointed major of dragoons on the decease of his father, and in 1721, served the office of high sheriff of the county of Antrim. Both John and Dalway Clements were officers in Colonel Skeffington's regiment when it served during the 1689 Siege of Derry. This tradition continued into the 18th century with several of the next generation of the family serving with their regiments in North America.

I have to admit that, swamped under a tide of genealogical information about the early migration of these Clements to America in the wake of Arthur Dobbs' first contingent from this area in 1751, I have not even attempted to trace the direct line of descent to Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain). But it is well worth somebody researching it - if only to justify another blue plaque in Ballynure graveyard. And, of course, also a similar one on Dalway's Bawn!

Along the Cattle Trail - in sight of Scotland

Last week I explored further along the old cattle drove road where it survives from the Commons to Dalway's Bawn.
This was a new stretch of the countryside for me, as I had only gone as far as the first hill after Lough Mourne before. Imagine my surprise when I ventured beyond the next brae, over the highest point, and suddenly the Irish sea and the coast of Scotland was there - straight ahead. (No history in this post, just a few photos.)
The center hill in the near horizon is Muldersleigh Hill, behind Whitehead - one of the ports where the cattle were exported from, the other being Portmuck in Islandmagee which can be seen on the distant left. The ridge of fields in the middle distance is in the townland of Bellahill (where Dalway's Bawn is), and the valley immediately in front is that of the Copeland Water, which marks the boundary of Carrickfergus County.

Just to explain for the benefit of anybody following this 'virtual' field trip, the figure on the lane is my long-suffering wife Helen, getting ahead of the game picking blackberries.

Going back to the first part of the cattle track which I described in an earlier post (The Commons Cattle Trail Today, June 2010), some more photos from then set the scene just as you leave Lough Mourne and the Commons.
























But back at the newly explored trail and the view of Scotland - you might have to click on this to enlarge if you want to see the Galloway coast - but believe me in the flesh it was as clear as anything, and to the left was the Scottish isle of Ailsa Craig looking just like Slemish rising out of the sea.

So, how far did we get? Well according to the map the lane goes all the way to Dalway's Bawn. But we only went on as far as the Copeland Water, at the bottom of the next valley. Here the lane crosses the Beltoy Road, and I was able to make a note of where to park the car when I (or we) come back to explore the next stage through Bellahill townland. (Our car was parked back at Lough Mourne, and as you will see from the next picture, this track is definitely not for ordinary vehicles).
At this point, the lane dives down to the valley bottom in a 1:3 gradient. Nothing like a field trip to understand why this lane survives without being made into a modern road!

So, nothing else for the time being except back to base at Lough Mourne.