The Use of Gorse in the Isle of Man

By I. M KILLIP

'HE is better than a furze bush'-an Irishman's estimate of ' a worthless person ' - is a misleading comparison, for in his book on the uses of furze in Ireland in which it occurs, Mr. A. T. Lucas makes it clear that the furze bush was anything but worthless. The book Furze: A survey and history of its uses in Ireland is based on evidence gathered by means of a questionnaire on ways in which country people in all parts of Ireland have used the plant up to recent times, and on an examination of literary and historical sources which have a bearing on its economic value in the past. Though he comes to no conclusions as to the origins and antiquity of the many uses of furze which he later describes, Mr. Lucas is able to demonstrate 'grounds for thinking that furze had some recognised value in pre-Norman Ireland, and ample proof that it had from late Medieval times onward,' quoting in support of this, data supplied by the Irish Civil Survey of 1654-56, where furze growing land is classed as profitable, and by the Extents of Irish Monastic Possessions 1540-41, in which as he says ' in those cases where definite acreages of furze are specified there can be no doubt that we are dealing with the plant as a recognised asset on land.'

In the second part of the book, in which he sets out and examines evidence on the ways in which furze was used, he is able to cite about twenty major purposes to which it was put, as well as miscellaneous and even isolated examples of its use. The great diversity of these leaves no doubt as to the reasons for the high value set upon it in the past, nor of the contribution it has made to Irish life up to recent times. Furze was used for fodder, for fuel (in bakers' ovens and for limeburning as well as in the house), for bedding for animals, in roofing and mudwalling, for fencing, draining, roadmaking, harrowing, chimney-cleaning and dyeing, this being by no means an exhaustive list. The final section of the book deals with the place of furze in Irish folklore and popular belief. The custom of lighting ceremonial fires against witch-craft was widespread in Ireland, and Irish people felt no compunction about setting fire to the gorse to drive bad luck away from their fields and their cattle. A similar disregard for the usefulness of the plant was displayed in the Isle of Man where the custom of lighting gorse fires on May Eve was observed with equal zest: it was said here that every time a twig snapped it was a witch burning.'

In reading Mr. Lucas' book, uses of gorse in the Isle of Man come constantly to mind, and though there is not so large nor so varied a body of information on the subject, the Manx Museum Folk Life Survey since its inception in 1948 has accumulated enough material to prove that gorse contributed in very many ways to the life of country people. Many of the methods and techniques found in Ireland have their counterpart here. Information is lacking on the use of gorse in building, roadmaking and limeburning, but this does not mean that it was not so used. Gorse blooms were used here to provide colouring matter in cheese and butter making, and the bush itself as a kind of doormat which 'the old people put at the back door every Saturday night ready for Sunday,' and as a 'scaa' - a screen made of gorse branches tied with rope to fill up a doorway. Few of the Gaelic names for gorse in its many forms have survived here, the bart of gorse being the only one of which there is common knowledge, though the clew of gorse, a single branch with a bushy head was used in chimney sweeping and to stop up a ' durrag'-a gap left in a stone-built wall which allowed sheep to pass from field to field. In addition to the making of walking sticks and cammag sticks, the wood of the gorse was sometimes used for the upright bars in the backs of chairs, and charred gorse-bons gorse-sticks which had been slightly scorched in the fire in order as it was thought to harden them were used as pins or tines in wooden harrows. ' Barts of bons ', the equivalent of the Irish furze faggots, (beart in Irish seems to mean a bundle of green gorse, not as here one of dry gorse-sticks) were cut and gathered and sold as fuel. The gorse itself was cut and sold for fodder at two shillings a cartload. We are told that gorse was'sown and grown for cattle fodder ', the seed being stocked by seed merchants in the towns and bough. by farmers to sow on the tops of hedges and in certain selected fields or plots of rough ground. It has been suggested that the seed was once imported into the Island, but of this as far as is known there is no record. This trading and trafficking in gorse is held now only in very slight remembrance but such recollection of it as remains indicates that gorse was once a saleable commodity and therefore of considerably greater value than it is today.

It could probably be demonstrated that very many of the older uses of gorse have survived in some degree up to the present day. A wooden framed cattle shelter, its sides interwoven with gorse, was in use in the Parish of Lonan only two years ago, being visible from a main road: others in less prominent places could probably be found. Unless hedges themselves disappear there is no foreseeable reason why the simple expedient of stopping up a gap in a hedge with a bush of gorse should ever be abandoned. We do not know for how long it has been the habit of Manx people to'go on the bons ' which means to gather gorse sticks to light the fire, but they are still doing it, and it is a country practice which will probably never entirely die out. There is something so peculiarly Manx in this custom that the Manx American who had forgotten or professed to have forgotten the meaning of ' a bast of bons ' was considered to have lost his nationality.

There is no doubt that gorse has a significance for Manx people quite unrelated to its economic or practical value. It could hardly be otherwise in an island where in Spring the hedges are covered with it and there are whole fields of it in bloom: where in early Autumn the late-flowering Manx gorse and the heather stretch for level acres on the Ayrelands of the north and on the lower slopes of the hills. The gorse that 'runs riot in Glen Chiass ' was one of the things that T. E. Brown remembered when in exile in Clifton. Most people say ' My word, the gorse is proud this year! ' and leave it at that.

There is something in the soil of the Island that encourages the growth of gorse, so that when land goes out of cultivation it creeps back and re-establishes itself. The people seem to have made use of it and tried to get rid of it at one and the same time. It met two very urgent requirements, supplying fuel and cattle fodder, but nevertheless it had to be eradicated in some places, and in others its growth had to be controlled. Small derelict farms are now overgrown with gorse where once every effort was made to clear the ground and bring it back into cultivation. It covers steep brooghs and river banks which bear traces of the lazy beds where miners and crofters grew their crops of potatoes in the days when a few acres of land were precious, and the work of rooting out the gorse was willingly undertaken. Nevertheless when hedges were built they were sown with gorse seeds along the top, and the seed was also sown in ground unsuitable for any other crop. A hedge that was built entirely of sods and topped with gorse could easily be destroyed, and both hedge and gorse would be in need of constant renewal. A stone and sod or earth hedge was a much more permanent structure, and here gorse could be sown and maintained, making a strong fence by giving additional height, and providing very necessary shelter for animals in the storms of winter. The gorse itself could be used in a variety of ways, and indeed unless such a hedge was cut down at regular intervals, the action of the wind on the tall bushes would eventually break it down. This kind of hedge is still common in the Island, but is no longer sown with gorse along the top, for where such a hedge stands today the gorse is firmly rooted and is cut down regularly so that its growth is ensured. A gorse hedge cut down to clear the headland of a fallow field before ploughing, once in five to eight years, will renew itself sufficiently to come into faint bloom the following year.

In more recent tines, far from encouraging the growth of gorse, it was necessary to wage constant war upon it. Much clearing was done in hilly fields where gorse tended to re-appear whilst the land was lying fallow, particularly in the central parishes of the Island where the farms ran in long, narrow strips up to the stone was at the foot of the mountain, a wall which served a dual purpose, enclosing the cultivated land, and keeping the mountain at bay. Two sayings were current in days gone by to describe a mark's relation to this wall and what lay beyond it. Of a good farmer it was said that his fields were ploughed ' right up to the mountain hedge', and of a bad, that his land had ' gone back to the more rnountain'. Where the line of demarcation had beceme confused or obliterated and it was necessary to reclaim again from the waste, a great deal. of hard work was involved. It is recorded that for work of this kind they had to have four horses ploughing abreast with a big iron tool on the plough, and then they had to break up the gorse roots with the speiy (gorse hack) '.

Going back to earlier days we find that this hacking out with the speiy was by no means the whole story. ' In the very old days gorse was grown specially for fodder. That would be before there were turnips and other root crops for feeding cattle in the winter. The coarse strong growth would be cut out and the new shoots would get a chance to grow. The fine fresh growth was used-for cattle.' If gorse grew then as profusely as it does today this way of encouraging its growth so that it could be used as fodder seems more likely than deliberate propagation by sowing or planting. Sowing in actual plots of ground as well as on hedge tops was however carried out in some cases. ' Gorse was sown on a steep broogh on Ballahimmin, and they said that it was sown and cut in rotation, and each patch was a different shade of green. There was a small gorse patch on the Eary in Patrick, and they grew it too, on Ballcosnahan, one of the big farms in the district.'

The most widely known and probably the earliest method of preparing gorse for fodder was by bruising it with a wooden mallet on a flat stone or in a stone trough. To speak of ' bruising gorse' does not necessarily mean that this method was employed, as the term is a general one used to describe the 'Preparation of gorse for fodder by hand with a mallet or chopper, or by means of a wind or water driven crusher or hammer type mill. ' Chopping gorse' usually means preparing it by putting it, through a hand-turned cutter. A simple method of preparation involving a minimum of fetching and carrying was to bruise the gorse on a stone placed in the field where the gorse was being cut. Mr. Robert Cannon, of Abbeylands, Baldwin, can point to a stone which was possibley used in this way.

In Wood's Account of the Isle of Man (1811) an observation occurs which allmost leads to the conclusion that the animals themselves first demonstrated that gorse bruised and rid of its prickles could be used as fodder. He says that horses ' when confined to this kind of food trample upon the branches and paw them with their forefoot till the prickles become mashed together or rubbed off. In no other place except Anglesea are they driven to the exercise of a similar sagacity.' A somewhat similar observation from Mr. J. T. Kaighen of Bride on the behaviour of small, Manx ponies that were used for work on the hills, serves to show that the gorse could be eaten by them when necessity arose without preliminary preparation. ' They were using little ponies on the hills putting four before the plough. They were left out to fend for themselves eating gorse and suchlike, and when there was snow they would go in under the big gorse and they would be eating it as if it was grass, and they might be under there for a week maybe.'

Mr. George Quayle of Lezayre has suggested that gorse prickles would be less injurious to horses than to cows and other cattle as horses (having more teeth) are better equipped to chew their food, whereas cattle graze differently and swallow it whole. He thinks therefore that it would be necessary to bruise gorse with a mallet for cows, as it would be almost impassible to make it soft and fine enough for them by using a hand-chopper, and inclines to the opinion that the chopper was used more particularly for horses and the mallet for cattle. This, if true, is significant, for it would help to account for the apparently much more widespread recollection of the mallet and trough method than of any other. Superseded on the farm by quicker mechanical means, gorse-bruising with a mallet was the method employed by the very large croafting community who in the majority of cases kept one or two cows, but no horse. A note from the late Mr. W. Quilleash, Ballaragh, reads "we were using a cutter to chop the gorse for the horses, but a crofter up the road was bruising it with a mallet in a trough made of flag stones, four upright stones and a flag for the bottom.' In the parish of Patrick ' Gorse was bruised with a mallet in a stone trough, and people used to be making the troughs themselves, hollowing out a depression six inches deep and eight inches wide in the top of a granite boulder.' Troughs of larger dimensions, have also been found, and the recorded measurement quoted represents no standard, though it has been suggested that this kind of trough was frequently made by miners who were also crofters. Mr. Quayle says that gorse was sometimes bruised on a stone of a fairly regular shape boxed in with boards nailed to uprights which had been placed in, the ground at its four corners. A narrower piece of wood slotted in at the front was removable. In describing the mallet that was used, he points out that the handle was set at an acute angle, not at right angles to the head, so making it possible to work in a more nearly upright position. The mallet had pieces of scythe or sickle blade driven down into the face, and was banded with iron at the striking end. The wood used was probably ash or elm. An example of the kind of mallet used has not yet been found, but a description of one that was used in Sulby reads - ' The big wooden mallet I remember one old man using was called the "thumper". It was a big oak mallet they were using.' The expression ' thumping gorse' is used in only one instance and no doubt means the same as bruising. There is a record of a tool resembling a maul having been used for gorse. The up and down motion of a heavy-headed tool of this kind on gorse lying on the ground could no doubt properly be described as ' thumping gorse'.

A gorse-mallet is always spoken of here as a 'mallad'. This is nearer to the Irish mailead than to any of the Manx Gaelic words we have for it: bwoailteen (Cregeen), tratneayn (Kelly). This latter word must have been the people's name for it, as F. Comaish of Kirk Michael gave it as ' the Manx word, for a gorse-mallet', spelling it 'trat ny ayn'. He supplied. also a word for a gorse-,chopper skynn-phronnee-conney: the dictionaries give only skynn-phronnee, a chopping knife.

The kind of gorse chopper most commonly used is described by Mr. A. W. Teare of Colby: - ' It was made of 5/8 inch flat iron with collars welded to take the pole handles the angle (at which the handle was set) was more acute, as they would beat it standing erect. I had several of these irons with a wooden trough to hold the gorse.'

An unsigned note in the Folk Life Survey archive has this to say about the gorse choppers which are preserved in the Manx Museum: ' They display a faithfulness to type which is remarkable . . . having a long narrow blade with double arms one at each end for socketing the handle. The neat flowing curve which characterises the longer arm is sometimes absent. The handle, four or five feet long, was not parallel to the axis of the blade, but diverged at a varying angle from it. The two choppers from Kirk Michael are divorced from this tradition and have wider blades hafted by a single arm projecting from the middle, and the handle appears to have been parallel to the blade.'

The writer of the note continues: - ' Gorse was cut and fed to animals in the spring whilst the sap was still running freely through the new stems, keeping them soft and nutritious.' The evidence does not altogether support this, the main impression being that gorse was used as fodder in the winter. ' In the hard weather we would be cutting the fine young gorse.' ' In the winter of 1876, anybody who could find any young gorse cut it and carried it home for bruising.' ' The gorse was ready to cut when it was two years old. The time to cut it was from November to April. When the time came for it to flower it was not so good for the cattle.' In Kirk Lonan there was a rhyme which ran-
' Come bruise the gorse without delay to keep the cows alive till May.'
Gorse would be given to cattle by both farmers and.crofters, when other fodder was finished. Some relied on it as a regular means of eking out their scanty supplies, and others with only one or two animals to provide for, as a main item of their diet.

The chopping of gorse by a hand-turned machine is a mode of preparation that outlived all others. ' The cut gorse was pushed between the rollers, of the machine with a " feeder " - a piece of wood. The teeth of the rollers gripped the gorse and pushed it against the blades of the hand-turned wheel! The fine Manx gorse was preferred, and a man would travel some distance to get it, so a Sulby man says ' My father was getting up at daybreak and walking a mile to bring back some nice young gorse for the horses. He would put it in the cutter and hold it in with a stick and turn the handle, and it would come out all sliced fine.' Gorse and hay were often chopped together, the gorse being put through once or twice before the hay was added. Gorse prepared in this way was given to horses long after it had ceased to be used as fodder for other animals. It was thought to have great medicinal value, being particularly effective in cases of worms. The belief was that the worms became impaled on the prickles and were so detached from the animal's stomach. It would be fairly safe to say that all the older Manx farmers have heard of this use of gorse as a medicine, and many have practised it. There is complete unanimity amongst them as to its effect on a horse's condition. ' It made him grow fat and sleek.' According to one man ' it made him grow a fine moustache, and put a shine on him like a rook.'

A suggestion that locally made gorse-cutting machines were in use is contained in a note which has already been quoted about the use of gorse in the bad winter of 1876. In the parish of Ballaugh it continues ' The smith Mr. Lace was kept busy making chopping machines, . . . one farmer suggested fixing a cart wheel to one side of his machine as a flywheel to give it a steadier motion..' The haycutters most often used as choppers were of standard make and were sold by the merchants.

Very much older than these hand operated machines were the gorse-mills of various kinds which were quite numerous in the Isle of Man over a hundred years ago. Lord Teignmouth writing in 1836 mentions a gorse-mill. ' near Inchebreck'. A wind-driven gorse-mill at Booillyvelt in Kirk Maughold appears to have been of fantastic construction-'The windmill with four wings ten or twelve feet long was erected at the. top of a tree, and a connecting shaft drove the gorse-mill down below. It worked on the same principle as Murray's gorse-mill at Ballaglass. He was cutting gorse to feed his horses and he had a mill worked by a water-wheel. It was a good crusher and took the bark and everything.' This mill of Murray's was said to have been in use up to the 1920s. Another wind-driven mill was in use at Ballacroshey, Ballaugh, but details of its construction are not available. Remains of the foundations of a gorse-mill at Druidale are discernible, as is the position of the damhead where the stream was diverted to turn the water-wheel. Mr. W. Cowley of the Creggan, Lezayre, who remembers this mill before it was dismantled, but not in the days when it was working, describes it as ' a crushing mill with big rollers inside. It would be a hundred years ago since it was used by the Brookes in Druidale. They were sowing a few acres of gorse for crushing they got the idea from Ireland.' Yet another kind, a turbine driven gorse-mill of which nothing now remains is known to have been used at Ballacooley, Ballaugh. Mr. T. H. Kinrade of Lezayre who supplies the information has heard that ' the gorse was crushed in the mill by means of two sets of interlocking teeth.' 'These mills may be said to be typical of a method of milling gorse which was in the nature of an innovation, being introduced from outside by such persons as Murray of Maughold, Colonel Anderson of Ballacooley, in Ballaugh, Brooke of Druidale. The mill at Injebreck mentioned by Lord Teignmouth, the one in the possession of the Gawnes of Kentraugh to which reference is made in the diary of Edward Moore Gawne (I.M.M. vol. V. Nos. 72-73), also the Cooilroi gorse-mill in Lonan, may all possibly belong to this category, though the likelihood of improved methods of milling on an old site must also be borne in mind. For a more traditional method it is necessary to look for the almost vanished traces of the old gorse-mills that once stood on many of the small streams that ran through the farms. In Lonan ' the gorse-mill field ' on Skinscoe contains all that is left of the stone-work, overgrown now with briar and ivy, that supported the water-wheel of the gorse-mill on Stroan y Grangee, a mill that served both Skinscoe and the Ballamoar. In Lonan too, the late Mr. William Kermode described a gorse-mill which he remembered at Baldhoon - ' It was worked by a water-wheel and was down below the stream. They relied on the flood water to work it, for the water was not carried to it. It was like a hammer-mill and the mallet was at the end of a horizontal bar and at right angles to it. This, the turning of the wheel, lifted up a certain distance and then let it drop on the gorse which was on the ground underneath.The mallet was a tree-trunk with an iron band round the striking end to prevent it splitting, and the band was wedged tight with pieces of wood so that it wouldn't slip. As the mallet lifted up, the gore was turned with a fork, and the bark peeled off the sticks was thrown under to be chopped as well.' To supplement this may be added what the late Mr. W. Stowell of Riversdale remembered of the gorse-mill at Ballaglass, Lonan. Thr stream to the west of Ballaglass farm appears to have been dammed at one time where the road crosses over and some low stone walls alongside the road may mark the site of the gorse mill, of which Mr. Stowell said : ' Little gorse-mills were often built alongside mountain streams, like the one at Ballaglass. There were two sorts of mill, one had single and the other had double hammers. They were driven by a water-wheel with half-moon cogs which lifted the hammers then allowed them to fall with their own weight onto the gorse. There was a 15 inch face on the hammer which had iron spikes on it.' The double-hammer mill had ' two heavy wooden mallets well weighted with iron and with blades on the heads, which were raised alternately by the two half cog wheels attached to the axle of the overshot wheel. The gorse came out like fine grass. mother kind of mill had rollers, but they were not very common, most people had bruisers. The note from Mr. Stowell contains the information that ' this kind of mill was sametimes used as a corn mill with stones like a hand quern.' Mr. B. R. S. Megaw in an article in the Journal of the Manx Museum (vol. IV, No. 63) has suggested that the gorse-mills in the Isle of Man might in fact be a later development of the horizontal mills.

For whatever use it was intended, for fuel, fodder or other purpose, all the processes attendant on working with gorse were slow and laborious. It had to be approached with caution, being difficult to handle, and held down with a forked stick whilst it was being cut with the sickle, which was the tool used far gorse growing on a hedge or at a fairly high level. The low Manx gorse which grow on the ground could be cut with a special short-bladed gorse-scythe. The forked stick used with the sickle has been galled ' the quin stick', and although the name was not widely used, ' guin' as a dialect word meaning thorn or prickle is occasionally heard. For cutting down a tall gorse hedge a long-handled tool was needed which could be gripped in both hands ~- a gorse-cleaver.

Factual information, such as this article gives, of the methods and tools of a trade can never of itself convey in any real sense the part played by gorse or furze in the lives of the people in any? district where it Nourished. 'Those who would see the furze-cutter's calling against its natural back-ground and in its owzl time, could. do no batter than read again The Return of the Native, one of 'Thomas Hardy's novels of Wessex life, in which Ulex Europaeus assumes almost the role of a minor character. hardy was a trained observer of archaic cccupations and much else besides : he was, as he said of himiself ' a man who used to notice such things.' His eye missed nothing : the ' he'th-cropers '-the wild ponies that grazed among the heath and furze -- the glare of the November bonfires of furze-faggots on Egdon heath, the faggot-ties of bramble thrown on the ground outside the furze-cutter's house which revealed to him the occupation of the man within, and the furze-cutter himself carrying the leather gloves and bill-hook of his calling; his legs ' sheathed in bulging leggings as stiff as the Philistine's greaves of brass '.

A Manx gorse-cutter of whom we have written record is no less a person than Orree beg, a hero of the Manx Gaelic Ossianic fragment ' Fin as Oshin' (Moore's Manx Ballads). The story of how Orree, son of the king, avenged himself can Oshin's daughter by burning down the castle of the Eonians has a familiar ring and establishes a precedent in remote antiquity f or the Manx custom of ' going on the bans '. He sets about his task like a true Manxman by going to the mountain with his gorse-hack on his shoulder to get a bars of gorse
' Hie Orree beg magh dye ny sleityn
As speih mooar connee er e geayltyn '.

He gathers eight barts, with-
' Hoght kionnanyn currit ayes dagh bait '
which the translator, unaccountably lapsing into a Scotticism, renders ' Eight large faggots cram'ed in ilka Burthen ' (' kionnan ', diminutive of ' kione ', means ' a lump less than a head, a bundle ' according to Cregeen). He puts one bart in every door and window, 'Agh mean y thie mooar hene y bart mooar sollys ' (' But the big blazing Bart [ he put] in the middle of the great hall itself '). Despite the heroic setting, the details of the gorse-cutting and the vocabulary employed are those with which recent research has made us familiar, and even on this slight evidence it becomes apparent that oral tradition of today reaches back in unbroken continuity to the remote past. It is regrettable that. more early sources of this kind with which to compare our present findings are denied to us.