Blindboy
speaker
1,520 appearances
3 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2026
last heard 10 Jun
Blindboy’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Apr 2026 with 2.
Appearances
Before colonization, Ireland had a pastoral tradition.
We were a cattle-based economy, so cattle was a big deal.
But people moved with their cattle.
And there used to be a tradition that would start about now.
This tradition was called bullying.
Bullying was very important.
So if you had cattle and they were to feed on grass, instead of fertilizing your field to get stronger grass, when it came to about April,
Every community, usually the teenagers, the young boys and the young girls, came to about April.
They would move with their cattle up to the hills where the grass was thicker.
So you're not relying upon fertiliser, you're moving your cattle to an area where the grass is better.
And entire communities in Ireland, I'm talking 1500 years ago, longer, entire communities in Ireland would move with their cattle to the hills to stay in these huts known as Bowleys, Bowley huts.
And they would stay there for the summer with their cattle.
But what made it really important, it wasn't just about moving cattle to the hills.
It was a meeting place for all different communities.
And it was a place of courtship because it was the teenagers that were going.
So people would meet people from the opposite sex, from a different community.
You'd share songs, you'd share stories, you'd share weaving techniques.
Culture would be shared at these pastoral sites of moving, these bullying sites.
But that story of the old Brindle cow as a piece of oral folklore is so old that it was for the benefit of people who were bullying.
It was for the benefit of people who moved with their cattle to the hills.
Showing 1281–1300 of 1,520 · page 65 of 76
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