Eigse Paged 2004 - National University of Ireland

BAILE: SETTLEMENT AND LANDHOLDING
IN MEDIEVAL IRELAND
IT is now widely accepted that ringforts, the dominant form of habitation
in the Early Christian period, had started to fall into decline by
the tenth century, and it has been suggested that they were replaced
by some form of open settlement which, by its nature, is virtually
invisible in the archaeological record. 1 The later medieval placename
landscape is dominated by baile-names – about a sixth of all
townland names begin with Bally – but a link with the archaeological
record has proved elusive. Attempts to contrast the distribution of
supposed baile-settlements to the ringfort distribution have achieved
only very limited success, not least because such efforts have been
based on the erroneous assumption that baile in placenames must
refer to a settlement. 2 In fact baile is frequently applied to a variety
of land units and postdates the main period of ringfort habitation.
Charles Doherty has recently linked the emergence of baile-names to
the demise of the ringfort, the appearance of settlement and rectangular
houses c. 1000 A.D., and the emergence of ‘unenclosed agricultural
clusters organised in townships working an infield-outfield
system and ploughing in common’. 3 However, despite advances
made by historical geographers, the precise meaning and chronology
of baile, and its relation to emergent townlands, remain poorly
1
See J. P. Mallory and T. E. McNeill, The archaeology of Ulster from colonization
to plantation (Belfast 1991) 185; Matthew Stout, The Irish ringfort (Dublin 1997)
24, 33.
2
See, for example, Desmond McCourt, ‘The dynamic quality of Irish rural settlement’
in Man and his habitat: essays presented to Emyr Estyn Evans, ed. R. H.
Buchanan, Emrys Jones and Desmond McCourt (London 1971) 126-64. Barrett
shows that of the three regions of southern Donegal, the Dingle peninsula and Co.
Louth, ringforts and baile-names exist in complementary distribution only in Dingle
(G. F. Barrett, The ring-fort: a study in settlement geography with special reference
to southern County Donegal and the Dingle area, County Kerry, unpubl. PhD thesis
(Queen’s University, Belfast 1972) cited in T. B. Barry, The archaeology of medieval
Ireland (London 1987) 21-2. For a useful critique of the relevant literature see
Charles Doherty, ‘Settlement in early Ireland: a review’, A history of settlement in
Ireland, ed. Terry Barry (London and New York 2000) 50-80.
3
Charles Doherty, ‘The Vikings in Ireland: a review’, Ireland and Scandinavia in
the early Viking Age, ed. H. B. Clarke, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh and Raghnall Ó Floinn
(Dublin 1998) 288-330 (at pp 316-17, 322).