Eigse Paged 2004 - National University of Ireland

SETTLEMENT IN MEDIEVAL IRELAND 43
example, Duffy shows that the vast majority of ballybetaghs comprise
sixteen tates. 105 This is echoed in Keating’s description of
twelve, or exceptionally fourteen, seisreacha to the baile bíataigh.
Although this schema is certainly excessively prescriptive for
Keating’s own time, it probably illustrates reasonably accurately the
basic principle of the system as it once existed. McErlean is
undoubtedly correct in seeing in the ballybetaghs and similar units
the structure within which the Gaelic taxation system operated. 106
The packaging of equal numbers of medium-sized land units of
equivalent economic capacity (tates in Monaghan, for example) into
large units (ballybetaghs) is a simple and elegant solution for ensuring
the easy administration of the assessment of taxes and dues. It
also had repercussions for the system of landholding. As Duffy
demonstrates, the ballybetagh and its subdivisions were also a device
for the lord to allocate his lands among branches of client septs or
followers, although this must be seen as secondary to the primary
function of these divisions in tax evaluation. 107
The various applications of the term baile appear bewildering,
even contradictory, at times. It is a homestead and a farm; a village
and a city; a house cluster and a ballybetagh. However, these apparently
disparate entities share common features that are expressed in
this single term. The defining characteristic of the baile is occupied
space, whether by a habitation (farmstead, village, town, etc.) or by
agricultural land (farm, townland, ballybetagh). Each place is important
by virtue of the presence of people who imbue it with an economic
and social function in relation to the provision of food and
raising of revenue. The town facilitates trade and commerce and
pays taxes. The farm sustains its inhabitants and produces a surplus
so that tax can be paid to the king and food-rent to the lord. It is part
of a larger tax-assessment unit (the forerunner of the modern townland),
which in turn is part of a larger unit of assessment (ballybetagh).
The baile, therefore, is fundamentally concerned with the
organisation of people, land and resources for the sustenance of the
inhabitants and the generation of material goods.
University of Ulster at Coleraine
GREGORY TONER
105
Patrick J. Duffy, ‘Social and spatial order in the Mac Mahon lordship of Airghialla
in the late sixteenth century’ in Duffy et al., Gaelic Ireland 115-37 (at pp 126-9).
106
McErlean, ‘The Irish townland system’ 326-8.
107
Duffy, ‘Social and spatial order’ 130.