When the 6th-century Saint Molaise of Inishmurray, an island off Co Sligo, was asked why he would not allow cows on the island to supply milk for the religious community, he replied: "In the place where there are cows there are women, and where there are women there is mischief."
This quotation is in the latest book by Sligo historian Mr Joe McGowan, who was born in Mullaghmore, a small headland looking out on Inishmurray. He uses the quotation to illustrate the tradition that women in Ireland did the milking until recently. A local farmer told him: "It was all women that milked cows. The men wouldn't mind helping, but they wouldn't be let. I remember me mother doing the milking and me father looking after the child. She wouldn't trust him with the cows at all."
Echoes of a Savage Land draws on his memories of growing up in Mullaghmore in the 1950s, linking them with a knowledge of folklore the rituals surrounding milking, he said often some milk was squeezed on to the ground with the words, "In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost", but, despite the Christian invocation, the milk was intended for the fairies.
Joe McGowan has published two other books dealing with the north Sligo area, In the Shadow of Benbulben and Inishmurray: Gale, Stone and Fire, and he gives guided tours of this now-uninhabited former monastic island. For tours of the island he can be contacted at 071-66267 or 087-6674522.