The rabbits are back in this corner of the island, parts east, anyway. And is it possible that they are becoming smaller? Or are rabbits that seem to burrow almost entirely in ditches, stony and otherwise, always smaller?
It's been a long time, but apart from some superficial gnawing at ash trees, now too big to be heavily retarded, and some restriction in the flowers you may plant, not much damage done.
Surely someone has written a the sis on the role of the rabbit in the Irish economy? During the last war, young and not so young, fellows in the country made a good business out of trapping them for export to Britain. And, Fairley tells us, "in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries an average of over two million skins, or the fur from them, were being exported annually."
Myxomatosis and the general tightening up of farming discipline in recent decades have brought a vast change. They used to be farmed in warrens like chickens in a barnyard. In an article on `Meath in 1802', there is a paragraph The Rabbit Trade. Here it is, verbatim.
"There is only one rabbit warren in the County Meath off sufficient extent to entitle it to particular notice. It extends along the seashore from the mouth of the river Boyne, towards the mouth of the river Nanny, and belongs to Mr Brabazon, of Mornington.
The rabbits burrow in a heap of sand, blown off the sea shore by the easterly winds, and feed on a salt marsh running parallel to it being prevented from going on the uplands and corn grounds by broad drains, which are constantly full of water. They are taken by pass nets, placed between them and the burrow, on their hasty return from feeding at night, being alarmed by the barking of dogs, kept for the purpose.
They are all disposed of in Dublin market, the skin being generally more valuable than the flesh and they are sold by the warreners, at from one shilling and six pence to two shillings the pair."
How much would that be in today's money? The above is from a magazine form publication Butlers Review of County Meath. It was published in 1982 and the editor said that the 1983 edition was in course of preparation. The same article as that about the rabbits, contains references to the mending of the roads, the want of capital by farmers and the vast sums drained from the country by absentee landlords.
Also mentions the inordinate use of spirituous liqueurs. These not not mention the money wasted in their purchase, deprives those, who are prone to this dreadful vice, of health, reason, and fits them for the commission of acts, that would blush think of in their sober senses.
See district court reporting today.