Cattle raiding in medieval Ireland (and elsewhere)
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Cattle raids were often depicted in Irish mythology, such as the famous Táin Bó Cúailnge (The Cattle Raid of Cooley).
Cattle raiding is the act of stealing live cattle, often several or many at once. In Australia, such stealing is often referred to as duffing, and the perpetrator as a duffer. In other areas, especially in Queensland, the practice is known as poddy-dodging with the perpetrator known as a poddy-dodger. In North America, especially in the Wild West cowboy culture, cattle theft is dubbed rustling, while an individual who engages in it is a rustler.
TIL cattle thievery still goes on in a big way in Pakistan, where it is sometimes referred to as "lifting". See here. I wonder if its roots go back to pre-Islamic (i.e., Indo-Iranian) times.
Oh, I forgot to draw attention to the video narrator's pronunciation of "cattle". Mea culpa.
Selected readings
- J. P. Mallory, In Search of the Irish Dreamtime : Archaeology & Early Irish Literature (London: Thames & Hudson, 2016) — Ulster Cycle; Táin Bó Cúailnge (Cattle Raid of Cooley)
- Bruce Lincoln, "The Indo-European Cattle-Raiding Myth", History of Religions, Vol. 16, No. 1 (Aug., 1976), pp. 42-65
- "The cattle-keeping Bai of Yunnan" (1/18/22)
- "Indo-European 'cow' and Old Sinitic reconstructions: awesome" (1/16/20)
- "Galactic glimmers: of milk and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (1/8/19)
- "Know your Narts: cattle rearing and cattle raiding" (6/6/20)
- "Cattle raid, spray, whatever" (12/21/13) — be sure to read all the comments
- "Translating the I ching (Book of Changes)" (10/11/17)
[Thanks to Sunny Jhutti]
Philip Taylor said,
July 19, 2025 @ 4:02 pm
"Cattle raiding is the act of stealing live cattle, often several or many at once" — I am not convinced that one can steal only one cattle : one can steal one cow, one bull, or one heifer (etc) but "cattle", by definition, is plural, although there is at least one attested instance of the word being used to denote a singular beast — A cattle, when it goes into a drinking pit […] throws the chief part of its weight upon its fore feet. William H. Marshall • The rural economy of Yorkshire • 1788 (1796).
Anna said,
July 19, 2025 @ 5:13 pm
What's noteworthy about his pronunciation of "cattle" then?
Victor Mair said,
July 19, 2025 @ 7:45 pm
Here's British vs. American pronunciation of "cattle".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whUQJBzZF7M
Steve Morrison said,
July 19, 2025 @ 8:20 pm
@Philip Taylor: Here is a Straight Dope message board discussion of what the singular of cattle should be.
Bob Ladd said,
July 20, 2025 @ 12:28 am
What Anna said. This is not about cattle, it's about intervocalic /t/! Has the youtube guy made similar videos for little, butter, bottom, Betty, and ad infinitum?
Gokul Madhavan said,
July 20, 2025 @ 1:08 am
Re: pre-Islamic cattle raids in the Indo-Gangetic plain: See the many references to such raids in the Mahābhārata, especially the failed attempt at cattle raiding (go-haraṇa) by the Kauravas in the Virāṭa-parvan book, which foreshadows their ultimate defeat in the Mahābhārata war. The religious and cultural identities of many of the people in the region may have changed in the millennia since, but the economic importance of cattle still remains.
The best recent pop culture reference to Indo-European cattle raiding I can think of is the opening scene in Arrival where they discuss Sanskrit words that mean “battle”, including the (honestly not so common in Classical Sanskrit) word gaviṣṭi. The Sanskritist Malcolm Keating has a post about the movie here that talks about this word.
I am curious to know about cattle raiding in non-IE-influenced cultures, such as the Maasai.
Victor Mair said,
July 20, 2025 @ 5:17 am
He also says "settlement".
Chris Button said,
July 20, 2025 @ 7:34 am
Sounds to me like he's glottalising the intervocalic -t-.
Victor Mair said,
July 20, 2025 @ 8:17 am
Precisely, Chris!
Bob Ladd said,
July 20, 2025 @ 9:36 am
@Chris Button, @VHM
"Glottaling" (as it's often called in the sociophonetic literature) is definitely something that regularly happens to intervocalic /t/ in a variety of (mostly British Isles) accents of English and in a variety of phonetic contexts. In most of those accents and contexts it's sociolinguistically stigmatized, but a widespread exception is in most North American pronunciations of words like button – i.e. "intervocalic" between a stressed vowel and syllabic /n/ or schwa-plus-/n/ (e.g. mitten, cotton, Newton, etc. etc.). Why only there and not in cattle, bottle, settle, bottom, atom, butter, etc. is a mystery, though I have heard younger N. American speakers pronouncing words like button and cotton with a normal N. American intervocalic "flap" exactly as in cattle, bottom, and all the rest, i.e. "regularizing" the phonetic treatment of intervocalic /t/ before "syllabic sonorants" or schwa-plus-sonorant consonant or whatever exactly it is phonetically.
Either way, it's a whole lot more complicated than a difference between British and American pronunciations of cattle!
Robert Coren said,
July 20, 2025 @ 10:00 am
I'm really curious about the origin of "poddy-dodging".
Chris Button said,
July 20, 2025 @ 10:09 am
@ Bob Ladd
Isn't that precisely Victor's point?
T-glottalizing did not used to be common in Irish English. I just checked Wells 1982 (so 40+ years ago), where in Ireland: "T Glottaling is found only in the causal speech of younger working-class Dubliners."
Chris Button said,
July 20, 2025 @ 10:18 am
*casual speech (not causal speech)
As for North American pronunciations of "button", I've always been very attuned to the nuances there. No prizes for guessing why that might be!
Victor Mair said,
July 20, 2025 @ 10:35 am
@Bob Ladd
"Either way, it's a whole lot more complicated than a difference between British and American pronunciations of cattle!"
That definitely was not my point.
Chris got it, you didn't.
Maybe it's because his surname is Button!
Jonathan Smith said,
July 20, 2025 @ 12:37 pm
Re: e.g. "button", while come to think of it [pʌɾən] or sth. with proper "flap" exists somewhere among some, my sense is the larger trend in AmE is towards a truly glottalized version — that is, normative pronunciation of "button" isn't well-represented by e.g. [pʌʔn̩] because it really begins identically to "but" with tongue closure at ~alveolar ridge simultaneous to glottal closure, whereas some very youngs have a version with no such closure yielding dramatic second syllable ʔn̩ (ish).
Anna said,
July 20, 2025 @ 4:54 pm
@ Chris Button
Ah, thank you, that explains it! I was puzzled because to me it sounded like a perfectly normal way of saying "cattle". I am not a native speaker, but I learned my English in Dublin, where I lived for many years. Now it all makes sense :-)
(These days I'm back in Italy and I listen to podcasts in all varieties of English, I've even learned to distinguish several of them — but my baseline pronunciation is still Dublin!)
Barbara Phillips Long said,
July 20, 2025 @ 5:06 pm
In the early 1970s, at college, someone from Staten Island pronounced “bottle” with a glottal stop. I’ve always associated that type of pronunciation with Staten Islanders since then, so it was a surprise to hear it in the cattle rustling video.
Tom said,
July 20, 2025 @ 6:32 pm
@Gokul Madhavan
Yes, and also about cattle raiding in other IE-influenced cultures. Especially, in southern Europe, there were cattle cultures which have somewhat disappeared now, but we know of it from the bull-leaping frescos and Spanish and French bull-fighting. Did they have raiding too? I've never heard of it.
Victor Mair said,
July 20, 2025 @ 10:12 pm
I want to register that I really like the way this dude talks and gestures. I've watched the video about thirty times, and each time it humors me. Even the way he moves his fingers to accompany the cute noises he makes (oo-oo-oo) is charming.
Victor Mair said,
July 23, 2025 @ 6:18 am
And how would y'all pronounce -tt- in "glottalization"?
Adrian Martyn said,
July 28, 2025 @ 3:46 pm
Annála Ríoghachta Éireann (alias Annals of the Four Masters) recorded about sixty cattle raids between 864 and 1200 during the high point of medieval Gaeil kingship. Mostly by the major dynastic kings from Aodh Fionnlaith to Ruairí Ó Conchobhair, generally to subdue political opponents. In 864 "A complete muster of the North [an Tuaisceirt] was made by Aedh Finlaith, so that he plundered the fortresses of the foreigners [longphorta Gall], wherever they were in the North [isin Fochla], both in Cinél Eoghain and Dál Araidhe; and he carried off their cattle and accoutrements, their goods and their chattles. The foreigners of the province [Goill an Cóiccidh] came together at Loch Feabhail Mic Lodain. After Aedh, King of Ireland [Aodh, .i. rí Ereann], had learned that this gathering of strangers was on the borders of his country. he was not negligent in attending to them, for he marched towards them with all his forces; and a battle was fought fiercely and spiritedly on both sides between them. The victory was gained over the foreigners, and a slaughter was made of them. Their heads were collected to one place, in the presence of the king; and twelve score heads were reckoned before him, which was the number slain by him in that battle, besides the numbers of them who were wounded and carried off by him in the agonies of death, and who died of their wounded some time afterwards." Dying 20 November 876, he was eulogised as "Aodh Ailigh airdrigh [high king] Gaoidheal" – Aodh of Aileach, monarch of the Gaeil.