Page:A View of the State of Ireland - 1809.djvu/98

 Iren. I will begin then to count their customes in the same order that I counted their nations, and first with the Scythian or Scottish manners. Of the which there is one use, amongst them, to keepe their cattle, and to live themselves the most part of the yeare in boolies, pasturing upon the mountaine, and waste wilde places; and removing still to fresh land, as they have depastured the former. The which appeareth plaine to be the manner of the Scythians, as you may read in Olaus Magnus, and Io. Bohemus, and yet is used amongst all the Tartarians and the people about the Caspian Sea, which are naturally Scythians, to live in heards as they call them, being the very same, that the Irish boolies are, driving their cattle continually with them, and feeding onely on their milke and white meats.

Eudox. What fault can you finde with this custome? for though it be an old Scythian use, yet it is very behoofefull in this country of Ireland, where there are great mountaines, and waste deserts full of grasse, that the same should be eaten downe, and nourish many thousands of cattle, for the good of the whole realme, which cannot (me thinks) well be any other way, then by keeping those boolies there, as yee have shewed.

Iren. But by this custome of boolying, there grow in the meane time many great enormityes unto that