benhall.1 wrote:
That image of large areas of tall grass blown flat by summer storms seems much more American than Irish to me (although I've never been to the US, so what would I know?).
Well, although I've been a city mouse for ages now, up to young adulthood I lived in, or cheek-by-jowl with, agrarian areas enough to have a bit of a grasp of things, at least weather-wise; fields were often a stone's throw away, so you got to see firsthand how they fared. In the central US storms can be extraordinary, but even here flattened crops are something we would take as noteworthy; in all those years I'd never seen it myself, so while I assume the risk is statistically uncommon, all the same it's a well-known possibility.
PB+J wrote:
Several describe [Timothy grass] as introduced from the states and by a man named timothy hanson, but I still think it would have been called "Hanson grass."
The reality is more nuanced. Timothy grass is actually native to Europe, and was unintentionally introduced to the New World by settlers. It was first described in 1711 by New Hampshire farmer John Hurd, and indeed for a time it was called "Hurd grass", but its present name is due to Timothy Hanson, also a farmer, widely promoting its intentional, monoculture cultivation in 1720 as a fodder crop, and the promotion took and spread even back to across the Pond. So you could say that if it were at all "introduced" to Ireland and the rest of Europe, it would be in calling attention to what was already under their noses, but prior to that not specifically cultivated as a resource in its own right.
Who knows why it wasn't called "Hanson grass" instead.
Yes I pointed out in my first post that it's native to Ireland, and was introduced to the US. The in the 19th century it is re-introduced specifically as a fodder crop. In one of his accounts of his departure from Ireland O'Neill mentions that one of his brothers had "investment in stock and cattle dealing [in the 1850-60s], a course later well justified since he made a rapid fortune.” So at some point his brother was in the cattle business, and it's in the same time when agricultural journals are promoting Timothy grass as fodder.
It's mostly speculation. By the time of the fire O'Neill had published his first collection of tunes and ireland was very much on his mind