‘When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl’.
–William Shakespeare.
One of the contributions made by trees in providing food was the many native apple varieties once available in Ireland. In autumn wild crab apples (Malus sylvestris) were collected in great numbers for jams and jellies. The cultivation of apples was also more common in the past, for both private and commercial consumption. Irish apple harvesting was never the major rural industry it was (and is) in the UK, with its long-established traditions in such counties as Devon, Kent, Somerset, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire. Nevertheless, there were pockets of the industry in Ireland, mostly in Munster – in Cork, Kerry, Limerick, Waterford and Clare. Many estates grew a variety of apple types in walled gardens or extensive orchards – dessert apples, culinary apples and apples for cider production. Apples were often from native cultivars, best suited to local growing conditions and resistant to disease. In Clare, cider apple cultivation was a viable business up to the late 1830’s.
James Frost, recalling that úll and abhal are Gaelic names for apple, wrote of townland names in Lower Bunratty in 1893: ‘We find four localities indicating the growth of apples, viz.: – Moy-ullaan, Moygalla, Gortnanool, and Drumullan’. These names suggest that apple harvesting was of long standing in the area. In Quin we have the townland of Applefort, likely drawing its name from apple production.The local industry grew with the fame of one particular variety of apple known as the cackagee, from the Irish ‘cac a’ ghéidh’ meaning ‘goose poo’! The apple originated with Palatine settlers from southern Germany, a few thousand of whom had arrived in Limerick in 1709 on the invitation of Queen Ann. Escaping persecution by the French Catholic army, they constituted the last plantation of Protestants in Ireland. They settled on lands provided by Sir Thomas Southwell around Rathkeale. Living in tight German-speaking communities, they were progressive and industrious farmers. Apple cultivation was included as one of their many skills. Using their own seed stock, in time they became the pioneer apple growers in Munster. They also had a practice of keeping geese in their orchards, which ate the windfalls on the ground. Through their natural and effective recycling processes the geese fertilised the growing apple trees – hence the cac a’ ghéidh/cackagee apple. The apple had a reputation for producing very fine cider, making it the apple of choice for many other apple growers.
Arthur Young wrote of a visit to ‘Drummoland’ in 1776:
This country is famous for cider-orchards, the cakagee especially, which is incomparably fine. An acre of trees yields from four to ten hogsheads per annum, average six, and what is very uncommon even in the cider counties of England, they yield a crop every year. I never beheld trees so laden with apples as in Sir Lucius O’Brien’s orchard; it amazed me that they did not break under the immense load, which bowed down the branches.
Henry Dutton enjoyed Clare cider in 1808 but attributed its flavour to a combination of apples and not just the cackagee variety.
‘There were formerly extensive orchards in this county, especially near Six-mile-bridge, and a few still remain; many young apple-trees have been lately planted. Very fine cider is made here from a great variety of kinds, mixed in the pressing, and not, as is generally imagined, from caccagea or any particular sort; apples are frequently purchased in the county of Limerick* and elsewhere, and manufactured into cider: it is in such deserved repute, that it is generally bought up by the neighbouring gentlemen for their own use and as presents to their friends, the price usually about five guineas per hogshead’.
(*Palatine apples?)
Reverend James Hall in his ‘Tour through Ireland’ in 1813 wrote that Cackagee cider around Tralee sold at ‘3 or 4 Guineas a hogshead, when common cider does not fetch more than one Guinea’.
The cider industry was in noticeable decline by the early 1840’s, due in no small part to the Famine. Clare still had six listed ‘Cider Makers’ in 1841 – the highest of any county. In 1845 at the outbreak of the Famine, the Parliamentary Gazetteer of Ireland reported that in Clare ‘Cyder orchards, for the production of the beverage called ‘Cackagee’, were formerly of considerable note, but seem to have fallen into disrepute’. It seems that, to date in any case, the once famous cackagee apple variety is no more. This loss of the venerable fruit makes the work of the Seed Savers in Mountshannon, shared keepers of the Native Irish Apple Collection, all the more important for the future of Irish apple species. A award-winning “Cockagee” cider (in name if not in cultivar) is produced in county Meath using the traditional keeved (natural fermentation) method, by the Cider Mill Company, Slane.
There was a young lady from Hyde
Who ate a green apple and died.
While her lover lamented
The apple fermented
And made cider inside her inside.
MH February 2026
