Loy Digging

An Irish agricultural tradition makes a comeback.

By Sam Moore
Published on January 2, 2024
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Courtesy of the Loy Association of Ireland
A well done completed competition plot.

It’s not likely anyone in this country is going to find an old loy in an ancient barn loft, although someone in Ireland might. So, what is a loy? A hint is that it’s the Irish word for a spade, but a loy is quite different from the spade as we know it. The loy consisted of a long narrow curved iron blade, at the front end of which was welded a sharpened steel cutting edge. This was fastened to a sturdy wooden handle made of ash or oak, the lower end of which was heavy and wedge-shaped. At the right side was carved a wooden step so the loy could be forced into the soil with the foot. It was reckoned at the time that twelve men armed with loys could turn over one acre a day.

The loy was used primarily in the North Midlands of the Irish Republic, where the stony clay soil was heavy and wet with deep-rooted grass and lots of organic matter. The narrow blade cut through this tough soil relatively easily and the wedge-shaped bottom and sturdy handle gave the loy digger leverage to break loose, lift and invert the square sods.

From accounts of potato planting written during the 1930s and published by the Irish Folklore Commission we can reconstruct the procedure.

April is the favourable month for sowing potatoes. The farmer cleans the rushes off the field and stretches a scoring rope on the grass the length of the ridge required and scores along the rope with the loy about three inches deep and continues like this leaving three feet ten inches between each score.

Farmyard manure is brought to the field and left in little heaps. After the ground is scored the manure is spread between each score. Then the field is ready for digging.

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