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Cattle, Money & The Welsh
In his book
The History of Money: From Ancient Times
to the Present Day
, author Glyn Davies describes how
cattle formed one of the most primitive forms of money.
Using linguistic evidence he shows how ancient and
with the English words
capital, chattels
and
cattle
all
having a common root. The word
pecuniary
which means
of or relating to money comes from
pecus
the Latin word
for cattle while the Welsh word
da
used as an adjective
means
good
but as a noun means both
cattle
and
goods
.
Carrying out financial transactions for people en route
became part of the drovers trade so at least some of the
drovers were well educated bi-lingual men who kept
account books. In the years leading up to the Civil War in
the 1640s it was the drovers who carried the Ship Money
(one of the main grievances against Charles I and,
ultimately, one of the immediate causes of the war) from
the local collectors to the Treasury. Stewards of Welsh
estates sent rents, collected from tenants, by drover to
their English landlords. Dealers bought herds of cattle and
flocks of sheep from farmers and employed drovers to
The early Welsh drovers wore the traditional smock and
protected their trousers in wet weather by wearing long
woollen stockings and leggings made of brown paper made
waterproof with soap. Later they wore heavy woollen or
leather coats and always wide brimmed hats. Even the cattle
wore moon shaped shoes for the long journey – those chaps
with metal detectors sometimes find them still. The drovers
became an important conduit of news carried farm to farm
and village to village, Wales to London. Sometimes the
news was of international importance - from the drovers
did the Welsh people hear of Wellington’s victory in 1815
at the Battle of Waterloo.
Travelling with the drovers became a relatively safe way of
getting from Wales to towns and cities in England and
many apprentices began their working life by walking with
the drovers to their new masters. By the early 1800s women
also began to travel with the drovers. One such was Jane
Evans, of Carmarthenshire, the fiery daughter of a minister
who ran away from home in 1854 and travelled to London
with the Welsh drovers on her way to become a nurse with
Florence Nightingale during the Crimean War.
Where English churchyards lie on old drovers’ roads one
sometimes finds the grave of a Welsh drover. At All Saints,
Epping Upland in Essex a fine memorial of Welsh slate
re-discovered after being lost for many years reads:
Underneath lie the remains of John Jones late of Madryn
Isaf in the county of Caernarfon. Drover who died the 21st
day of November 1835 aged 55 years.
Alongside cattle droving the import of Welsh woollen
knitted goods and flannels flourished – it was said that
George III would only wear Welsh bed socks. Sometimes
the women knitted as they walked south alongside their
drover men folk. The drovers used sturdy and hardy little
corgis to control the cattle and on arrival in London might
send the dogs home alone having paid the inns along the