For thousands of years, people in Ireland deposited these butter slabs in peat bogs as a way to preserve them — and sometimes even buried them as offerings to the gods.
Think you are from Portnoo?/FacebookThe unearthed slab of bog butter weighs around 50 pounds.
An Irish farmer recently uncovered an ancient slab of butter by “pure luck” on his Donegal farm.
The nearly 50-pound slab of “bog butter” is currently undated, but historians believe it could date back to the Bronze Age. In any case, this stunning discovery could be one of the largest of its kind ever found on the Emerald Isle.
The 50-Pound Slab Of Bog Butter Found By “Pure Luck”
Think you are from Portnoo?/FacebookMicheál Boyle and Alan Moore with archaeologist Paula Harvey.
The ancient slab of butter was found by farmer Micheál Boyle amid ongoing work on his farm at Loughfad, Portnoo. As he told the Irish Examiner, “It was just by pure luck that we came across it.”
“I could see this white thing in the ground,” he said. As he and his team started digging, Boyle noticed a “salty, cheesy smell” — and they soon uncovered a massive slab of butter.
Boyle described the find as “a perfect rectangle… completely greasy, but completely preserved.”
“There was no mistaking what it was,” Boyle said. “This is only clay ground here, but it maybe was bogland back in time.”
Paula Harvey, a local archaeologist, said the butter, which weighs around 50 pounds, could be “one of the biggest” of its kind ever found in Ireland, per The Irish News.
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A History Of “Bog Butter” In Ancient Ireland
Think you are from Portnoo?/FacebookThe bog butter slab found on Boyle’s farm might be among the largest ever found in Ireland.
Burying bog butter is a practice in Ireland that dates at least as far back as the Iron Age, with some reports showing that it still happened as recently as the 19th century. Farmers often stored the butter in bogs as a way to preserve it.
“The bogs would have acted as a cool place, almost like a refrigerator,” Harvey explained. “The butter would have stayed there until it was retrieved by the farmer, or perhaps in this case the local community, and then subsequently was lost for one reason or another.”
According to some folk beliefs, bog butter was also sometimes buried as an offering to local gods or spirits. The butter was often stored in wooden containers before being plunged into the bog.
This was possibly the case with the bog butter Boyle found, as he noted there was “one little piece of wood” at the bottom of the slab, suggesting it may have been housed in a wooden container that has since decomposed.
Currently, Boyle’s bog butter is being analyzed at the National Museum of Ireland, but he and Harvey both hope that the butter could be returned to the local area.
“The slab of butter wouldn’t mean anything to anybody visiting a national institution, but it certainly would mean an awful lot to the local community here in south west Donegal,” Harvey said.
Of course, the glaring question is: Has anyone tasted the bog butter? We’re happy to report that the answer is yes, as Harvey said she did try a “sliver” of the discovery.
“It does taste like butter, an unsalted butter at that,” she said. “I had a sliver and I’m still here to tell the tale.”
After reading about this bog butter recently found on an Irish farm, learn about bog bodies, the miraculously preserved mummies of people laid to rest in bogs. Then, read about Scáthach, the fearsome fighting queen of Irish lore.
