Agricultural History Review, Volume 53 Part 1 (2005), p. 115

If the National Eisteddfod, the incomparable Bryn Terfel and the occasional ageing and subfusc pop singer stand as today’s Welsh urban cultural icons, then the Welsh Black cattle breed is foremost among claimants for iconic status in the countryside. Enduringly rugged and capable of withstanding the harshest of environmental conditions, the Welsh Black can be seen as a metaphor both for the landscape itself and for the worthy souls inhabiting it. A modern history of the breed has been long overdue and it was with great pleasure that I opened this handsomely-produced book from the pen of Jenny Buckton and the imprimatur of the admirable Gomer Press. But gloom and disappointment soon descended. Rather than offering a serious study of the biological evolution of the breed and critically discussing the economic (and even cultural) motives which determined temporal changes in its genetic constitution and phenotypic conformation, Ms Buckton takes up more than half of her book trying to explain (via a potted history) the role of cattle in Welsh society. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with this, of course, since as items of trade, tribute and status cattle of all shapes and sizes were of vital social as well as economic significance. The trouble is that Ms Buckton rather overeggs the pudding. Moreover, much of her historical narrative is quixotic and inaccurate and her cause hardly helped by a writing style sometimes so tortuous as to defy comprehension. As she slips confusingly from one historical period to another (using sources which are not only dated, but cited with alarming eccentricity), a fog descends as significant issues tend to get lost in a miasma of irrelevant detail. Throughout the text, mechanisms of change are studiously avoided as the author resorts to infuriatingly unscientific generalizations. Thus the aurochs grew to ‘gigantic’ proportions, the Neolithic period extended from 10,000 bc to 3000 bc, ‘vast ranches’ were established in Wales by 1200 bc, and farm tenants between 1790 and 1815 were in a ‘pitiful’ situation (they were, in fact, doing very well as a result of the Napoleonic blockade). Elsewhere we read of the nineteenth century as the beginning of the Age of Enlightenment, of an enigmatic ‘Royal Inquest’ of indeterminate date, of the cattle of Wales suffering an ‘identity crisis’ in the mid-eighteenth century and of the shire (sic) horse becoming a ‘new force’ in agriculture in the 1700s when in reality the breed was first registered in1877. The lack of dates in Ms Buckton’s text lead the reader down a variety of confused pathways sometimes culminating in statements of some singularity. We are asked to believe, for example, that the celebrated Thomas Johnes of Hafod introduced Friesian cows to his estate in 1840 when the poor man had gone to his reward in 1816. As if all this were not enough, the text is replete with evidence of poor proof-reading. The distinguished Archaeologia Cambrensis appears as Cambrenese, the well-known Norfolk land agent Hall W.Keary is introduced 116 the agricultural as ‘Hall Kearny’; we read of ‘laying havoc’, ‘raked rentals’ and ‘plightlet’ (presumably ‘pightle’ as in Adams Agrarian landscape terms or OED); Dunsaetae becomes Densetae and so on. This is all rather unfortunate in a work claimed by HRH Prince Charles in his foreword to be a story ‘about the precious culture and heritage of Wales’.

The second half of the book, dealing with the period from the establishment of the earliest Welsh Black Cattle Herd Book in 1873 more or less to the present, offers the inevitable parade of animals and breeders which make breed histories such fun for those involved. While readers of this Review may be interested in aspects of the finances and membership of the breed society, and theefforts it has made to promote the Welsh Black andto sponsor exports to southern Africa, South America, India, Europe and elsewhere, I suspect they will approach the final chapter, more-or-less a listing of show-winning cattle and their owners (the former with often impenetrable names) with tepid enthusiasm. On the other hand, those with a practical eye will probably enjoy detecting the subtle differences in the qualities of the many animals illustrated in these pages. As Ms Buckton demonstrates, the Welsh Black cattle breed formerly played a distinguished role in the Welsh economy. As a dual-purpose animal and a suckler dam par excellence, it continues so to do, more especially as modern methods of selection involving progeny and performance testing progressively improve its carcass quality and lean meat potential. Ms Buckton’s efforts I fear, fail to do justice to her subject and the Welsh Black awaits the arrival of an historian who will provide a more definitive scientific account of its evolution.