Clay Pipe
This clay pipe was found in top soil in Ballybeg, near Clarecastle.
Clay pipes were ubiquitous in the days before cigarette smoking was common practice in Ireland. They were particularly prominent at wakes where trays of tobacco filled pipes were handed around together with whiskey and Guinness.
It was considered the most important part of the hospitality offered at a wake. A wake would have lasted through the night and generally it was men who would only attend the mourning during this time. Perhaps this is where the word wake comes from - the remaining awake during the sleeping hours.
Curative properties were attributed to snuff left over from a wake and the clay pipes used on such occasions were sometimes buried separately often in or near a prehistoric burial place. Quantities of old pipes often turn up in archaeological excavations; the fragments of several clay pipes were found during the excavation of a double-banked ringfort at Ballycally near Shannon.
Clay pipes often carried political slogans of the day; this one carries the legend “Land for the Irish”, which suggests a date around the time of the land war during the late 1870’s and the early 1880’s.
Ref: 2004.51
