There is archaeological evidence from almost as early as 4,000 BC that the hunter/gatherer practices of the people on this island were being replaced by the cultivation of the land - farming was being undertaken. As in the rest of north-western Europe, early faming in Ireland was in all probability mixed, being based on the cultivation of cereals and on animal husbandry.
(see The Prehistoric Archaeology of Ireland by John Waddell).
Likely Booley site in Comeragh Mountains
Transhumance is a seasonal movement of livestock between fixed summer and winter pastures and evidence survives of such practices in the Alps dating from the later Neolitic period (c. 3,000 BCE. See Prehistoric farming in Europe by Graeme Barker).
Booley house in KnockmaeldownsThat the earliest farmers on this island made use of the practice is unlikely to be verified. Nevertheless, by the late Middle Ages the practice seems to have been established in Ireland and the 'uplands' were being used in this manner.
(see: Transhumance and the making of Ireland's Uplands, 1550-1900 by Eugene Costello).
This was the Booley.
The
term ‘booley’, ‘buaile’ in Irish, refers to a temporary
dwelling or shelter at a place for milking cows, and the ‘booley
house’ served as a home mainly for the farm hand or for an entire
family where occasionally livestock were also sheltered.
Booley in Knockmaeldowns.
P.W. Joyce, in his ‘Irish Names of Places’ provides many examples, “Great numbers of places retain the names of these dairy places, and the word ‘buaile’ is generally represented in modern names by the forms of Booley, Boley, Boola, and Boula, which are themselves the names of many places, and form the beginning of a still larger number.
For Booley sites in Galway, see: here
and about 100 potential sites in Donegal, see: here
and Achill: here
The lost art of 'booleying' in Ireland by Eugene Costello. Here
It is clear from all this that the Uplands of Ireland were used – to be looked at in due course
