Ray's Thought for the Day - The Adventures of Etain

Yepper, I, Ray am quite fond of oxen. Allegedly, the Tuatha were the first ones to yoke oxen across their shoulders, rather than puttin' the yokes on their heads. This strategem allowed the oxen to pull along with their whole bodies with most of the force devoted to pullin' along more in line with the oxen's centers of gravity.

One day Mider and a bunch of the Tuatha were buildin' a great road through a bog as partial compensation for Mider abscondin' with Etain, again. And, of course, the oxen were hepin' the Tuatha build the road. This particular road was a very great undertakin' and involved the placement of a great many bridge class culverts demanded on account of all the wetlands and Waters of Eire that were bein' impacted, so Mider wanted to keep the engineerin' details a secret. Then Mider told Echu "Keep yer bunch away from the project limits, they might get hurt, and I aint liable fer that." But Echu couldn't live with followin' those directions (Echu never could get over seein' Etain get levitated out of the dining hall and always suspected Mider was trickin' 'em.) so he, Echu, sent a spy out to watch how the road was bein' built. And the spy saw how the oxen were yoked on the shoulders and not on their heads and he made a drawing of the oxen so yoked and took that drawing back to Echu. Some say that particular road would have been perfect in every detail, but because of the spyin' (Mider learned about the spyin' of course.) that particular road got designed all catty wampus so that a traveler could easily get lost, on it, fall off somewheres, and drown. And these are the spells of the Tuatha as they worked.

Place it here, place it there, excellent oxen, in the hours after sundown, very onerous is the demand, no one knows whose the gain in building the causeway over Moin Lamrige.

Anyhow, that's the story of how the Irish learned how to yoke oxen, properly. And Echu got the credit for that invention, the shoulder yoke, fer oxen.