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buannacht

The Oxford Companion to Irish History | 2007 | 700+ words | Copyright

buannacht (Eng. ‘bonaght’) signified from the 12th to the 16th centuries the billeting of mercenary soldiers on civilians, though by the 16th century it could also mean a land tax exacted in lieu of actual billeting, which was styled by the Anglo‐Irish ‘bonaght‐beg’ (‘little bonaght’). It derived from buanna (pl. buannadha, buannaighe, ‘bonies’), a word of uncertain etymology which is first found in Irish texts of the 11th and 12th centuries with the meaning ‘hired soldier’. English writers in the Tudor period often use the abstract ‘bonaght’ to denote the mercenaries themselves, rather than the imposition.

Katharine Simms

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