Irish roads- Bothar na hEireann

My family (particularly my mother) will appreciate this. Today, I was riding with my friend Adrian to Tuam to be interviewed as a "foreigner" for my opinion on Galway and as we bumped along the way there, he mentioned that the roads at least weren't as bad as those in County Clare- the ones leading through the Burren to Doolin by the Cliffs of Moher, the one my mother drove which in Adrian's word's are "the worst roads in the northern hemisphere". He also quipped that, "The engineers responsible for the Irish road system are of the bovine variety." I though it was just a joke at the expense of foolish road workers, but then he gave us the etymology of the Irish word for road: bothar (pronounced "bo-her"). Bo is cow and thar is path, coming from back in the day when farmers would move their wandering cows from pasture to pasture, the cows used the same area of flattened grass each time, farmers moved equipment along it, someone got the idea to throw down some stones to make it easier, then finally along came the tarmacadam that we have today. So it's true- we follow cowpaths through the fields of Ireland at 100 km/h.