sb. Also 6 creete, 7 creat(e, cret(e, kreat. [a. Mid.Irish caeraigheacht, mod.Ir, caoraigheacht, (craoidhecht, croidhecht), f. caera, caora sheep (the application being transferred to horned cattle)] In Irish Hist. a nomadic herd of cattle driven about from place to place for pasture, or in time of war with the forces of their owners. (The word often includes the herdsmen or drivers.)
1596. Spenser, State Irel., Wks. (Globe), 652/2. He shall finde no where safe to keepe his creete … that in shorte space his creete, which is his moste sustenaunce, shalbe … starved for wante of pasture.
1612. Davies, Why Ireland, etc. (1787), 123. [In these fast places] they kept their creaghts or herds of cattle.
1633. T. Stafford, Pac. Hib., x. (1821), 127. The residue … I haue left to keep their Crets.
1643. Col. H. O’Neill, Relation (in Gilbert, Contemp. Hist. Affairs Irel., III. 201). O’Neill ordered his army and creaghts to move.
¶ Sometimes misunderstood and loosely or erroneously used.
1646. in Sir J. Temple, Irish Rebell. (1746), 121. Commonly bringing their Cattle into their own stinking Creates.
1658. Ussher, Annals, 227. The country people … dwelt scattered in cretes and cabans.
1855. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., III. 673. He was soon at the head of seven or eight thousand Rapparees, or, to use the name peculiar to Ulster, Creaghts.
2. transf. Applied to Eastern pastoral nomads.
1634–77. Sir T. Herbert, Trav., 170. Near this place we overtook some of those Creats or wandring Herds-men, old Authors commonly call Nomades … now of no accompt amongst the Persians.
Hence Creaght v., to take cattle from place to place to graze.
1610. W. Folkingham, Art of Survey, I. x. 25. They do … by kreating & shifting their Boolies from seed-fur til haruest bee inned, both depasture & soile their grounds.
1612. Davies, Why Ireland, etc. (1787), 161. It was made penal to the English to permit the Irish to creaght or graze upon their lands.
