Anglo-Irish. Also 7 colp, 9 collip. = Irish colpa, ‘A full-grown beast of the horse or cow kind. Six sheep are also called a colpa, as their grass is estimated as the same as that of a full-grown cow or horse’ (O’Donovan Suppl. to O’Reilly). Hence, as a standard of agricultural value, a cow’s grass or pasture for a year, or its equivalent, reckoned in the case of good land as equivalent to an Irish acre.
1672. Sir W. Petty, Pol. Anat. Irel. (1691), 107. As to their … Plough-lands, Colps … &c., they are all at this day become unequal.
1835. T. Bermingham, Soc. State Gt. Brit. & Irel., 140. Formerly … in Ireland … the grazing-land was regulated by so many head of cattle to each portion, called collips.
1858. Simmonds, Dict. Trade, Collop … a term for four or five sheep.
1880. Daily News, 21 Dec., 5/4. Wherever grass grows there will a Kerry calf or ‘collop’ be found.
1882. Correspondent. The number of animals which an Irish acre of pasture can support is called a ‘sum’ or ‘collop.’
