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stook

In Ireland, “a stack of sheaves of corn or barley, usually twelve”.¹

In Devonshire and Yorkshire, England, 10 sheaves, “from 7 to 10 inches through at the band. … Sometimes 12 sheaves made a stook.”²

In Scotland, 12 sheaves.³ In the 19ᵗʰ century the size of the sheaf was described thus: “each sheaf at the band to fill a fork ten inches wide between the prongs,” and elsewhere as 30 inches round.

1. Terence Patrick Dolan.
A Dictionary of Hiberno-English. The Irish Use of English.
Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1998.

Page 258.

2. Second Report, (1820). Page 34. See also source 1.

3. Please see thrave.

sources

Stouk, sb. a shock of corn of ten sheaves.

John Hutton.
A Tour to the Caves, in the environs of Ingleborough and Settle, in the West-Riding of Yorkshire, &c. in a letter to a friend. Second edition.
London: printed for Richardson and Urquhart, under the Royal Exchange; J. Robson, New Bond Street; and W. Pennington, Kendal, 1781.