A-Z Challenge 2013: Y is for Yoke

You may not think that a yoke is a very genealogical thing - but I have linked it to my ancestors, who were

most of them agricultural labourers, and were therefore probably very familiar with yokes...right down to my own grandmother, who could remember using one to go and fetch the milk (and this was in the early 1900s).

A yoke was usually used with other animals, though, such as oxen, horses, donkeys, mules - and even water buffalo (although you don't see too many of them in the southwest of England!).  Bow yokes, withers yokes, and head yokes have all been used with various animals - a yoke can even be used with a single creature.