GROUSE SHOOTING. 87 



endured from the insects, and, after *' blowing a com- 

 fortable cloud," went to bed . and slept ; but a man 

 must exercise and carouse with a grouse-shooter, to 

 conceive the deep and delicious repose which attends the 

 sportsman's pillow. 



This morning we were early astir. There was a 

 mutual admission of slight headache, but coffee and fresh 

 air will soon remove it. Having finished breakfast, and, 

 in spite of Sir Humphry's denunciations, fortified our- 

 selves against damp feet with a glass of Mareschino 

 we left the cabin for the moors. 



Never was there a wilder spot than the dell in which 

 we have taken up our shooting quarters. It is a herds- 

 man's hovel, to which my kinsman has added an apart- 

 ment for his accommodation in the grouse season. 

 This is our banquet-room and dormitory ; a press in 

 the corner contains our various drinkables, and upon a 

 host of pegs, stuck into the interstices of the masonry, 

 hang guns and belts, and all the unmentionable appa- 

 ratus of a sportsman. The cabin itself is appropriated 

 to culinary purposes and to the accommodation of our 

 dogs and personal attendants. The quadrupeds are 

 quartered in the farther extremity of the house, and, 

 after their fatigue, luxuriate gloriously upon a fresh 

 bed of sun-dried fern. 



In a calliogh* beside the fire, the keeper and old 



* " Callioghs " are recesses bmlt in the side walls of an Irish cabin, 

 convenient to the hearth, and sufficiently large to contain a bed. 

 Some of them are quite open to the fire ; while others are partially 

 screened from view by a rude matting of bent or straw. 



If you enter a peasant's hovel on a wet day, and inquire for the 

 owner of the house, a strapping hoy will generally roll out of one of 

 these dark cribs, yawn, stretch his arms, scratch his head, and bid 

 " your honour " welcome, and then inform you that he " was just 

 strichin' on the bed." 



