Browne — Ethnography of the Mullet, Inishkea, 8f Portacloy. 627 



cemented by "dobe" or tempered clay, or sometimes mortar. It 

 generally consists of two apartments, the kitchen and the "room." 

 The kitchen, which is usually of pretty large size, is used as the 

 living room ; it has a floor of beaten clay. This room has one, or 

 perhaps, two windows of small size, and seldom made to open. These 

 are always glazed now-a-days, but in the last century they were 

 covered with oiled sheepskin. The house has two doors, both of which 

 open directly into the kitchen, and are situated about two-thirds of 

 the way from the partition wall of the two apartments. 



The end of the kitchen farthest from the fire is used as a pen for 

 the cattle and pigs. The fowl roost where they can, often on the 

 backs of the cattle. 



Above the beams or couples in this part of the kitchen boards are 

 sometimes placed, making a sort of loft, in which fishing and boat 

 tackle, agricultural implements, and other articles are stored. 



The fireplace is built against the partition wall between the 

 kitchen and the room. It consists of a stone hearth backed by a 

 "hob," also of stone, built out slantwise behind it to make the fire 

 draw well. This class of house has no chimney, the smoke escaping 

 through a circular hole in the roof immediately above the hearth. 



" The room" is a smaller apartment than the kitchen, (measuring 

 about 12 feet by 10 feet) it has one or two small windows, and the 

 floor is sometimes boarded. 



The furniture of the house is poor and scanty, that of the kitchen 

 consisting of a bedstead, rudely made up of drift-wood, two posts being 

 driven into the floor, a longitudinal piece uniting these and two cross- 

 beams at head and foot resting by one end on the posts, and having the 

 other built into the wall. Sometimes it is built up into four-poster shape 

 and has curtains. The bedding is composed either of feather ticks, or, 

 with the poorer people, of straw, covered with coarse sacking. The 

 bedclothes are often very dirty. There is a dresser covered with 

 earthenware plates, cups, and jugs of a poor and cheap description, a 

 table, two or three chairs, and a couple of forms or settles. A long 

 straw rope is usually stretched across the apartment to hang clothes to 

 dry on. Worsted when spun, nets, &c., are hung from the couples. 



"The room" contains one or two beds of the sort described, a chair 

 or two, a table (in some cases), and a large chest. 



The domestic utensils consist of the usual three-legged pot, a 

 griddle, a gridiron, and sometimes a pot oven, a few staved wooden 

 piggins, a boran or sheepskin sieve, and, in the mountains and islands, 

 a quern, now only used usually for grinding barley for cattle food, 



