258 



Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



keep domestic stores, &c. This loft is often lighted by an imglazed 

 liole in the gable. These sleeping-rooms may or may not be lit by a 

 ■window, and are often densely dark. They contain one or two beds 

 stuffed with straw or bracken, the rude bedsteads being made of drift- 

 wood or bog timber. In some cases the sleeping-places are only divided 

 off by a partition wall, or a wooden screen, and the bed is on the floor. 

 The kitchen contains a table, a rude dresser with crockery, a couple 

 of chests, straw ropes stretched across the room for drying clothes, or 

 a couple of benches or stools, a chair (perhaps), baskets, a griddle, and 

 a pot or two. This type of house, if two-roomed, may or may not have 

 a chimney. If there be three rooms there will be a chimney against 

 the central wall. About sixty per cent, of the houses have some sort of 



' ai.iin ill Gannima. 



division or partition in them. All are thatched as before described. 

 The thatch is put on once in six years, new thatch being laid on over 

 the old. The cattle are taken into the house at night, and fastened 

 at the end of the kitchen farthest from the fire. 



The pig, if there be one, has often a snug place beside the fire, 

 and the fowls roost on the couples overhead. In many cases there is 

 a stagnant pool outside the door. 



There is a still better class of house which is whitewashed outside 

 (perhaps), has a floor kept neatly sanded ; there are glazed windows, 

 and more furniture, and a pig-stye is built outside the house. It is 

 evident that the reason wliy there are not more houses of this class is 



