Browne — Ethnography of Carna and Miveenish, Connemara. 525 



in other cases the pig is taken into the kitchen. The sleeping rooms 

 are small and dark and ill ventilated. The furniture is scanty and 

 poor, and consists of a rough deal table, a chest or two and some stools 

 and forms, a rade dresser with some coarse delft ware, a chair or two, 

 a griddle, a pot, and perhaps a spinning-wheel. 



The sleeping room contains a bed or two, the bedsteads of drift 

 timber and the beds etnffed with straw. There may be a chest and a 

 stool or chair. As might be expected under snch circumstances, 

 domestic cleanliaess and comfort are not at a very high level, and 

 the sanitary condition of the houses leaves much to be desired. There 

 is a still better class of house of more modem type which is built with 

 mortar, has windows and chimneys, is whitewashed outside and much 

 better furnished inside, cleaner, and the pigs and cattle are not taken 

 into the house, but these being wholly modern do not require closer 

 description (Plate xxm., fig. 2, Plate xxiv., fig. 1). 



The Eev. T. A. Finlay, to whose article on this district I have 

 previously referred, thus described the sleeping arrangements in the 

 poorer houses : — "Beds are a rare luxury; a truss of straw or dried 

 sedge on the earthen floor usually takes the place of a bed, and the 

 clothing worn dnring the day, supplemented in some cases by disused 

 guano sacks, form a substitute for bed-covering. On this couch the 

 sleepers are disposed with their heads close to the fire, their feet extended 

 towards the door. The hygienic merits of these devices I will not 

 undertake to estimate. I can, however, assert that they do not avail 

 to prevent the ailments which damp and cold produce elsewhere." 



6. Transport. — As good roads are of comparatively recent date in 

 this district, wheeled vehicles are quite of modern introduction, and are 

 but few in number. In former times the sea formed the real highway 

 for the people of these regions, who were largely cut oif from the outer 

 world by the broad belt of wild uninhabitable land and mountain, and 

 mostly lived, as is still the case, along the coast line. Even now there 

 is almost no population at a distance of more than a mile from the sea 

 shore. Boats then formed the chief means of communication with other 

 places. The older roads were mere bohereens seldom more than four 

 or five feet wide, very rough, and uneven (Plate xxrv., fig. 1), so totally 

 unsuited for carts ; besides, the narrow, irregular arms of the sea and 

 muddy creeks were altogether impassable for vehicles of any sort even if 

 the people had been well enough off to have possessed them. Now, 

 though good roads have been made, and more are being made through 

 the districts, and the island of Mweenish has been connected to the shore 

 by causeways (built about six or seven years ago), there is still but little 



