190 A CRUISE IN THE LACCADIVE SEA 



houses," for they are not in any way consecrated to 

 religious purposes. They are, in actual fact, large 

 barn-like structures of palm- thatched coral stone where 

 the men — perhaps when they have had enough of 

 their father-in-laws' houses — come to work, and snooze, 

 and gossip about the ordinary affairs of profane life. 

 A broad bench runs along all four walls inside, but 

 the most important and most delightfully-original piece 

 of furniture is a large raft, swung horizontally from 

 the ridge-pole by stout ropes of coir, and used on the 

 converse principle of the punkah : that is to say, the 

 company sit upon it, and by an occasional kick-off from 

 the wall cause it to swing gently to-and-fro across 

 the room, instead of sitting under it and having 

 it swung over their heads in the placid Indian 

 fashion. A good Minnikoy swing - punkah will 

 accommodate a large family, unto the third genera- 

 tion, all at once. 



The ladies' clubs, or public meeting-rooms for the 

 women, I have preferred to call ''bowers," so as to 

 avoid a term so inconsonant as public-house or so 

 prosaic as workroom. When one sees them full of 

 women and girls spinning coir, with children babbling 

 on the floor, the imagination takes a poetic flight to 

 ancient Troy and the hall of the Iliad, where the 

 numerous daughters and daughters-in-law of King 

 Priam wove their embroidered robes. They are like 

 the public-rooms of the men, but are nicely decorated 



