The form and plan in all parts of the country are pretty nearly the same,
though the furniture varies; the hospitable door (inns are proverbially
hospitable) stands always open, but the guests are sheltered from the
thorough air by a screen, composed like the rest of the mansion, of mud;
the partition walls which separate it from the adjoining rooms reach no
higher than the spring of the roof, so that warmth and air, not to mention
the grunting of pigs, and other domestic sounds, are equally diffused
through all parts of the tenement; from the rafters, well blackened and
polished with smoke, depend sundry flitches of bacon, dried salmon, and so
forth, and above them, if you know the ways of the house "may be you
couldn't find (maybe you _couldn't_ means, maybe you _could_) a horn of
malt or a _cag_ of poteen, where the gauger couldn't smell it." If you are
very ignorant, you must be told, that poteen is the far famed liquor which
the Irish, on the faith of the proverb, "stolen bread is sweetest," prefer,
in spite of law, and--no--not of lawgivers, they drink it themselves, to
its unsuccessful rival, parliament whisky. Beneath the ample chimney, and
on each side of the fire-place, run low stone benches, the fire of turf or
bog is made on the ground, and the pot for boiling the "mate, or potaties"
as the chance may be, suspended over it by an iron chain; so that sitting
on the aforesaid stone benches, you may inhale, like the gods, the savour
of your dinner, while your frostbitten shins are soothed at the same time
by the fire which dresses it.--_Monthly Magazine_.
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