(Vol. vi., pp. 441. 565.)
Your correspondent JAMES GRAVES seems to consider cooking in a skull
impossible. I certainly have never tried it, nor do I wish to express an
opinion as to the taste of the Irish or their invaders, A.D. 1315, though
methinks those who relished the "flesh" need not have demurred to the pot.
But as to the possibility, in Ewbank on _Hydraulic Machines_, book i. cap.
3., I find the following mention of
"PRIMITIVE BOILERS.--The gourd is probably the original vessel for
heating water, &c. &c., its exterior being kept moistened by water
while on the fire, as still practised by some people, while others
apply a coating of clay to protect it from the effects of flame."
He then quotes Kotzebue as finding "the Radack Islanders boiling something
in cocoa-shells." A primitive Sumatran vessel for boiling rice is the
bamboo, which is still used; by the time the rice is dressed the vessel is
nearly destroyed by the fire. This destructibility needs hardly to be
considered an objection to the "starving fugitives," as plenty of the same
kind must have been at hand, and even an Irishman's skull is probably as
little inflammable as gourds, cocoa-sells, or bamboos.