The interior of the cabins is quite as repulsive as the exterior. The
chickens run in and out with the children, and they "kape the pig in the
parlor" because that is the only room in the house and there is no other
pen. The inevitable baby--you never enter a cabin without finding
one--is always in its mother's arms and another is generally clinging to
her skirts, while two or three more are playing in the filth around the
door. There is only one room, where they all sleep, the elder ones upon
rough benches, covered with pallets of straw, and the younger ones on
the floor--grandparents, parents, children, pigs, and chickens--young
and old, both sexes, lying side by side, with whatever covering their
scanty earnings enable them to provide. There are no sheets or
mattresses; no pillows, only comfortables that have been used for
generations, and tattered blankets that are never washed. There is no
furniture but a table and two or three stools. There are shelves, and a
few nails and hooks driven into the walls. There is no stove, but a peat
fire under the chimney where the mother cooks in pans and kettles when
the weather is stormy and uses a rock outside for a kitchen when it
doesn't rain or blow. There are few dishes, mostly broken china, and the
covers of tin cans. The walls are windowless; there is no light but that
which comes through the door, and during the long winter nights, when,
in this latitude, it becomes dark at four o'clock, the family hibernate
in the darkness because candles are beyond their means and burning peat
gives no light. You can understand why so many of these poor wretches
lose their wits. The insane asylums of Ireland are filled with
unfortunates from this coast, most of them are hereditary and chronic
cases caused by melancholia, nervousness, and starvation. I have been
trying in vain to find out how they spend their time during the long
winter evenings, but have been unable to get any satisfactory
information on that point.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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