The houses are usually divided into three apartments--one door in the byre end leading to the whole. Immediately we enter we find ourselves among the cattle. A stone wall, or sometimes a partition of clay and straw separates the byre from the kitchen. Another partition, usually of a more elegant description, separates the latter from the _Culaist_ or sleeping apartment. In the centre of the kitchen a pavement of three or four feet in diameter is laid, slightly raised towards the middle, on which is placed the peat fire. The smoke, by a kind of instinct peculiar to peat smoke, finds its way to a hole in the roof called the _falas_, and makes its escape. The fire in the centre of the room was almost a necessity of the good old _Ceilidh_ days. When the people congregated in the evening, the circle could be extended to the full capacity of the room, and occasionally it became necessary to have a circle within a circle. A few extra peats on the fire would, at any time, by the additional heat produced, cause an extension of the circle, and at the same time send its warming influences to the utmost recesses of the apartment. The circle became extended by merely pushing back the seats, and this arrangement became absolutely necessary in the houses which were most celebrated as the great _Ceilidh_ centres of the district. The _Ceilidh_ rendezvous is the house in which all the Folk-lore of the country, all the old _sgeulachdan_ or stories, the ancient poetry known to the bards or _Seanachaidhean_, and old riddles and proverbs are recited from night to night by old and young. All who took an interest in such questions congregated in the evening in these centres of song and story. They were also great centres of local industry. Net-making was the staple occupation, at which the younger members of the circle had to take a spell in turn. Five or six nets were attached in different corners of the apartment to a chair, a bedstead or post set up for the purpose, and an equal number of young gossipers nimbly plied their fingers at the rate of a pound of yarn a day. Thus, a large number of nets were turned out during the winter months, the proceeds of which, when the nets were not made for the members of the household, went to pay for tobacco and other luxuries for the older and most necessitous members of the circle.