The manner of building hedge school-houses being rather curious, I will describe it. The usual spot selected for their erection is a ditch in the road-side; in some situation where there will be as little damp as possible. From such a spot an excavation is made equal to the size of the building, so that, when this is scooped out, the back side-wall, and the two gables are already formed, the banks being dug perpendicularly. The front side-wall, with a window in each side of the door, is then built of clay or green sods laid along in rows; the gables are also topped with sods, and, perhaps, a row or two laid upon the back side-wall, if it should be considered too low. Having got the erection of Mat's house thus far, they procured a scraw-spade, and repaired with a couple of dozen of cars to the next bog, from which they cut the light heathy surface in strips the length of the roof. A scraw-spade is an instrument resembling the letter T, with an iron plate at the lower end, considerably bent, and well adapted to the purpose for which it is intended. Whilst one party cut the scraws, another bound the _couples and bauks_* and a third cut as many green branches as were sufficient to wattle it. The couples, being bound, were raised--the ribs laid on--then the wattles, and afterwards the scraws. * The couples are shaped like the letter A, and sustain the roof; the bauks, or rafters, cross them from one side to another like the line inside the letter. Whilst these successive processes went forward, many others had been engaged all the morning cutting rushes; and the scraws were no sooner laid on, than half a dozen thatchers mounted the roof, and long before the evening was closed, a school-house, capable of holding near two hundred children, was finished. But among the peasantry no new house is ever put up without a hearth-warming and a dance. Accordingly the clay floor was paired--a fiddler procured--Barny Brady and his stock of poteen sent for; the young women of the village and surrounding neighborhood attended in their best finery; dancing commenced--and it was four o'clock the next morning when the merry-makers departed, leaving Mat a new home and a hard floor, ready for the reception of his scholars.