A typical Irish cottage isn't quaint...it doesn't have interesting nooks and crannies or proper old built-in cupboards or twisty stairs. It's three rooms in a row, with the front door directly opposite the back door so the Faeries can come and go as they please without any interference from the humans...
The roofs were thatched with reeds...later replaced by slates and then proper roofing tiles...the ceilings bulge in an alarming manner 'cos the joists are so far apart and the original windows were seriously tiny to keep out the wind and weather...
The children almost always slept in the roof space, gaining access via a wooden ladder, the Grandparents had the outshot bed near the hearth, with a curtain to pull across for warmth and privacy and everyone else slept in iron bedsteads with a straw mattress...thick linen sheets and roughly woven blankets made from coarsely spun wool...
The only furniture was a huge dresser...they were built first, then the walls went up around it...a wooden table and either a wooden settle or a couple of wooden chairs. It'd have been the Father who sat down for his meals...the children and the Mother stood up. With one set of clothes to wear and one set for Church, weddings and funerals there was no need for wardrobes or cupboards...just a row of nails hammered into the plaster.
By the front door would be a small shelf, on which the Holy Water was kept for dipping your fingers into and making the sign of the Cross whenever you left or came home. The mantel-piece was for keeping the tin of tea...the spare candles...a bag of sugar...and a box of matches. And a tin of baccy.
The dresser held the best delph...thick plates with a Willow pattern in brown rather than the English blue...the family Bible with the rosaries hanging on a nail just above it...and perhaps there'd be the long awaited letters from Americay tucked in safely behind a plate on a shelf. The most important item after the Bible, was the goose-wing duster. After the Michaelmas goose was plucked, a wing would be saved to use to dust the delph and the mantelpiece. The bottom of the dresser was either a hen coop or the place where the farm dog slept. The cats slept in the roof with the children,to catch the rats and mice who lived there.
Potatoes were kept in a clamp outside until they were needed...flour for the bread in a sack. The all important still was well hidden somewhere where the excise men and Guards would be unlikely to find it...if the cottagers were adept at poaching then there might have been a rabbit in the cooking pot...the slightly better off may have had a side of bacon hanging up near the hearth...
It is incredibly difficult to imagine living so simply when we have central heating and a telephone...the internet of course...more clothes than we probably need or want...and we have a varied diet. Irish cottagers ate potatoes washed down with buttermilk...sometimes a cabbage...children took a cooked potato to school in their pocket for the lunch...and a piece of turf for the school fire. And this is within living memory...only about forty years ago...
Everything was sold in order to have enough money to pay the rent...no rent money? Then the landlord simply had his men knock your home down and you ended up sleeping in a ditch or making your way to the Workhouse...eggs and fresh milk...butter and carrots...all were sold for rent money, not for the family to be nourished or enjoy.
Not for nothing was the pig known as 'the gentleman who paid the rent'...because a fat pig could be sold to pay your rent for months in advance. Fattened on acorns the children gathered from the woods and bits of potato peelings...tough cabbage leaves and a bucket of buttermilk... he was worth his weight in gold.
As time passed people began to build onto their basic three rooms...our tiny back kitchen is an addition...others, more recently, have doubled the original cottage in size with brand new fitted kitchens and bathrooms...extra bedrooms with wide screen TV's on the wall...I've even seen a chandelier in a bedroom.
The iron bedsteads are used for a gap in a fence and the old dressers broken up for firewood...people use soft yellow dusters and Pledge for their furniture...goose wings long forgotten...we'd consider it unhygienic to hang a side of bacon from the ceiling and rabbits come from China in neat plastic packages in the meat counter of the supermarket, or are left on our doorstep by a neighbour...full of shot to break your teeth.
But however hard their lives seemed to be to us, they always had the time for strangers passing through...there'd be a bed for the night in front of the fire and a decent helping of tatties...a donkey would be fed and watered and a pipe of baccy freely given...a jug of porter shared and news from distant towns...
We can't do that now...
Janexxx
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