The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-01-11 00:00:00

A SNUG IRISH FARMER

"On reaching the gate, Peety Dhu and his pretty
daughter turned up towards the house we have alluded
to—which was the residence of a man named Burke. On
reaching it they were observed by a couple of large dogs,
who, partaking of the hospitable but negligent habits of
the family, first approached and looked at them for a
moment, then wagged their tails by way of welcome, and
immediately scampered off into the kitchen to forage for
themselves.

" Burke's house and farmyard, though strongly indi-
cative of wealth and abundance in the owner, were, not-
withstanding, evidently the property of a man whose mind
was far back in a knowledge of agriculture, and the in-
dustrial pursuits that depend upon it. His naggard was
sloienly in the extreme, and his farmyard exceedingly
offensive to most of the senses ; everything lay about in a
careless and neglected manner ;—wheelbarrows without
their trundles—sacks for days under the rain that fell
from the eaves of the houses—other implements embedded
in mud—car-houses tumbling down—the pump without a
handle—the garden-gate open, and the pigs hard at work
destroying the vegetables, and rooting up the garden in
all directions. In fact, the very animals about the house
were conscious of the character of the people, and acted
accordingly. If one of the dogs, for instance, was
hunted at the pigs, he ran in an apparent fury towards
that which happened to be nearest him, which merely
lifted its head and listened for a time—the dog, with laud
and boisterous barking, seizing its ear, led it along for
three or four yards in that position, after which, upon the
pig demurring to proceed any further, he very quietly
dropped it and trotted in again, leaving the destructive
animal to resume its depredations.

"The house inside bore the same character. Winter
and summer the hall-door, which had long lost the
knocker, lay hospitably open. The parlour had every
equivocal appearance ; for the furniture, though originally
good and of excellent materials, was stained and dinged
and hacked in a manner that denoted but little sense of
care or cleanliness. Many of the chairs, although not
worn by age, wanted legs or backs, evidently from ill-
usage alone ;—the grate was without fire-irons—a maho-
gany bookcase that stood in a recess to the right of the
tire-place, with glass doors and green silk blinds, had the
glass all broken and the silk stained almost out of its
original colour; whilst inside of it, instead of books, lay
a heterogeneous collection of old garden seeds in brown
paper—an almanac of twenty years' standing, a dry ink-
bottle, some broken delf, and a large collection of blue-
moulded shoes and boots, together with an old blister of
French flies, the lease of their farm, &c., and a great
number of their receipts for rent. To crown all, the
clock in the other recess stood cobwebbed about the top,
deprived of the minute hand, and seeming to intimate by
its silence that it had given note of time's progress to this
idle and negligent family to no purpose.
_

" On theediawing-roOm stair; there lay what had once
been a carpet, but so Inseparable had been their connexion
that the stairs were now worn through it, and it required

harp eye to ar. such fragments of it as re-
mained, from the colour of the dirty boards it covered and

the dust t

" On entering the kitchen, Peety and his little girl
found thirteen or fourteen, in family labourers and ser-
vants of both sexes, seated at a long deal table, each with
a large wooden noggin of buttermilk and a spoon of
suitable dimensions, digging as if for a wager into one or
other of two immense wooden bowls of stirabout so thick
and firm in consistency that, as the phrase goes, a man
might dance on it. This, however, was not the only
picture of such enjoyment that the kitchen afforded.
Over beside th.. dresser was turned upon one side the
huge pot in which the morning meal had been made, and
at the bottom of which, inside of course, a spirit of rivalry

but by no means so har-
monious, was kept up by two dogs and a couple of pigs,
which were squabbling and whining and snarling among
each other, whilst they tugged away at the scrapings or
residuum that was left behind after the stirabout had been
emptied out of it. The whole kitchen, in fact, had a
strong and healthy smell of food—the dresser, a huge
one, was covered with an immense quantity of pewter,

wally vigorous and animated

eve towards the chimney to

perceive