The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1890-08-03
Housekeeping in a Crofter's Hut
In Skye.
LONELY NOVELS INLONELY GLENS
Where the Peat Shoulders on the Earth and
the Thatch is Held Down by Stones
Irish Scenes.

sea is Olac i-Sreen 1t would be hard to find
On the face of the globe scenes more desc
late, more savage. There looms out of the
mist behind me the fierce crag CT the
rina-Gillean, the peak of the Young
Men. Through the rain, that is sleet not
far up its sides, one cannot fully see the
sharpness and steepness of it's
which threaten danger and death
to the unWary mountaineer This morning
made out patches of snow lying in its
gorges. All along the bleak track crossing
TUE DREARY MooRLAND
to the right the Titanic watering pot has
been filed and refllei to the discomfort of
the black faced melancholy sheep huddled
under the lea of a gray stone Over the
sea n front the gulls circle screaming, and
on the thwart OF herring fishers boat
black cornorant is sitting. Everywhere
the basattic rock crops out, dark-colored
and barren, and there's not crumb of
human comfort save in the bedtime story
Dame Mcqueen is telling her BARNS.
Dame McQueen's shieling is the best in
the clachan. 1t has two rooms. The
three or four other huts that make up the
little village have, so far as | have looked
into them, only one n"Whence made We the
waikiki she asked me when ! stopped to
see if she could sell me oatcake for my sup
per. Damo Mcqueen has the Gaelic, but
she speaks also little English, which is
more than do some of her neighbors. 1t
required persuasion to induce her to keep
me over night, but the storm was break
ing and no other shelter reachable.
DAME MCQUEEN's HUT
is built OF round stones, the granite of the
neighborhood laid to all appearance with
out mortar. Its thatch is straw and sticks
lntermingled and the binding pole that
runs along what in a more pretentious
mansion one would call the caves is
weighted and held in place against the
gales of winter by large stones hanging by
straw ropes to the ground. 1t has low
door IN the middle of the side. One stoops
IN entering, from the apprehension if not
necessity. rough partition separates
the kitchen and the bedroom; each is about
seven feet high and is floored iihperfectly
with rude stone tagging. The walls are
unfinished, precisely as on the outside, but
IN the tiny bed chamber in which | am
writing there has been ADDED touch of re-
inning elegancesin the shape of breadths of
coarse white cotton cloth stretched across
at the level of the top Of the sidewalks, to
form q ceiling below the thatch, but now
sagging oddly in billowy festoons The
furniture IS prosiac enough-a low bed,
spread with dark, hand-woven blankets,
and a wooden chair. There is a window
Slit, very small to save glass, and to see
well one must open the door,
The Kitchen Is more primitive and more
interesting. In the endis the open stone
fireplace, where
PEAT IS SMoLDERING,
its pungent smell filling the air and the
heavy flakes of its SCOT hanging down from
the chimney. At one side of the re sits
Dame Mcqueen, on roughly squared
block of stone. Yesterday on the shore of
a lonely loch miles from any other habta-
ton L found hut whose furniture barring
one ordinary chair of commerce that looked
anonymously modern among such sur
roundings, consisted of sticks of ship's
timber washed ashore from wrecks.
From the thatch' overhead rows of red
dish brown fishing nets are hanging.
There is spinning wheel, shelf with
crockery, table, and in every corner,
there being no place to store them, are
heaped ropes, fish baskets and such arti
cles OF clothing as are not walking about on
the backs of the family. For supper we
ate potatoes and brose, the bare footed
children in their short and dilapidated
brown frocks sitting with their share on
the floor and shaking back at intervals the
dark hair that hung over their eyes The
children are disappointed at the non arrival
OF the father, who should have been home
from a fishing trip. This might be done or
that if only he would come.
THERE ARE LONG HoRNs,n
says the mother, ''on cattle in the mist, 80
ahT tal- frl
marking on the size of the fish one does not
catch and the beauties of the things that
are not to be.
wish could understand the gutturals
and the aspirations of the Gaelic that is
making those same urchins so round eyed.
| must ask Dame Mcqueen to English her
freight story for me.
She says it is the tale of Maol a-chlio-
balm. Her grandmother used to tell it to
her. L cannot catch all the words of her
northern tongue, but she seems TO saw that
once there was widow whose three
daughters desired to go and seek their for
tunes. So she baked three bannocks and
asked the oldest, will you have the small
Ter half with my blessing or the bigger half
with my curse.'' Now, the daughter was
hungry and said, 81 will take the bigger
half and your curse" And the second
daughter said the same; but the little sis
ter, Maol- -chliobain, chose the smaller part
and the blessing. So the mother gave her
all, greatly to the disgust of the other sis
tiers, who tied her to d rock and then to a
peatstack and then to tree, that she should
not go with them; but she came after,
carrying on her back the rock and the peat
stack and the tree. They reached the
giants house and slept in the bed with the
giants three daughters. In the night the
giant said to his bald, red-skinned son,
xiii me one ofsthe strange girls
And the son said, "How shall | know
them."
And the giant said, ''Ny daughters have
but the strange girls have turns of hair.n
But Nadia chliobain heard the giant and
she took the
TURNS OF AMBER BEADS
off the necks Of the giants daughters and
put them on the necks of her sisters: so
when the giants son came to the bed he
Killed one OF the giants daughters and the
giant drank her blood, and this he did 10
the second and the third. Then Nadia
chliobain-I hope l am getting this iudiyid-
uaPs name with scma degree to CORE CT
ness-arose and took her sisters on her
back and fled. The giant came after and
the sparks trodden out from her heels hit
his forehead, and the sparks trodden out
from the points of his feet hit the back of
her head, but she leaped brook and he
could not follow. Then he said, lyon are
over!''
And she answered, Eyes, if it vex you. ,,
"You killed my three bald, red skinned
daughters"
YES, if it vex youp
when will you come againln
when my concerns bring me.n
Maoe-a-cAliobain and her sisters have