MAN is said to be by nature a cooking animal. There are, however, exceptions to this rule; the Greenlander and the Esquimaux, who live upon raw whale blubber, and dry, unsalted reindeer, or some of the dwellers on the Andes, who devour raw horse-flesh, do not come under this category. But of those professedly within its limits, the modern Irish, compared with other nations in a similar state of advancement in all other respects, were, and perhaps are, the most uneducated in the culinary art of any people under the sun. They could, it is true, dress potatoes, boil or roast eggs, turn oatmeal into bread or stirabout, and make butter-if this latter can properly be styled cooking; but certainly the great bulk of the peasantry in the remote rural districts of Ireland, especially the south and west, could not

dress food of any other description than potatoes and eggs. They were totally unacquainted with kitchen chemistry. The few other vegetables, besides oats and potatoes, with which they were familiar, such as flat Dutch cabbage and scallions, dillisk, and some few sea weeds, were luxuries of rather rare occurrence amongst them; and in hard summers, young nettles and wild rape have not unfrequently been served up to eke out the scanty meal to which the people were reduced by the partial failure of the potato, and consequent dearness of corn. Upon the sea-coast, coarse fish, limpids, whelks, and periwinkles served for food; while, in the interior, salted herrings, and small, dried bream were used by those who could not afford milk, eggs, or butter, "kitchen "* for the dry potatoe; hence, the well-known proverb of "po

as

VOL. XLIII.-NO. CCLIV.

K

tatoes and point." This latter luxury meant anything so used as a condiment, but more particularly the head of a herring with salt, bruised into the bottom of a plate or small-wooden cup, and sometimes called "blind herring," or a little kitchen-stuff, or even salt, pepper, and water. It was placed in the middle of the skib or skeehogue of murphies, balanced on a three-legged stool, around which the family, includ ing the pig, arranged themselves, and as each of the party (barring the pig, who devoured the skins and poreens) removed the fine, outer rind of the lumper with the right thumb-nail, they flavoured the esculent by a dip into the saucer of "point," to give it a relish. Occasionally, the salt herring itself was hung by a string from the chimney-brace, and each drop as it distilled therefrom was received upon the mealy mouthful by every individual in succession. A draught of spring water concluded the repast, and in lieu of tablecloth, napkin, or finger-glass, the back of the hand rubbed across the mouth gave the necessary finish to the whole. Where it could be afforded, the adults of the family, male and female, had then a blast of the pipe, and were happy and contented therewith. The use of milk, butter, and eggs was limited to the minority who happened to be in more affluent circumstances. At Christmas and Easter, the festival was honoured by the addition of a bit of meat of some kind or other, bought at the "big market," and generally boiled to rags, with, possibly, the addition of a wisp of cabbage-a gratuity often received from some of the wealthier or more civilised neighbours.

On Saint Martin's Eve they spilled the blood of some animal, generally that of a cock, but this was more of a religious rite than a dietetic observ

ance.

Blood was eaten occasionally -but of this anon.

As the potato was the only portion of the produce of the land which the tiller could call his own-for the wheat, oats, and cattle went to pay the rent-the labourer, in the south, and west especially, was more of a root-feeding animal, and less graminiverous than in Ulster, where "stirabout-eaters" inherited the peculiar appetites and culinary knowledge of their Scotch ancestors. There were, however, certain occasions on which the male inhabitants of the far west resorted to a particular diet. In early summer, the precise period varying according to the amount and condition of potatoes both above and below ground, the Irish peasant determined upon his annual migration, and, in former times, never thought of leaving home without providing a sufficient amount of portable cooked food with which to sustain nature until he procured work at the hay harvest in some of the agricultural districts of England; "the woman of the house," therefore, made shift to obtain a stone or two of meal, which she converted into thin oaten cakes, and half-baked on a griddle. The last of the previous year's potatoes having been eaten, and the last spud of those intended to supply the future wants of the family having been put into the ground, the house was "readied up;" the pot, noggins, and any little crockeryware that appertained to the premises were given in care to a neighbour. The bedclothes were wrapped round the woman and her half-dozen children, the quilts and sheets being secured round their persons by large iron pins, the lineal descendants of the antique brooches-or fibulæ, as they are now styled - which enrich our museums, and copies of which decorate the persons † of our modern

fashionables. The tattered remains of the blankets and bolsters formed the bustle of the woman, who produced them each night for herself and children to sleep on in their future peregrinations. The wife stripped herself of her footless stockings, which, under the name of traheens, were drawn up to the elbows over the ragged frieze coat of her husband; the three or four oaten cakes, tied up in the wife's check apron, were then slung upon his back; the reaping hook, with its serrated edge guarded by a thumb-rope or wisp of straw, was fastened round his shoulder; and the spalpeen—

"Cut his stick and oil'd his brogues the latter end of May,

And off for England he set sail to cut the corn and hay."

:

The family parted at the nearest crossroads the wife and children to subsist upon the religious offerings and donations of the pious and charitable in a distant part of the country for they seldom begged near home, the father of the family to earn three or four sovereigns in Saxon land, with which, sewed up in the waistband of his breeches, he returned about the end of August or beginning of September; while the potatoes were left to shift for themselves, to struggle with the weeds and winds, and the crows, and also the

blight, which, to a certain extent, affected the crop almost annually in the south and west.

When Lammas or Garland (or, as it is called in Connaught, Garlic) Sunday approached, the great day for broaching the gasses and testing the value of the future crop, the wife often drew near home to collect tidings of the state of the potato-garden.

While in foreign parts, the spalpeen made, though very slowly, some progress towards change, although what he saw in the land of the Saxon very slightly influenced his peculiar idiosyncracies and prejudices. The English farmer finding that, although Paddy did his best, and reaped and mowed and dug with industry, energy, and determination, and endeavoured to give a day's labour for a day's wages, the

balance being between five pence at home, and two shillings and six-pence abroad, he still lacked the physical strength wherewith to compete, upon the remains of his oaten cake, with the meat-fed English labourer-determined to give him a meal, and work it out of him next day. Thus, many of our countrymen saw, for the first time, the smoking sirloin, which, with salt and potatoes, was served to them in plenty. The master of the feast coming in on one of these occasions, with broadbrimmed hat, brass-buttoned blue coat, drab smalls, and mahogany-coloured 'top-boots, said, in all the pride of English hospitality"Wel, Paddy, my boy, fill yourself; you have nothing like that at home." A lean, freckled, sharp-visaged little fellow, from the other side of the Brusna, said, in reply

"Just as good, your honour, barrin' the beef." But this first taste of the roast beef of Old England did not endue the Celt with any missionary enterprise; - a certain moiety of the annual emigrants remained in England, and formed part of the permanent population there, as hod-men or labourers; those who returned, brought home blackthorn sticks, and more or less gold; a few carried back grapes (or four-pronged forks), short spades and shovels; and those who had remained longer than the usual migratory period came home dressed in fustian jackets, broad Windsor cords, caps,* and laced buskins, after the fashion of the nav

vies.

Upon an appointed day the family met, the cabin was re-opened, the fire lighted, the potatoes were broached,

the rent of the con-acre or freehold was paid, and the old system of living, with all its deficiencies of cookery, resumed. The potatoes were dug, pitted, and thatched with decayed stalks: and then

"The finest devarsion that's under the sun,

Was to sit by the fire till the praties were done;"

and eaten with salt, or whatever "kitchen " could be procured, until the "latter end of May," again. And yet on this fare the men were vigorous, the women hearty and handsome, and