But when any one enters them the impression is quite changed. We must first remark that the Irish are extremely prolific. Most families include six or seven children, yet as a rule the houses have only one room, ten or eleven yards long by five or six wide.
To enable the whole family to sleep there they formerly resorted to very original arrangements. In one corner there was a great heap of reeds; in the evening they spread them out for a bed; the man and wife slept in the middle; the smallest boy by his father’s side, the youngest girl by her mother, and so on until they reached the eldest, who occupied the two extremities next to the pigs, who are always allowed inside. If they offered hospitality to a stranger, and this frequently occurred, the pigs were pushed a little further away. This was called sleeping “straddogue.”
It appears that this rather primitive couch is still used in many houses. But moralists have some reason to say that luxury is penetrating everywhere. In all the cottages that I have yet visited, the inhabitants have already mounted one step on the ladder of comfort. I have always seen one, and sometimes two beds, but never more. When there is only one bed, the father, mother, and daughters sleep side by side at one end; the sons at the other. When there are two, the parents and daughters occupy one, and the sons repose on the other. The pigs had also profited by this innovation; they sleep under the bed, and the hens generally perch above it. I have never seen such arrangements even amongst the savages on the African coast.
This system, deplorable from a human point of view, seems, on the contrary, to have the happiest effect on the development of the intellectual and affectionate qualities of the pig. To him is confided the education of the children, who, almost naked, play in the mud outside the cottage. I saw two this morning, nearly of the same age, a little boy and a little girl, sleeping in the glare of the sun, their heads comfortably resting on the side of a great sow. The latter was evidently quite conscious of her important charge. When I advanced she first moved her ears, then uttered some little grunts, intended to herald the approach of a stranger, but she did not move for fear of awaking the two children. A little further on three others, of four and five years old, were filling an old tin box with dirty water, which they afterwards poured over their legs, with great satisfaction. Their guardian lying full length in the pool, watched this innocent amusement from one corner of her eye, and seemed to take extreme pleasure in it.