Maddie's House

By These Ten Bones by Clare B. Dunkle. New York: Henry Holt, 2005.

Here is the interior of a house like Maddie's. The iron kettle chain holds a large pot over a peat fire, and you can see the box bed, with its roof of planks, behind the stools and chairs. The item near the fire is not a ladder, but a frame for carrying loads. The little glow of light high on the wall comes from a cruisie or rush light. That's not enough light to see by, so my husband has left his camera on a very long exposure to increase the amount of light the camera uses. If you look closely, you can just make out the black hen roosting on the most comfortable chair in the house!

Unlike Maddie's house, the interior of this forge is faced with stones. Maddie's walls are unfaced turf. But this picture clearly reveals the ceiling of sapling poles that holds up the turf and thatch roof layers. (In Maddie's house, they are covered with thick black soot.)

This photograph shows how dim these houses are inside, with no windows and very little interior light. Notice how smoky the house is, too, with no chimney. Highlanders didn't shut their doors because they needed to let the smoke out! But peat smoke has a pleasant smell, and the smoke itself is warm. It actually helps to heat the house. The peat fire is kept going both summer and winter because it helps to dry out the turf walls and ceiling. Without that drying action, the turf would begin collecting moisture, and soon the roof would fall in.

This display cabinet in the Highland Folk Museum shows several tools that Maddie's family uses, along with some (like the oil lanterns) that Highlanders used much later. Hanging on the top righthand side are iron bannock spades like the one Maddie throws at the mysterious intruder, and below that are racks, pots, and kettles that her mother might hang over the peat fire from the kettle chain. (They would not have used teapots, however, at that time.) On the top lefthand side, looking like small hanging boats or irons, are the cruisies. These are shallow iron bowls filled with fat; one of the wicks that Maddie and her cousins peel in the book is laid in the pointed end and lighted, and it functions like Aladdin's lamp, drinking the fat out of the bottom of the bowl. Even more primitive are the rush lights on the bottom shelf of the lefthand side: these are just a small iron clip that holds a burning wick, with no bowl of fat for it to consume.

This is a boxbed, from a house built centuries after Maddie's house, but still with almost exactly the same design. You can see that the boxbed has its own walls and ceiling of boards, to keep in warmth and keep off sooty drops of moisture, which condense on the main ceiling. (This house, however, has no soot inside it.) While it seems strange to us that an entire Highland family would share a bed, we have to remember that they did not undress for bed in those days because of the cold; in fact, due to the smoke, some experts suggest that they even slept sitting up in order to breathe better. (In my book, I have followed the guidance of those experts who maintain that they slept lying down.)

This is the style of basket that Maddie uses for collecting the wool that her sheep have shed.

Here is a loom, and the cloth being woven on it is a typical Highland plaid. You can see why Maddie's father needs a whole room for his loom!

This wheelbarrow holds a stack of dried peats, ready for burning on the fire. Although they are the color of dirt, they have very little soil in them; instead, they are thick mats of dried plant roots and vegetable matter, and this is what makes them burn. Notice that this wheelbarrow is mostly wood. The lack of naturally occurring iron was such a serious problem for the Highlanders that they made everything they possibly could out of wood; they even whittled wooden pegs to use some of the ways we use nails. In fact, in the early 1800's, when a man went to the city (an arduous journey that he might perform only once in his life), he often bought his iron coffin nails then, so that his family would have them years later when they needed to bury him.