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Updated: June 3, 2025
Sheila had to explain to him that while she was doing everything in her power to get the people to suffer the introduction of windows, it was hopeless to think of chimneys; for by carefully guarding against the egress of the peat-smoke, it slowly saturated the thatch of the roof, which at certain periods of the year was then taken off to dress the fields, and a new roof of straw put on.
But hark, I hear old Adam Woodcock hollowing to his hawk Come along, man, we will have a merry afternoon, and go jollily to my father's in spite of the peat-smoke and usquebaugh to boot. Maybe we may put you into some honest way of winning your bread, though it's hard to come by in these broken times."
'Come awa in by, Steenie, my man! she said, in a tone that seemed to wrap its object in fold upon fold of tenderness, enough to make the peat-smoke that pervaded the kitchen seem the very atmosphere of the heavenly countries. Steenie stood smiling and undecided on the slab in front of the doorstep. 'Dreid naething, Steenie, his mother went on.
Hens clucked as they hopped on to the table, and a red-headed colleen was perpetually chasing a cat of almost equally ruddy hue, but everybody was mightily civil and kindly. The room was full of peat-smoke, but the eggs were undeniably fresh; so that there were compensations on every side. The widow, her step-daughter, and the colleen before mentioned did all the work.
The chimney went up through the rock, and had been the most difficult part of their undertaking. They had to work it much wider than was necessary for the smoke, and then to reduce its capacity with stone and lime. Now and then it smoked, but peat-smoke is sweet.
Peat-smoke, however, is both wholesome and pleasant, nor was there mingled with it any disagreeable smell of cooking. Outside were no lamps; the road was unlighted save by the few rays that here and there crept from a window, casting a doubtful glimmer on the mire.
For example: you smell peat-smoke, and you recall some occasion when you smelt it before. The same stimulus will not produce the same recollection in another man who did not share your former experience, although the former experience left no OBSERVABLE traces in the structure of the brain.
He entered the cottage with these verses in his memory. Poor old Janet, bent double with age, and bleared with peat-smoke, was tottering about the hut with a birch broom, muttering to herself as she endeavoured to make her hearth and floor a little clean for the reception of her expected guests.
And there is to be a greater surprise still; for we are going to make one of the rooms into the drawing-room at home; and you must open your boxes, and bring me down the heather and the peat, Mairi, and the two bottles; and then, you know, when the salmon is on the table, and the whisky and the beer, and Bras lying on the hearth-rug, and the peat-smoke all through the room, then you will come in and shake hands with him, and he will think he is in Borva again."
Occasionally she made a good peat fire, for she had found a chimney that went sloping into the upper air; and if it did not always draw well, peat-smoke is as pleasant as wholesome, and she could bear a good deal of its smothering.
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