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Whilst one party cut the scraws, another bound the couples and bauks* and a third cut as many green branches as were sufficient to wattle it. The couples, being bound, were raised the ribs laid on then the wattles, and afterwards the scraws. * The couples are shaped like the letter A, and sustain the roof; the bauks, or rafters, cross them from one side to another like the line inside the letter.
Whilst these successive processes went forward, many others had been engaged all the morning cutting rushes; and the scraws were no sooner laid on, than half a dozen thatchers mounted the roof, and long before the evening was closed, a school-house, capable of holding near two hundred children, was finished. But among the peasantry no new house is ever put up without a hearth-warming and a dance.
"Aisy, Ned," said one or two of them, "bad as it was, let us hear Billy Bradly's story out." "Well," proceeded Billy, "when the ticklin' was over, we took the scraws off of the grave, lined wid thorns as it was, and laid the procthor, naked and bleedin' scarified into gris-kins " "Let me at at him, the ould cardin' mur urdherer; plain murdher's daicency compared to that.
Stretched on the side of the public road, in a shed formed of a few loose sticks covered over with "scraws," that is, the sward of the earth pared into thin stripes removed above fifty perches from any human habitation his body racked with a furious and oppressive fever his mind conscious of all the horrors by which he was surrounded without the comforts even of a bed or bedclothes and, what was worst of all, those from whom he might expect kindness, afraid; to approach him!
"Sure you know he can't; isn't he weedin' that bit of blanther in Crackton's park, an' afther that sure he has to cut scraws on the Pirl-hill for the new barn." "Well, I'll help him if he helps me; isn't that fair? Let us join." "Hut, get out o' that, avourneen; go yourself; do what you're bid, Art." "Is it by myself? murdher alive, father, don't ax me; I'll give him my new Cammon if he comes."
It would be much more sensible to think of marriage as solid meadow-land after your present scramble over a shaky what-d'ye-call it." "True for you! I give you the stage as the shakiest of all scraws. But where is solid footing to be found? The world itself is only a vast bog that sucks in the generations." "I am sorry I asked you to be serious," he said glumly.
She never asked no questions, but I see her eyes twinkle when I spoke of Master Martin and Miss Phemie; and then she turned sharp to the horse-dealer and said: "`John, these is fine horses; you buy these cheap-like, and we can sell 'em again to-morrow. "Then he cursed and swore, and said the hosses was old scraws, and he'd be damned afore he'd buy such hounds'-meat.
I had with me an old man from the Lowlands, very good at the building of dry-stone dykes, a knowledgeable man in many ways, but especially in trees and gardens and such-like. The byre we built was not very big, and very dark, but it was cosy, too, under the crooked joists, and covered with heather scraws and thatch.
It simply consisted of a few sticks laid up against the side of a ditch; over these sticks were thrown a few scraws that is, the sward of the earth cut thin; in the inside was the remnant of some loose straw, the greater part having been taken away either for bedding or firing. When Mave entered, she started at the singular appearance of Sarah.
Failing to find the old woman, he postponed his quest for the present and stayed talking to Theresa, who, as it happened, was at home; and then he stopped again outside to help Hugh McInerney by handing him up some rolls of green-sodded scraws and slippery bundles of rushes.
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