The Highland monthly - National Library of Scotland

A Ceilidh. 559
A CEILIDH.
PART I.
CEILIDH! What memories the word recalls! I
have only to shut my eyes, and lean back in my
chair, and with my mind's eye I can see the following
picture. A large peat-fire in the middle of an earthen
floor, sending up a blue column of smoke to a roof that,
exposed for centuries to the influence of peat-reek, shone
through the cloud of smoke that often hid it from the
view of the inmates below, and reminded one of those
glazed caps often worn by sailors. It used to be my
greatest wish on a Sunday morning to have my boots equal
in brightness the polished rafters of Aonghas Ban's
house. At the farther end of this room there is a door
leading into the " ben " which forms the sleeping apartment
of Aonghas Ban and his young family. In the main
room, or " but," into which we have had a peep already, are
a dresser covered with the kind of crockery suited to the
simple life of the inhabitants of the house, two or three
wooden boxes performing the functions of a wardrobe,
mealchest, buttery, &c. ; a barrel or two filled with salt
herring, half-a-dozen straw-bottomed chairs, and two or
three wooden benches to accommodate the neighbours
when they muster to the Ceilidh. At the other end of the
" but," and separated from it by a partition consisting of
rude planks fixed in the floor, is the byre or cowshed. The
main door opens into the cowshed, and, on the right hand
as one enters, another door in the rude partition leads into
the " but."
As this picture rises before me in imagination it is
night, and seated round the fire arc about a score of prople
of both sexes and of all ages. There is Aonghas Ban