ABSTRACT
When once a wren’s nest is distinguished from the natural mounds of furze amidst which it is placed, after recognition is tolerably easy; though at a first glance it is so much like a mere bush that you might well pass by without dreaming that it was the habitation of human creatures. However, there are differences, of course; and thus after I had looked for a few moments at my first nest, and glanced around and beyond it, I saw that I was in fact in the midst of a little village, with as many—homes shall I say? and as many inhabitants as some English hamlets whose names are well marked on the map. Dotted about to right, and left, and onward, at intervals varying from 20 to 100 yards, were other bushes, which bore not only certain signs of man’s constructive skill, but of woman’s occupancy. Suspended against the prickly sides of one of them was a petticoat, against another a crinoline; an article so bulky and intractable that it could not well be got inside. Indeed, the probability is that it never did get inside at all—never was inside; but was put on and taken off, as occasion required, at the hole that served for a door. How could three or four large-limbed women, crinolined accordingly, live in a space no bigger than the ox’s crib or the horse’s stall? Besides, that is exaggeration. To be particular, the nests have an interior space of about nine feet long by seven feet broad; and the roof is not more than four and a-half feet from the ground. You crouch into them, as beasts crouch into cover; and there is no standing upright till you crawl out again. They are rough, misshapen domes of furze—like big, rude birds’ nests compacted of harsh branches, and turned topsyturvy upon the ground. The walls are some twenty inches thick, and they do get pretty well compacted—much more than would be imagined. There is no chimney—not even a hole in the roof, which generally slopes forward. The smoke of the turf fire which burns on the floor of the hut has to pass out at the door when the wind is favourable, and to reek slowly through the crannied walls when it is not. The door is a narrow opening nearly the height of the structure—a slit in it, kept open by two rude posts, which also serve to support the roof. To keep it down, and secure from the winds that drive over the Curragh so furiously, sods of earth are placed on top, here and there, with a piece of corrugated iron (much used in the camp apparently—I saw many old and waste pieces lying about) as an additional protection from rain. Sometimes a piece of this iron is placed in the longitudinal slit aforesaid; and then you have a door as well as a doorway. Flooring there is none of any kind whatever, nor any attempt to make the den snugger by burrowing down into the bosom of the earth. The process of construction seems to be to clear the turf from the surface of the plain to the required space, to cut down some bushes for building material, and to call in a friendly soldier or two to rear the walls by the simple process of piling and trampling. When the nest is newly made, as that one was which I first examined, and if you happen to view it on a hot day, no doubt it seems tolerably snug shelter. A sportsman might lie there for a summer night or two without detriment to his health or his moral nature. But all the nests are not newly made; and if the sun shines on the Curragh, bitter winds drive across it, with swamping rains for days and weeks together; and miles of snow-covered plain sometimes lie between this wretched colony of abandoned women and the nearest town. Wind and rain are their worst enemies (unless we reckon in mankind) and play “old gooseberry” with the bush dwellings. The beating of the one and the pelting of the other soon destroy their bowery summer aspect. They get crazy; they fall toward this side and that; they shrink in and down upon the outcast wretches that huddle in them; and the doorposts don’t keep the roof up and the clods don’t keep it down:—the nest is nothing but a furzy hole, such as, for comfort, any wild beast may match anywhere; leaving cleanliness out of the question. Of course, I did not make all these observations at a first visit. It was afterwards that I found No.5 Bush (they are called No. 1 Bush, No. 2 Bush, and so forth by the wrens themselves) was a really superior edifice in its way—larger, better than any other; and well it should be, for it was the abode of five or six women. Other nests were smaller, and fast going to decay; but even in the smallest three women were harboured, while one was tenanted by as many as eight. Altogether, there are ten bushes, with about sixty inhabitants. In them they sleep, cook, eat, drink, visit, receive visits, and perform all the various offices of life. If they are sick, there they lie. Brothers and mothers and fathers go to see them there. There sometimes—such occurrences do happen—they lie in childbed; and there sometimes they die.
