Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 81, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 June 1899 — SOME QUEER CUSTOMS. [ARTICLE]

SOME QUEER CUSTOMS.

Camp Dish wash Inc aad Tory Islaad Teamakla*. An old camper-out once related to a horrified housekeeper his experience of dishwashing in a miners’ camp. It did not take much time, though the company was numerous, and the utensils of the kitchen were in constant use. The reason why it took hut little time he sufficiently indicated by the state* inent that the cook pot was not cleaned till it became too small to hold a pudding of reasonable size. Then somebody got a hammer and knocked off the hardened accretions from its interior till it was restored nearly enough to its original capacity to render further service. On Tory island, an out of the way bit of an Irish islet, the natives are not much more dainty in their living, and their habit of letting the grounds remain indefinitely in their teapots has disastrous consequences. “Every day and all day long,” says a recent writer, “the teapot sits stewing in the embers of the hearth and at each successive brew fresh tea is thrown in, but the old is never thrown out until the pot is choked.” The result is an unusual and excessive rate of insanity. Little wonder, when a Tory island boy who was questioned as to his usual meals could reply: “Stirabout for breakfast and tay for dinner; tay, of coarse, at taytime and stirabdut for supper; whiles we have tay for breakfast instead, and stirabout for our dinner, and then another sup of tay before bedtime.” However, this diet, injurious as it is to the nerves, does not seem to affect the muscles. The Tory islanders are a robust and vigorous race, the men averaging six feet in height and the women unusually tall and strong. The women, indeed, have need of all their physical strength, since it is thy who do the bulk of the outdoor work, while the men stay at home and spin and weave. “At Anagry strand on a Sunday morning,” says the same observer, “one may •witness a strange sight. At low tide more than a mile of roundabout is saved by wading across a narrow bay. The men include in their Sunday’s wardrobe shoes and stockings. The women, by courtesy and custom, wear ‘martyeens’—footless stockings with a loop passing over the toe. Each good wife takes her good man upon her shoulders and the heroes are conveyed across dry shod.” —Youth's Companion.