The village was more than half a mile long,
the cottages being irregularly divided from each other by gardens, or
yards, as the inhabitants called them, of different sizes, where (for
it is Sixty Years since) the now universal potato was unknown, but which
were stored with gigantic plants of KALE or colewort, encircled with
groves of nettles, and exhibited here and there a huge hemlock, or the
national thistle, overshadowing a quarter of the petty enclosure. The
broken ground on which the village was built had never been levelled; so
that these enclosures presented declivities of every degree, here rising
like terraces, there sinking like tan-pits. The dry-stone walls which
fenced, or seemed to fence (for they were sorely breached), these
hanging gardens of Tully-Veolan, were intersected by a narrow lane
leading to the common field, where the joint labour of the villagers
cultivated alternate ridges and patches of rye, oats, barley, and peas,
each of such minute extent, that at a little distance the unprofitable
variety of the surface resembled a tailor's book of patterns. In a
few favoured instances, there appeared behind the cottages a miserable
wigwam, compiled of earth, loose stones, and turf, where the wealthy
might perhaps shelter a starved cow or sorely galled horse.
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