them from training him to any kind of employment. He was eternally going
about in quest of diversion; and wherever a knot of idlers was to be
found, there was Phelim. He had, up to this period, never worn a shoe,
nor a single article of dress that had been made for himself, with the
exception of one or two pair of sheepskin small-clothes. In this way he
passed his time, bare-legged, without shoes, clothed in an old coat much
too large for him, his neck open, and his sooty locks covered with the
hare-skin cap, the ears as usual sticking out above his brows. Much of
his time was spent in setting the idle boys of the village to fight; and
in carrying lying challenges from one to another. He himself was seldom
without a broken head or a black eye; for in Ireland, he who is known
to be fond of quarrelling, as the people say, usually "gets enough
an' lavins of it." Larry and Sheelah, thinking it now high time that
something should be done with Phelim, thought it necessary to give
him some share of education. Phelim opposed this bitterly as an
unjustifiable encroachment upon his personal liberty; but, by bribing
him with the first and only suit of clothes he had yet got, they at
length succeeded in prevailing on him to go.

The school to which he was sent happened to be kept in what is called
an inside Kiln. This kind of kiln is usually--but less so now than
formerly--annexed to respectable farmers' outhouses, to which, in
agricultural districts, it forms a very necessary appendage. It also
serves at the same time as a barn, the kiln-pot being sunk in the shape
of an inverted cone at one end, but divided from the barn floor by
a wall about three feet high. From this wall beams run across the
kiln-pot, over which, in a transverse direction, are laid a number of
rafters like the joists of a loft, but not fastened. These ribs are
covered with straw, over which again is spread a winnow-cloth to keep
the grain from being lost. The fire is sunk on a level with the bottom