“Is there, then, another island in the other lake, like this one here?”
“Island! Nay, none—and here is no island! What thou seest yonder our fathers, that were before us, built long ago. For they felled timbers and staked them on the bottom of the lake and builded their houses thereon, and dwelt there, even as we dwell.”
When they came to the waterside, they laid the wounded man down on the ground. Then Gaithel put his hands to his mouth and gave a peculiar call, and the people in the canoe heard it and came quickly to the shore. They lifted Dobran in and paddled away with him to the landing place; and Gaithel and Tig walked beside the shore and along the gangway. When they got to the village, they were met by a crowd of the Lake people; for Dobran had spread the news of how Tig had helped him, and all the people were eager to welcome the stranger who had shown kindness to one of themselves. But Gaithel took Tig at once to the hut where Dobran was lying. His wife had already bound up his injured limb, and she was then preparing supper; and she brought food and set it before them, broiled fish and porridge and curds. After supper many of Dobran’s friends came into the hut to see him, and they stayed chatting with him till late; but at last they all went home, and the household settled down to sleep.
Chapter the Twenty-fourth
How Tig saw the Lake People’s Village
ON the next day, Gaithel took Tig and showed him the village; and Tig saw what he had taken to be an island was really a large and solid platform made of tree-trunks laid close together. There was a paling of stakes at the edge of the platform next the water, all round; and within the paling were the huts, built close together side by side in rows with narrow alleys in between, and sheds for the cattle, built of poles and wattled and daubed with clay like the huts. Besides their cattle the Lake People had some sheep, which they prized greatly on account of the wool, from which the women span yarn for weaving into cloth. At the place where the gangway joined the platform there was a gate of bars in the paling, and also a rough stairway going down to the canoes that were drawn up alongside. In an open place in the middle of the village was a fire burning on a large open hearthstone; and Gaithel said that nowhere else on the island was anyone allowed to have a fire, for fear of burning down the huts. In another place was a shoot for rubbish, to which the people had to bring their household refuse and tip it into the lake. Then Gaithel took Tig down to the landing stage, and showed him the canoes that were moored there; “I know someone who would like to see these canoes of yours,” said Tig. “He is a man in our village, called Crubach. He is lame. He makes troughs in the same way as you make canoes, by burning out a tree trunk, only of course they are much smaller; my mother has one to dip hides in when she is curing them.”
Making a Canoe