Receipt for a Donnybrook Tent.
Take eight or ten long wattles, or any indefinite number, according to the length you wish your tent to be (whether two yards, or half a mile, makes no difference as regards the architecture or construction). Wattles need not be provided by purchase and sale, but may be readily procured any dark night by cutting down a sufficient number of young trees in the demesne or plantation of any gentleman in the neighbourhood—a prescriptive privilege or rather practice, time immemorial, throughout all Ireland.
Having procured the said wattles one way or other, it is only necessary to stick them down in the sod in two rows, turning round the tops like a woodbine arbour in a lady’s flower-garden, tying the two ends together with neat ropes of hay, which any gentleman’s farm-yard can (during the night time, as aforesaid) readily supply,—then fastening long wattles in like manner lengthways at top from one end to the other to keep all tight together; and thus the “wooden walls” of Donnybrook are ready for roofing in; and as the building materials cost nothing but danger, the expense is very trivial.
A tent fifty feet long may be easily built in about five minutes, unless the builders should adopt the old mode of peeling the wattles; and when once a wattle is stripped to its buff, he must be a wise landlord indeed who could swear to the identity of the timber—a species of evidence nevertheless that the Irish wood-rangers are extremely expert at.[[28]] This precaution will not however be necessary for the Don Cossacks, who being educated as highway robbers by the Emperor of all the Russias, and acting in that capacity in every country, cannot of course be called to account for a due exercise of their vocation.
[28]. I recollect a man at the assizes of Maryborough swearing to the leg of his own goose, which was stolen—having found it in some giblet broth at the robber’s cabin. The witness was obviously right; the web between the goose’s toes being, he said, snipped and cut in a way he could perfectly identify.
The covering of the tents is now only requisite; this is usually done according to fancy; and being unacquainted with the taste of the Russian gentlemen on that head, I shall only mention the general mode of clothing the wattles used in my time—a mode that, from its singularity, had a far more imposing appearance than any encampment ever pitched by his majesty’s regular forces, horse, foot, or artillery. Every cabin, alehouse, and other habitation wherein quilts or bedclothes were used, or could be procured by civility or otherwise (except money, which was not current for such purposes), was ransacked for apparel wherewith to cover the wattles. The favourite covering was quilts, as long as such were forthcoming; and when not, old winnowing sheets, sacks ripped open, rugs, blankets, &c. &c.—Every thing, in fact, was expended in the bed line (few neighbours using that accommodation during the fair)—and recourse often had to women’s apparel, as old petticoats, praskeens, &c. &c.
The covering being spread over the wattles as tightly and snugly as the materials would admit, all was secured by hay ropes and pegs. When completed, a very tall wattle with a dirty birch-broom, the hairy end of an old sweeping brush, a cast-off lantern of some watchman, rags of all colours made into streamers, and fixed at the top by way of sign, formed the invitation to drinking;—and when eating was likewise to be had, a rusty tin saucepan, or piece of a broken iron pot, was hung dangling in front, to crown the entrance and announce good cheer.
The most amusing part of the coverings were the quilts, which were generally of patchwork, comprising scraps of all the hues in the rainbow—cut into every shape and size, patched on each other, and quilted together.