At the beginning of this century a corn-kiln in such a district in Ireland was a very simple affair. A floor of earthenware tiles, pierced nearly through from the underside, was arranged on a kind of platform or loft. Beneath there was a furnace, which was heated by burning the rough, dry seeds, or outer shelling, ground off the oats. In front of the furnace there was a hollow, called “the logie-hole,” in which the kiln man sat, with the shelling or seeds heaped up within arm’s length around him, and with his right hand he beeked the kiln, by throwing, every few seconds, a sprinkling of seeds on the flame. In this way he kept up a warm glow under the corn till it was sufficiently dried for the mill.
Such was the simple character of the ordinary corn-kiln in County Down at the beginning of the century. But I have been assured by the old men of the neighborhood that Hugh Brontë’s kiln was of a still more primitive structure. 453 The platform, or corn-floor, was constructed by laying iron bars across unhewn stones set up on end. On these bars straw matting was spread, and on the matting the corn was placed to dry. Such a structure was the immediate precursor of the pottery floored kiln. The design was the same in both, but the matting was always liable to catch fire, and required careful attention.
The kiln was erected in the part of the Brontë cottage now roofless, and, like the cottage itself, must have been a very humble affair. It has been suggested that the kiln may have stood elsewhere, but it is now established beyond all doubt, on the unanimous testimony of the inhabitants, that the Brontë kiln stood in the ruined room of the Brontë cottage, and, in fact, it is known by the name of “the Brontës’ kiln.”
Within those walls, now roofless, the grandfather of Charlotte Brontë began in 1776 to earn the daily bread of himself and his bride, by roasting his neighbors’ oats. His wage was known by the name of “muther,” and consisted of so many pounds of fresh oats taken from every hundredweight brought to him to be kiln-dried. The miller, too, was paid in kind, but his muther was taken by measure, after the shelling, or seeds, had been ground off the grain.
When Hugh Brontë had accumulated a sackful of muther he dried it on his kiln, took it to the mill, and paid his muther in turn to the miller, to have it ground into meal.
The meal, when taken home, was stored in a barrel, and with the produce of the rood of potatoes which Hugh had sod on his brother-in-law’s farm, became the food of himself and family. As the Brontës could not consume all the muther themselves, the surplus would be sold to provide clothing and other necessaries, and though there remains no trace of pig-stye or fowl-house, there can be little doubt that Mrs. Brontë would have both pigs and fowl to eke out her husband’s earnings.
Mrs. Brontë was a famous spinner, and she handed down the art to her daughters. She had always a couple of sheep grazing on her brother’s land. She carded and span the wool, her spinning-wheel singing all day beside her husband, as he beeked the kiln. Then, during the long, dark evenings, when they had no light but the red eye of the kiln, she knitted the yarn into hose and vest and shirt, and even head-gear, so that Hugh Brontë, like his sons in after years, was almost wholly clad in “homespun.”
This, probably, had something to do with the general impression, which still remains in the neighborhood, of the stately and shapely forms of the Brontë men and women. The knitted woollen garments fitted close, unlike the fantastic and shapeless habiliments that came from the hands of local tailors in those days.
Alice Brontë also span nearly all the garments which she wore, and her tall and comely daughters after her were dressed in clothes which their own hands had taken from the fleece.
On principle, as well as from necessity, the Brontës wore woollen garments, and the vicar carried the same taste with him to England, where his dislike of everything made of cotton was attributed by his biographer to dread of fire. The absurd servants’ gossip as to his cutting up his wife’s silk gown had possibly a grain of truth in it, owing to his preference for woollen garments; but the atrocity spun out of the gossip by Mrs. Gaskell was probably an exaggeration of an innocent act. At any rate, the old man characterized the statement, I believe truly, by a small but ugly word.