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side and women on the other because the whole household, even hired
hands, slept 2 to a bed to stay warm.

The windows were quite small and high and did not let in a great deal of

light even though the day outside was bright with sun and brilliant with blue
sky! No wonder the women wore their eyes out, what with sewing and

weaving, and all the other close work they had to do. Couldn’t even imagine
what the place must have looked and smelled like during the 6 months of

darkness in winter. Peat and dung fires would have kept the rooms smoky

and choking too. Candles could not have provided sufficient light for all the
working going on. This house did not have electricity during the time it was

actually lived in. A sobering thought knowing folks actually lived here until
after WWII.

DRANGEY ISLAND

Our next adventure started in the small town harbor where we caught a

little private vessel with an intensely loud engine to get out to Bird Island
(Drangey Island). If only I had known that we would see plenty of puffins later, I

would never have taken this outing. Even though we were warned that if

we were afraid of heights we should not take this side trip, we did not
understand what that actually meant. So we forged on and that’s when the

terrors began.

I hated the loud and smoky ride out to the island and it took almost two
hours to reach even though our teenaged pilot (under the captaincy of his

grandfather) kept the motor at full throttle the whole way. We were going
against a very strong ocean tide and it seemed the boat just couldn’t make

any headway at all. The trip back took only a half hour, so it was true that

the tides were very strong. Anyway, if only the boat had never made it all
the way out!

The way to the top of this high chunk of rock sticking straight up out of the

ocean was extremely steep, dry and sandy, and at its bottom were huge
boulders on which to dash yourself if you slipped or fell. Normally, I am not