THATCHER Bespoke for weeks, he turned up some morning Unexpectedly, his bicycle slung With a light ladder and a bag of knives. He eyed the old rigging, poked at the eaves, Opened and handled sheaves of lashed wheat-straw. Next, the bundled rods: hazel and willow Were flicked for weight, twisted in case they'd snap. It seemed he spent the morning warming up: Then fixed the ladder, laid out well honed blades And snipped at straw and sharpened ends of rods That, bent in two, made a white-pronged staple For pinning down his world, handful by handful. Couchant for days on sods above rafters He shaved and flushed the butts, stitched all together Into a sloped honeycomb, a stubble patch, And left them gaping at his Midas touch. -- Seamus Heaney "Pinning down his world, handful by handful" - what a wonderful line! The art of thatching is one of the oldest building crafts in the world and is still practiced widely in Ireland, England, Scandinavia and continental Europe, and to a less extent in the U.S. Materials used in thatching, including reed and straw, were first brought to the U.S. by Spanish traders in the 16th century. Thatched roofs were commonly used by the original settlers of MA, PA, and VA, and were widely used in the 1800s. William Cahill, a present-day thatcher from Cincinnati, OH, who grew up in Salthill, Co. Galway, has created thatched roofs across America for people's private homes, gardens, on a gazebo, for a guest cottage or barn. He points out that in the 1940s, roughly 70% of homes in Ireland had a thatched roof. Cahill states he gets his wheat straw (used on the ridging of the roof) from the Amish in Lancaster, PA, but sometimes it comes from Turkey or Holland. The reeds (used on the r! oof itself) comes from southern NJ and near Lake Erie. The scallops and hazelrods (employed to hold down the straw at the peak of the roof) comes from Ireland. "Just like Aran sweaters, whose designers use their own signature style, so do thatchers. I can tell in Ireland who did the thatching by their ridging at the very peak of their roof," said Cahill, who incorporates an upside-down shamrock as his trademark. -- Excerpt, "World of Hibernia"