The roof of his home was made of a thatch of rushes or reeds and his sisters would climb up to collect eggs from under the hens nesting on top. One amusing episode in "An t-Oileánach" describes a neighbour's family at supper when, to their bewilderment and consternation, young chickens began raining, one by one, onto the table and splashing into a mug of milk. "For God's sake," cried the woman of the house, "where are they coming from?" One of the children spied a hole scratched in the roof by a mother hen.