| caption: |
chapter two - the village |
| caption: |
woodstack of morung; sitting platform and furniture |
| note: |
footnotes indicated by boxes within square brackets |
| text: |
The front gable of a hangseoki juts forward a distance of 10 or 12 feet and the thatch on either side is cut back in a hollow curve which gives the building a characteristic 'clipper-bow profile. In the porch thus sheltered is the hangseoki woodstack. Its size is an index of the numbers and physical strength of the young men resident in the hangseoki and for reasons of prestige woodstacks are sometimes so large that they block the village street and a gateway has to be left in them to allow free passage. In front of the porch there is usually a sitting- platform of planks and timber. A hangseoki porch is also a favoured site for a forge. The piston-bellows used, and their bamboo tubes, can easily be set up and as easily be dismantled when work ceases, while the small pit for charcoal, the stone against which the charcoal is piled and the small bamboo tubes which run through it to the foot of the bellow-tubes can be covered over with earth and left till the forge is required (23) again. |
