Before retiring to bed we would cover the peat fire with the ash of burnt peat--this was called smooring the fire--a few blasts of the hand bellows in the morning brought the fire alight, perpetual fire.
Something like the Muirton kail {soup} which was proved, in court, by a farmworker to be seven years old.

When someone has the hames put on them{a figure of speech} they are dissuaded from some {usually bad} action.

The hames were, as Jim says, a part of the horse harness, they being the parts that projected above the collar like two horns.