Treaty Stone, Limerick
The treaty of Limerick was drawn by Sir John Browne, a colonel in the service of King James and the first Marquis of Sligo. It was signed upon a large flat stone which now stands upon a pedestal at the entrance to the ancient bridge that crosses the Shannon River.
The women of the poorer classes in Tipperary and Limerick wear heavy woolen shawls made at Paisley, Scotland, and costing from five to ten dollars, according to the quality. They wear them over their heads in place of hats, and although it was very hot while we were there, it made no difference; they go around with their heads hidden in their shawls, as the Spanish women wear mantillas; and most of them are barefooted. Tipperary was the first place in Ireland where we saw barefooted women in the streets, and it isn’t an agreeable sight. We saw more in Limerick, and it was still less agreeable. The workingmen do not go barefooted, although many of them have shoes very much the worse for wear, but it seems to be the custom for the wives and mothers and daughters of the working classes to go about without shoes or stockings and with heavy shawls over their heads, which, like charity, cover a multitude of sins and other things. Their dresses are tattered at the bottom and often ragged and always greasy, and their hair, so far as it can be seen under the shawls, is very untidy, which gives them a disreputable and repulsive appearance, so different from the women we saw at Drogheda, Wexford, Waterford, Cork, Blarney, and other places we had been to.
There is no occasion for the women of Limerick to dress as they do, because the town is prosperous and it used to boast of the reputation of having the prettiest girls in Ireland. Some poet who knew them long ago has written thus:
“The first time me feet got the feel of the ground
I was sthrollin’ along in an old Irish city,
That hasn’t its aquail the whole wurrld around,
For the air that is swate and the gurrls that are pretty.
And the lashes so thick round thim beautiful eyes
Shinin’ to tell you its fair time o’ day wid ’em.