Formerly the Claddagh people wore a distinctive dress, resembling that of the fisher folks of Holland,—a red skirt, a blue waist, elaborate headdress, and bare feet and legs,—but this costume has been discarded by the younger women and is only worn by their grandmothers now. But all the women go barefooted. They never wear shoes or stockings. The men are engaged exclusively in fishing, although they do all of their own masonry, carpentering, and boat building. They pack their fish in the village, but carry a portion of each catch across the river to the fish market of Galway.
There is an attractive resort for city people on the Bay of Galway, with a long promenade, several hotels, and a number of comfortable villas.
Salmon Weir, Galway
XXXI
CONNEMARA AND THE NORTHWEST COAST
Clifden is the extreme western point of Ireland, and for that reason Marconi selected it for his wireless telegraph station in communicating with Canada and the United States. It is 1,620 miles in a direct line of St. John, New Brunswick, and, as a native remarked, “There’s not a spheck of droy land upon which a burrd could rist the sole of its foot bechune this blessed spot and Americky.” If you will examine the map you will understand the situation better, and a geological chart of the island will show you that the western coast, from Mizzen Head to Bloody Foreland, is protected by a chain of mountains, bleak, rugged, and abrupt, which nature has placed as a buttress to support the rest of Ireland against the fierce attack of the Atlantic. They have terrible storms there, and a northwest gale several times a year that is terrific. The east winds, which we dread, bring good weather in Ireland, but the west wind brings storms and cold and mists that are almost as bad as the London fog.
Connemara is the congested district, but it does not bear that name because the population is overcrowded, but because there are too many people for the inhospitable soil to support. The inhabitants are scattered over a vast area. I could see everything from one point as far as a radius of twenty-two miles, and there wasn’t a human habitation in sight, nor was there any inducement to build one because the country was a bleak, barren, rocky wilderness without soil for crops or shelter for cattle. There is the greatest degree of poverty and suffering in Ireland, and there the government is doing its greatest benevolent work in trying to place the people upon farms that are large enough to support them, and finding them other occupations by which they can earn a few additional dollars.
A railway was built from Galway along the edge of the ocean to Clifden a few years ago, and the track hugs the coast as closely as possible. An hour after leaving Galway nature begins to disclose her unfriendliness, the mountains begin to loom up to a height of two thousand and twenty-two hundred feet, the landscape becomes stern and forbidding, and there is no vegetation except heather, which, when in full bloom, adds a purple hue to the wilderness. Heather seems to be as brave, as enduring, and as self-reliant as the sage brush that decorates the arid plains of our western States, and nothing seems to discourage its growth. Alternating with the rocks are peat beds, in which both men and women spend much time getting out a supply of fuel for the next winter and stacking it in little piles to dry.