3-052-407 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Sketches In Ireland: at Galway, 1880. 'On the Quay; Connemara Women; A Claddagh boy making twine; The Claddagh...Galway, in fact, was by its remote situation, and by the disturbed state of the adjacent country, almost beyond the reach of the English regal power...The original Celtic tribes of the neighbouring county had gathered themselves up in Connemara, a wild district lying west of Lough Corrib,...but they were allowed to frequent the seaport of Galway and to make a settlement there. This is the quarter still distinguished as "the Claddagh," a sort of native Irish Ghetto, retaining its peculiarities to this day...the Claddagh is a cluster of rude cabins on the beach, where several thousand poor people, mostly boatmen or fishermen, or coasting sailors, dwell quite apart from the townsfolk, cherishing their own habits and customs, and speaking their own language...Our Artist's sketches on the quay at Galway, in the Claddagh, and those of a group of Connemara women, and of a boy, with a cumbrous sort of spinning-wheel, producing twine for the making of their fishing-nets, give a lively notion of the appearance of this primitive folk...The population of Galway city is now under 16,000, having diminished one third in the last thirty years'. From "Illustrated London News", 1880.