3-070-914 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

At the Galway Assizes: group of Arran Islanders, 1881. 'Perhaps for extreme unadulterated specimens of the uncultured and entirely original Irish peasantry to be found in a concentrated group one could not possibly hit upon a more fallow field of study than the ancient "City of the Tribes," otherwise Galway, during the time of assize. For there you can find the natives of the wild outlying districts all heaped together on their various missions of legal import, either as plaintiffs or defendants - mostly, I think, as defendants or witnesses...In the corridor of the court might be seen knots of the Arran Islanders in their strange costumes of white rough flannel and raw-hide mocassins, their bright blue socks and Tam-o'-Shanter caps - everything home spun and made, and with the inevitable Spanish stamp of feature of the Western Irish. They do not stand about, for the most part, but squat silently and moodily for hours; and in the dusk of the corridor you will have to pick your way amongst them like so many sacks or dwarf bushes'. From "Illustrated London News", 1881.