Over The Entrance Is A Skull And Cross
Bones In Relief On Black Marble, With This Motto, Which I Copied,
"REMEMBER DEATH
Vanitie of vanities, and all is but vanitie."
There is a fine museum in Queen's College, Galway, which I did not see.
Of course there are many things I did not see, although my eyes were on
hard duty while there. I did see specimens of that most beautiful marble
of Connemara. It is worked up into ornaments, in some cases mounted with
silver. As soon as any one enquires for it they are known to be from
America. A book shaped specimen that I coveted was priced at twelve and
sixpence. It is there yet for me. It is of every shade and tint of
green, and is really very lovely. I saw many specimens of it
manufactured into harps stringed and set in silver, with a silver
scroll, and the name of Davitt or Parnell on them in green enamel. There
were brooches and scarf pins of this kind. I did not notice the name of
the great Liberator among these ornaments.
The Claddagh was a great disappointment to me. I heard that it was not
safe to venture into it alone. I got up early and had sunshine with me
when I strolled through the Claddagh. I saw no extreme poverty there.
Most of the houses were neatly whitewashed; all were superior to the
huts among the ruins at Athenry. The people were very busy, very
comfortably clothed, and, in a way, well-to-do looking. Some of the
houses were small and windowless, something the shape of a beehive, but
not at all forlornly squalid. They make celebrated fleecy flannel here
in Claddagh. They make and mend nets. They fish. I saw some swarthy men
of foreign look, in seamen's clothes, standing about. You will see
beauty here of the swarthy type, accompanied by flashing black eyes and
blue black hair, but I saw lasses with lint white locks also in the
Claddagh. The testimony of all here is that the Claddagh people are a
quiet, industrious, temperate and honest race of people. I am inclined
to believe that myself. It is a pretty large district and I wandered
through it without hearing one loud or one profane word. I was agreeably
disappointed in the Claddagh. Claddagh has a church and large school of
its own.
They told me that the Galway coast has the same flowers as the coast of
Spain. I can testify that flowers abound in little front gardens, and
window panes, and in boxes on every window ledge. I did not go to see
the iodine works, where this substance is manufactured from sea weed. I
saw people burning kelp - and smelled them too - on the Larne and
Carnlough coast and in Mayo. They burn the dried sea weed in long narrow
places built of stone. They are not kilns, but are more like them than
anything else I know of.
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