The Little Hotel Where We Stopped Was Very Comfortable, Very Clean, And
Possesses A Good Cook.
The next day in exploring the by streets and
suburbs of the town I saw poverty enough, want enough.
It was market day
and the streets were crowded with country women in blue cloaks. These
cloaks are all the same make, but some of them, owing to their material,
were very stylish and shrouded as pretty black eyed, black-haired, rosy-
cheeked women as I ever saw. Some of these cloaks are made of very fine
material, the pleating about the shoulders very artistic, and the wide
hoods lined with black satin when worn round the face make the wearers
look like fancy pictures. Some of the women gather them round them in
folds like drapery. I noticed at once that the artist who made the
statues of O'Connell and Father Mathew had studied the drapery from the
cloaks of some Claddagh or Skibbereen woman.
Market day is used as a day for confession, and the clergy are on hard
duty on that day. Skibbereen boasts of a bishop and numerous resident
priests. The town is as quiet as if such a thing as a riot, an outrage
or a mob was never known.
In a little corner, squeezed in between houses, is a neat Methodist
chapel and the parsonage beside it. Called on the minister, who received
me graciously and was courteous and communicative. Having been by virtue
of his office over a great part of Ireland he had seen a good deal of
the oppression of the tenant, partly from the thoughtlessness of
absentee landlords, partly from the want of any sympathy with the
tenants.
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