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.
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