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A number of Claddagh fishermen had been out all night fishing not far from the harbour, and without thinking, or perhaps caring to think, of the steamer, they had put out their nets in the channel where she was to pass. Just before we started the mate sounded the steam whistle repeatedly to give them warning, saying as he did so
He was hand in glove with the Hon. Laurence Fitzgibbon, the youngest son of Lord Claddagh. He was intimate with Barrington Erle, who had been private secretary, one of the private secretaries, to the great Whig Prime Minister who was lately in but was now out. He had dined three or four times with that great Whig nobleman, the Earl of Brentford.
In the streets above the Claddagh, merchants who had grown rich in the Spanish trade were building solid houses with carved lintels and windows of stained glass. The Hewishes invested money in these new ventures.
In Galway, Sinn Fein had a strong hold on the college of the National University, but, on the other hand, the depot of the Connaught Rangers was just outside the city at Renmore, and that famous corps had many partisans; while in the fishing village of the Claddagh nearly every man was a naval reservist.
You see things in shop windows ticketed Scotch and English, but, until this new movement began, nothing marked Irish. Yet Limerick laces might tempt any fine lady, as well as Antrim linens and Down damasks. There is also Blarney tweed of great cheapness and excellence, Balina blankets, and the excellent Claddagh flannel.
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.
He was the youngest son of Lord Claddagh, an Irish peer with a large family, who could do nothing for Laurence, his favourite child, beyond finding him a seat in Parliament. "Well, Finn, my boy," said Laurence, shaking hands with the young member on board the steamer, "so you've made it all right at Loughshane."
Neither Connemara nor Claddagh cloaks were seen in the cars, nor were the blue or grey frieze swallow-tailed coats of Mayo and Galway seen on the powerful horses pounding along townward through the heavy road.
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.
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.
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