. Connaught. chief of them theLynch House, standing in the main street andrichly decorated with stone mouldings. Nearer theport are huge buildings of more recent date, grain-stores erected in the early eighteenth century whena tremendous export trade to England ran from thisport. All of them, or all but all, mansions and storesalike, have fallen on evil days, and you shall seethe decorated scutcheon over the entrance to somerookery of wretched tenements. The port is hardly less depressing. Admirable asa shelter in the days of small vessels, it is unfit forthese days when even coasting traffic
. Connaught. chief of them theLynch House, standing in the main street andrichly decorated with stone mouldings. Nearer theport are huge buildings of more recent date, grain-stores erected in the early eighteenth century whena tremendous export trade to England ran from thisport. All of them, or all but all, mansions and storesalike, have fallen on evil days, and you shall seethe decorated scutcheon over the entrance to somerookery of wretched tenements. The port is hardly less depressing. Admirable asa shelter in the days of small vessels, it is unfit forthese days when even coasting traffic comes in shipsof three thousand tons. It is true they have a dockhollowed out of rock and holding eighteen foot ofwater; but the Board of Works (a department ofDublin Castle) which executed the work at a costof forty thousand pounds omitted to notice that therewas only twelve foot of water at the entrance: andthe accommodation is thought as useful as a secondstorey with no stair to it. Nearly all the shipping. CONNAUGHT 37 consists in fishing boats: many trawlers, but mostnumerous of all, the little hookers worked by thefishermen who live across the river in the very oddcommunity called the Claddagh. These people tillrecently had a ^^king of their own (just as happenson the small islands of the coast) and they lived theirown life, and indeed still live it, almost wholly dis-tinct from the regular townsfolk. Their thatchedcottages scattered in a huddled group without streetsor plan of any kind make a curious feature of theplace; but it is a curiosity rather than a charm. In the main street of the town lives a jewellerwho manufactures still the Claddagh ring which thesefolk and the Aran people use for marriage or be-trothal: joined hands surmounted by a crowned heartmake an emblem which needs no posy to expoundit. You can get in Galway also another local objectwhich is worth having, the womans strong cloak ofred or blue flannel with hood to shelter the head inthe stormiest of wea
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookpublisherlondo, bookyear1912
