3-028-411 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Sketches from Ireland: woman making nets in the Claddagh, Galway, 1870. 'The ancient city of Galway, which was a place of great importance in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, having a rich traffic with Spain and the West Indies, has many curious features. It has a suburb called "the Claddagh," inhabited by a race of hereditary fishermen, to the number of 5000, who live apart from the townspeople and keep up their own peculiar customs. The women of the Claddagh find much employment in mending the nets with which their husbands and brothers go out to sea, and on the produce of which their livelihood entirely depends. Our Artist has made a sketch of one of these women, occupied in this needful work. A Claddagh girl, when she marries, will often bring a net and a share of a boat, as her dowry or marriage portion to the man whom she weds with her parents' approval'. From "Illustrated London News", 1870.