3-028-737 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Sketches from Ireland: women at field-work in Roscommon, 1870. 'We found the women well formed, muscular, if not particularly handsome, specimens of the fair sex; working away with a thorough will in their scarlet petticoats, and their white or check shawls fastened over their heads, their brawny legs for the most part completely bare, with not so much as a sandal on the foot with which they pressed the spade into the hard ground, though one or two had a sort of rude mocassins called "tracheens" wound round the lower part of the leg. On entering into conversation with them we found the Gaelic to be their ordinary language, though some of them spoke English well enough'. From "Illustrated London News", 1870.