I had forgotten about them until I was sorting out books recently and have decided to share some of it with you.
It feels a little bit like the programme http://www.rte.ie/tv/bloodoftheirish/prog1.html where they researched who we are and where we came from!!
There are references to most of Connaght but some interesting insights into
Galway/Connemara which I will share with your first.
Extracts from the 1st chapter
''Connaught -or Connacht, as it is more properly spelt or spoken-is geographically the best marked among the provinces of Ireland; and as usual other discriminations follow. I would not say that it is of all the provinces the most Irish; nobody has better to stand for Ireland than the boys of Wexford and at a Wexford Fair or meeting you will see scores of big farmers the very picture of Mr Punch's John Bull, only not so round about the abdomen. But Connaught, Connaughtment, and Connaught ways certainly come nearest to an Englishman's traditonal conception of Ireland and it's inhabitants; the stage Irishman is based upon Connaught characteristics. In West Mayo people do say ''shtruck''( or in moments of emotion ''shhtrruck''); and you can see still in places the traditional costumes. Shawled heads and bare feet are (thank goodness) to be met with all along the Atlantic seaboard; but the red petticoat(home-dyed with madder, though alas! aniline dyes are fast replacing the costlier and more beautiful crimson) is characteristic of Galway and Mayo; and in remote recessess of Joyce country and Connemara old and lovely fashions of braiding the hair and training ringlets to stray over the forehead still hold their own. In Connemara and on Aran the tall lad of thirteen may still though rarely be seen in the long petticoated shirt(his only garment) of red and blue flannel; but this is only a relic of sheer poverty.
''In Connemara the ''bawneen'' or sleeved waistcoat of whitish flannel is general and very becoming to its wearers, among whom are to be found the handsomest men in Ireland. Kerry women, who in certain parts really have the ''black-blue Irish hair and Irish eyes'', may perhaps hold their own even with the girls of Connaught; but for fine-looking men I would back Galway against any country in the British Isles. There is much talk of a Spanish strain on this coast, and undoubtly commerce was constant between the Iberian penisula: but the truth is that you have in western Ireland,as in western Spain, surivals of a race which the red haired people pushed off the good lands towards the limit of the sea. On the Claddagh at Galway I have seen a man at work in his cottage mending a net, who might have posed for the model of a Basque peasant; and the olive skinned fisher folk about the great mackerel curing station at Cleggan(near Clifden) are simply variants of a type that repeats itself along the coast of Spain.
