THE CLADDAGH BEGGAR. 3 sound like an anomaly, but let any one who has spent a summer on this portion of the wild Atlantic shore convict me of exaggeration if he can. It was, then, on a cold, blowing, and withal rainy day in August, that the beggars, noisy and importunate, thronged round the departing Bianconi car, and begged for charity of the travellers seated thereon. The woman whose words I have quoted, was the most conspicuous amid the group, both for the untiring energy of her supplications, and for the silent tale of starvation and of woe which was traceable in every line of her miserable face. Her only covering was a collection of patched and manycoloured rags held together by a bony hand, which was for ever failing in its attempts, and leaving exposed to view the dirt-brown skinny throat, and the unwomanly-looking chest, which seemed as though it had been exposed from earliest infancy (as indeed was probably the case) to the wild storms and buffetings of the cruel Connaught climate. "I'm a Claddagh woman, yer Honour. Charity for the poor childer, in the honour of God." The woman persisted so vehemently in her peculiar form of prayer, that, distracted though I was by the numerous supplicants around me, I could not choose but listen to her. I was, as I have said, surrounded by those clamorous, hungry Celts,-with boys, half naked, wriggling in their rags, for what purpose I abstained from guessing, and with old, bent patriarchs, wearied pilgrims through a world which had smiled neither on their childhood nor their age. Heavens! how forlorn they looked, and how, alas! degraded! Verily, at that moment I could almost have taken shame to myself that I was dressed in broadcloth, and had dared in my full contentment to complain that Galway bread was scarcely eatable, and that comfort in the hotel was deplorably wanting. "Where is the Claddagh?" I asked of the clamorous woman, whose cries had at last begun to excite, not only my compassion, but my curiosity. "This way, yer Honour," exclaimed twenty supplicants, each eager and resolute to earn by their information an anticipated reward. But before I could make up my mind as to the best means of escape from the troublesome throng, a policeman, who had been watching the scene, stepped forward to the rescue. "Off with ye," he called out authoritatively, but without the slightest ill-humour or violence. "Can't ye lave the jintleman alone? Git out of that, all of ye, will ye now?" After this powerful intervention in my behalf, the 66 5 space around me was soon cleared, and I stood unmolested, with the man in green, in the wide open street which stretches alongside of an enclosed square in front of old Filboy's hotel. I chose that most unclean hostelry for the sake of the associations connected with it, inasmuch as I looked upon it as classic ground, and as rendered venerable by the dirt which an unwashed and unwashing people have allowed to accumulate both within and without its time-honoured walls. Very untempting were its beds, and equally unsavoury the fare which was put before me; but I remembered for my comfort the glorious bygone days when the "bumper fair" was filled there; when shots (none of your pretence and half-and-half affairs) were exchanged across the tables; and when the "Galway Blazers "-God save the mark!-took their claret and their whisky like bold men as they were! Recalling to mind, I repeat, those bygone days, I turned my attention to the man of order and authority who stood beside me, and confessing mentally that he was in his right place, I accosted him thus: "I have a curiosity to see the Claddagh; can I do so now?" "Your Honour can," answered the man, raising his hand to his cap. a rough place." "It's but a step, although it's "Will you show me the way?" I asked. And he assenting, we went forward. a Through the main street, in which I noticed a few tolerable-looking shops, we pursued our way till, arriving (after a walk of some fifteen minutes) at the opposite side of the harbour, I was told that we had entered the precincts of the "Claddagh" singular locality, in which exist some thousands of human beings who, strange to say, have never mixed with their neighbours on the city side; who marry exclusively amongst their own class and community, and who gain their scanty and precarious livelihood by fishing only. One house in that curious nest of low-roofed buildings is not larger than another. There are streets upon streets of miserable cabins, straw-thatched, and internally smoke-dried, whilst a sickening odour of dead and decaying fish hangs heavily on the air. The women whom we met were all dark-eyed, and any might have been handsome but for the begriming smoke, the careworn wrinkled brow, and the total absence in their dress of the art of coquetteriethat genuinely feminine quality which, as a lenient writer has remarked, is only a vice in the old and ugly. That there is an admixture, in the population of the Claddagh, both of Eastern and Spanish blood, no one who visits the place can, in my opinion, entertain a doubt; and when we reflect that the qualities and habits of the wild nations from which has sprung this Celtic race have never been modified by any amalgamation with the colder blood of the Saxon, we can scarcely wonder that between the characteristics of the Irish and English peasantry there should be so marked and strong a difference. It was with such reflections passing through my mind, and the prayer of the Claddagh woman still ringing in my ears, that I followed her through the muddy lanes to the hovel where she dwelt. "This is the house, if it's plazing to your Honour," whined the poor creature, as she stopped at the door of a wretched and ill-smelling cabin. "Sure it's too much trouble your Honour's taking," she added, seeing that I was preparing with stooping head to cross the threshold of her dwelling. A low keening sound, that mournful wailing for the dead which, together with many another peculiar habit and characteristic, has always seemed to me as corroborative of their Eastern origin,† broke * In Celtic coon-pronounced keen: Anglice, a howl. "There be cryes used among the Irish, such as their lamentations at |