the artistic beauty of medieval life. The curaghs and
spinning-wheels, the tiny wooden barrels that are still much used in
the place of earthenware, the home-made cradles, churns, and
baskets, are all full of individuality, and being made from
materials that are common here, yet to some extent peculiar to the
island, they seem to exist as a natural link between the people and
the world that is about them.

The simplicity and unity of the dress increases in another way the
local air of beauty. The women wear red petticoats and jackets of
the island wool stained with madder, to which they usually add a
plaid shawl twisted round their chests and tied at their back. When
it rains they throw another petticoat over their heads with the
waistband round their faces, or, if they are young, they use a heavy
shawl like those worn in Galway. Occasionally other wraps are worn,
and during the thunderstorm I arrived in I saw several girls with
men's waistcoats buttoned round their bodies. Their skirts do not
come much below the knee, and show their powerful legs in the heavy
indigo stockings with which they are all provided.

The men wear three colours: the natural wool, indigo, and a grey
flannel that is woven of alternate threads of indigo and the natural
wool. In Aranmor many of the younger men have adopted the usual
fisherman's jersey, but I have only seen one on this island.

As flannel is cheap--the women spin the yarn from the wool of their
own sheep, and it is then woven by a weaver in Kilronan for
fourpence a yard--the men seem to wear an indefinite number of
waistcoats and woollen drawers one over the other. They are usually
surprised at the lightness of my own dress, and one old man I spoke