We have thus far spoken of the scenery of the islands, and of their natural history, of their antiquities, Pagan and Christian, and of their annals; let us now turn to speak of their people and of what others think of them. Doctor Petrie thus, in 1841, writes:

"I had heard so much of the Aran islanders, of their primitive simplicity, and singular hospitality, that I could not help doubting the truth of a picture so pleasing and romantic, and felt anxious to ascertain by personal observation how far it might be real. Collectively, the inhabitants may be said to exhibit the virtues of the Irish character with as little intermixture of vices as the lot of humanity will permit.

"They are a brave and hardy race, industrious and enterprising, as is sufficiently evidenced, not only by the daily increasing number of their fishing vessels, the barren rocks which they are covering with soil and making productive, but still more by the frequency of their emigration from their beloved homes and friends to a distant country, led solely by the hope that their indefatigable labour may be employed there to the greater ultimate benefit of their families.

"They are simple and innocent, but also thoughtful and intelligent, credulous, and, in matters of faith, what persons of a different creed would call superstitious. Lying and drinking, the vices which Arthur Young considers as appertaining to the Irish character, form at least no part of it in Aran, for happily their common poverty holds out less temptation to the vices of lying and drinking.

"I do not mean to say they are rigidly temperate, or that instances of excess, followed by the usual Irish consequences of broken heads, do not occasionally occur—such could not be expected, when their convivial temperament and dangerous and laborious occupations are remembered. They never swear, and they have a high sense of decency and propriety, honour and justice. In appearance they are healthy, comely, and prepossessing; in their dress (with few exceptions) clean and comfortable; in manner serious yet cheerful, and easily excited to gaiety; frank and familiar in conversation, and to strangers polite and respectful, but at the same time free from servile adulation. They are communicative, but not too loquacious; inquisitive after information, but delicate in seeking it, and grateful for its communication.

"If the inhabitants of the Aran islands could be considered as a fair specimen of the ancient, and present wild Irish, the veriest savages in the globe, as the learned Pinkerton calls them—those whom chance has led to their hospitable shores to admire their simple virtues would be likely to regret that the blessings of civilization had ever been extended to any portion of this very wretched country."[16]

The devotional expressions of the Aranites and the meekness and resignation with which they bear misfortunes or afflictions is the most striking feature in their character. "I had a beautiful girl for a daughter," said an Aranite peasant, "and I laid her in her grave yesterday, praise be to His holy Name that took her to Himself." A poor woman asking for charity tells you that "she hasn't eaten a bit this day, thanks be to God." Another says, "In troth I have been suffering for a long time from poverty and sickness, glory be to God." Their mode of salutation, too, is worthy of remembrance. The visitor on entering a house says, "God save all here." Meet a man on the road, greet him with a "God save you, sir;" instantly he'll remove his hat and reply, "God save you kindly, your honour." If you pass by men working in a field, always address them with a "God bless the work, boys;" they will answer, "And you too, sir," and if you speak in Irish so much the better, and how their eyes will brighten up at hearing their mother-tongue spoken by "a gentleman's honour!"

To the purity of the morals of the Aran women there are many testimonies. Births of illegitimate children are of rare occurrence indeed. Sir Francis Head, in 1852, made a tour through Ireland, looking into every police barrack as he passed, and when all that was done he published a work entitled "A Fortnight in Ireland." Unsparing in his vilifications of the Catholic clergy, he is compelled to compare the people to whom they minister favourably with those of other countries in the world. Arriving in Galway his first visit was to the police barrack, where he inquired of the officer as to the morals of the Claddagh people, when the south isles of Aran thus came to be mentioned.

Sir F. Head. "How long have you been on duty in Galway?"

The officer replies, "Only six months."

Question. "During that time have you known of many instances of illegitimate children being born in the Claddagh?"

Answer. "Not a single case—not one; and not only have I never known of such a case, but I never heard any person attribute immorality to the fishwomen. I was on duty in the three islands of Aran, inhabited almost exclusively by fishermen, who also farm potatoes, and I never heard of any one of their women (who are remarkable for their beauty) having had an illegitimate child, nor did I ever hear it attributed to them. Indeed I have been informed by a magistrate who lived in Galway for eight years, and has been on temporary duty in the isles of Aran, that he has never heard there of a case of that nature. These people, however, when required to pay poor-rates, having no native poor of their own in the workhouse, resisted the payment of what they considered a very unjust tax. In fact they closed their doors when the rate was only partially collected."

Three and twenty years after Sir Francis Head wrote the above we read in the writings of Frank Thorpe Porter, Esq., a member of the Irish Bar, long a divisional magistrate for the city of Dublin, and some time acting chief justice for Gibraltar, a further testimony of the worth of the islanders. On his return from Spain, he visited his son, Mr. Frank Porter, M.D., medical officer of the islands,[17] and whilst he was there several cases of typhus fever of a malignant type occurred.

The cottages are, with three or four exceptions, thatched and without any upper storey. The invariable course adopted during the prevalence of the epidemic was to nail up the door of the patient's apartment, to take out the sashes of the window, and render it the sole means of external communication. The medical attendant, priests, and nurse tenders had no other means of ingress and egress, and no objection appears to have ever been made to the system. Doctor Porter was stricken down by the disease, and although ten days had elapsed before a medical gentleman arrived from Galway, the doctor surmounted the fearful malady. "I spent," writes Mr. Porter, "each night in my son's apartment, and during the day he was attended by a nurse. Almost every night I heard some gentle taps outside the vacant window, and on going over to it, I would be told 'My wife is afther making a pitcher of whey for the poor docthor, you'll find it on the windy-stool;' or 'I brought you two jugs of milk to make whey for your son.' When the crisis had passed, and nutriment and stimulants were required, I would be told, 'We biled down two chickens into broth for the docthor, I hope it will sarve him.' Rabbits, chickens, and joints of kid were tendered for his use, and a bottle of 'rale Connemara Puttyeen,' was deposited on the window-stool. The people were all kind and anxious, and when he became able to walk out he was constantly saluted and congratulated; but no person would approach him if they could avoid it. They were all dreadfully apprehensive that he might impart the dreadful contagion. I brought him home as soon as possible, but he and I will always remember most gratefully the unvarying kindness and sympathy we experienced in Aran where they refused to take a farthing either for gratuity or compensation."

On September 3, 1886, Mr. R.F. Mullery, clerk of the Galway Union, thus, in answer to my letter to him, writes:—

The following extract from a letter written by my learned friend, Philip Lyster, Esq., barrister-at-law, resident magistrate of the district in which Aran is situated, bears testimony to the peaceful and law-abiding character of the islanders:—

The dress of the islanders is said, by those who understand such things, to be picturesque; but beyond all doubt their shoes, or rather slippers, made of untanned cow-hide with the hairy side out, and without heels and without soles, are the most unpicturesque foot-dress in Europe. These they call Pampoodies.

The raw cow-hide, which is cut to fit the foot, is stitched down the instep to the toe and also on the back of the heel. Soft as a glove, the wearer soon acquires an elasticity of step and an erect and noble bearing in his walk, to which the wearer of the more picturesque boot can never attain. There are two things, it is said, not to be found in Aran—corns on the foot and frogs in the fens. The young women on Sundays have their hair trimmed and bound up very tastily; but what ornament can these young people put on equal to the virtuous characters they bear? On Sundays and holy days the churches are well filled, and the altars well served by priests as zealous as the Catholic Church can in Ireland lay claim to—the Rev. Father O'Donohoe, P.P., and the Rev. Father Waters, C.C.

The extreme politeness of the islanders, and their desire to impart any knowledge they possess of antiquarian lore or of the legends or fairy tales with which the islands abound, must strike with force the mind of the observing tourist. Their reverence for the dead, and their affection for their loved and departed friends, impel them to erect, sometimes in long lines on the roadside, square stone pillars about ten feet in height by three feet each side, all of the same measurements, surmounted each with a well-cut stone cross and with inscriptions such as the following: "Sta viator. Stay, traveller. O Lord have mercy on the soul of Mac Dara Ternan, who departed this life 26th June, 1842." These monuments of the dead, who are generally interred in far-distant churchyards, have by moonlight a ghastly appearance.

The reverence of the Aranite for holy wells is great, nor will he suffer in silence his faith in them to be ridiculed. "Can you," said a stranger, "be so silly as to believe that that well gushing out of the hillside was placed there by a saint, in dim and remote ages?" The peasant replied that a well on a mountain side or on a mountain top appeared to him to be miraculous. "And isn't it, sir, wonderful to see water on the top of a hill? And it must flow up the hill inside before it can flow down the hill outside;" and water flowing up the hill inside or outside was to his mind miraculous. The stranger answered that, "the water may have been forced up from some far-off lake on a higher level." The peasant's answer was, "that may be so and it may not be so, but your honour does not give us any proof that it is so." Wells in all ages and in all places are associated with the marvellous, even from the well of Zem-zem to that on the Aran rocks, and we are not so sure that the geological stranger was quite satisfactory as to his theory of wells on a mountain summit.

Speaking of the wonders by which the native of Aran is surrounded, what wonder can be greater than that of the mirage, an island that is said to rise after sunset from the Atlantic? A phantom island which the people call "O'Brazil, the Isle of the Blest," upon which a city like the New Jerusalem is built, and the old men say that that city hath no need of the sun nor of the moon to shine in it, neither does it need the light of the lamp any more at all. That island with that city has, they say, over and over again appeared far away on the Atlantic. Alison, we remember, somewhere in his charming account of the French in Egypt, gives a note on the mirage of the desert, where the parched-up soldiers of the French republic, in 1798, used to see far-distant lakes into which tumbled the waters of mighty waterfalls. On, on the French soldiers rushed. Alas! the phantom vanished; and so vanishes the phantom city seen on a summer evening from the lofty cliffs of the Aran islands. To follow in search of this "Isle of the Blest" an Aranite peasant once resolved. He had heard of St. Brendan and of Christopher Columbus, and of those mariners who, sailing over the seas in search of fame and of gold, were fortunate enough to find both. The peasant, in spite of all persuasion, set sail.

The phantom receded; he followed. Still following, he never returned to Aran again, and his mournful fate is thus sung by Gerald Griffin:—