Search Results for 'John Naughton'

“Let not the visitor miss the joyful chaos of Galway’s week-end purchasing. Saturday is not a day of speed. Petrol must give way to horsepower and donkey-power, and cattle that like to investigate both sides of a road. Proud, glittering models of fame crawl humiliatingly in face of a stream of vehicles of astonishing build and variety, rumbling in from Connemara. Carts piled with sacks of oats, potatoes, flour; others with crates of wondering calves and bewildered fowls. It is the great day – not necessarily a happy one – of small brown donkeys further dwarfed by huge wheels and the garden produce heaped above them. Around you in the streets, or about the food market in the shadow of the ancient church, you can hear the musical Gaelic speech. Tall, handsome women of Spanish type dark-haired and dignified: island women whose features speak hardiness and force of character: and women of the rock-strewn dazzling region about Carraroe unwittingly bring upon themselves the staring that notabilities endure. The men also receive attention. Of fine physique their faces healthily browned by sea and mountain winds, they attract you so that you wander, fascinated, from group to group. Old men in home spun, with the wide-brimmed Connemara hats, and the younger in tailored suits and coloured felts of fashion are alike in keenness of selling and shrewdness of buying.”

Hely Dutton in his “Statistical and Agricultural Survey of the County of Galway” which was published in 1824, wrote, “The vegetable market near the Main Guard is generally well supplied and at reasonable rates ; all kinds come to market washed, by which means any imperfection is easily detected. The cabbage raised near the sea on seaweed is particularly delicious ---- those who have been used to those cultivated on highly manured ground cannot form any idea of the difference. There are also in the season peaches, strawberries, gooseberries, apples, pears etc.