A friend who had read here an anecdote about Stephen Gwynn in Connemara, said that Gwynn also had a few interesting things to say about the Claddagh. Such as "For the Claddagh is alien from Connemara as it is alien from Galway. (This was 1909). There was nothing strange about an Irish town outside English or Anglo Norman fortifications. "But here the Irish town has remained Irish. Irish is still the language of the Claddagh people." And the women he described as wearing the common dress of Connemara. But the Claddagh kept to itself, married within itself and the racial type, he noted, was strongly marked.
Then Gwynn goes on to the question of Spanish blood, and sees men who might easily pass for a Basque or Pyrenean type. But rather than of Spanish origin, he thinks they may be from a different people, "those who built the great dun of Aran." At a time of elections, he notes, there arises an odd situation. The Claddagh man isn't interested in the land question - he has none. As to the revival of fisheries, it does him no good, for he was catching fish before, and had his own market - the women being the distributors. And (a point made in the last Gwynn reference), "to argue with the Claddagh you must argue in Irish." One man wouldn't speak until Gwynn went into the language. Then he "discoursed freely and fairly." When it came to technical matters about boats the Claddagh man helped, in English, and then explained (in Irish), "if we talked English, you would be a wiser man than I, in Irish it is not that way the story is."
Going through the houses a few days later he found the young men who had been fishing all night still in bed at three or four in the afternoon. Not unusual where fishing was done by night. "But one thing struck me which I have never seen else where in Ireland, where generally men have a prejudice against handling babies. . . but here in at least a dozen houses I found the women bustling about while the man stood or sat with an infant on his arm - and holding it as a woman does, the arm making the same softline where it supported the infant as a hammock holds a sleeper.
"It was curious to see, and very pretty natural enough, too for the women must be outmost of the day hawking the fish in the street corners. Yet more than anything else it stamped on my mind that feeling of distinctness and aloofness in the Claddagh and its people."