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 with soot), and madder-red petticoats, were and are the prevalent taste of the ladies."

It will be obvious from the above extracts that from the earliest notice of Ireland to a late period in the last century, the national dress was handed down from generation to generation amongst the peasantry; and that many noblemen and gentlemen wore it within the last two hundred years. Persecution, as usual, but attached them more strongly to the prohibited garb, and it is probable that the free exercise of their fancy granted to them by Charles I. conduced more to the ultimate neglect of the long-cherished costume of their ancestors than the peremptory order to abandon it, issued by the officer of Cromwell, or even the exhortations of the Romish clergy to that effect, which are acknowledged to have been of little avail. Certain it is that the Lord Deputy's court at Dublin was in Charles's reign distinguished for its magnificence; the peers of the realm, the clergy, and the nobility and gentry attending it being arrayed of their own free will in robes of scarlet and purple velvet, and other rich habiliments, after the English fashion.