Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 8, 1897.djvu/35

Rh with high cheek-bones. A few English and Scotch, said to be descendants of the planters of James I. and Elizabeth, are found among them; but these are of an entirely different cast of countenance, with blue or black eyes and black hair, except where they or their fathers have intermarried with the aborigines. In that case, the children of such have a tendency to the traditional florid features and red hair of the Celt. As we come inland, red hair is but seldom met with. Very few are bald.

Eyes.—The colour of the eyes is blue or light blue, some few cases black, while inland it is grey or a mixture of grey and black. Spectacles are seldom used; the eyes retain their keenness and vigour unimpaired, or but slightly so, up till the age of seventy, eighty, and above. I know several instances where old men and women follow their avocations, in which good vision is very requisite, without the aid of glasses. Second-sight is quite common. They are a long-lived people. There is hardly a village where one may not find half-a-dozen old people whose average ages are near one hundred years.

Dress.—Chiefly made from the wool of the sheep, which the women in the long winter nights card, spin on the ordinary spinning-wheel, and have woven by the weavers here on the old hand-looms. These cloths are then dyed and sent to the tuck-mill (fulling-mill), where they are pounded together by large blocks of wood, and afterwards freed from greasiness by having a stream of water pass over them. To assist in this process, fuller's-earth or chamber-lye is used, largely the latter. These cloths are very warm, and even when soaked through, as they often are by the rains so frequent here, are hardly ever changed by the wearer, possessing a heat altogether unknown by the owners of more highly-finished and consequently costlier garments. Many of the people go barefoot, more especially during the summer months.

Diet.—Up to a few years ago tea was almost unknown.