382 THE SEA FISHERIES OF IRELAND. 



'Consequently they constructed for sea use the Curragh or Canoe. When 

 canvas came within their reach it afforded a still better covering, and it 

 stimulated further development. 



There are many places on the west coast of Ireland where the great 

 Atlantic rollers break in such volume and fury that it does not do merely 

 to haul a boat up clear of the water, and leave her there. Boats, to be safe, 

 must be placed high above the sea level. The light and buoyant canvas 

 curragh has, amongst others, this great advantage : that when the men come 

 in from fishing they need not go looking for help, but simply turn their 

 •canoe over their heads and walk up the rocky path or over the boulder 

 beach, and place her in a safe nook where no angry billows can harm her. 

 The lightness and buoyancy of the canvas canoe is unsurpassed, and, con- 

 sequently, on those parts of the coast where these qualities are of the first 

 importance, the canoe still holds its own. In some places the primitive 

 •one-man canoe lingers, but in most districts the curragh has developed into 

 a shapely canoe for four men. And as they are designed to go over the 

 water rather than through it they are, when properly handled, safe in the 

 most stormy sea, and can face a surf where any wooden boat would be 

 swamped. On the Kerry coast the canoe has reached its highest develop- 

 ment. 



The Pookawn of the Connemara coast also represents an early type of 

 craft. This coast, on account of its extraordinary indentations and channels 

 safe from the ocean, is the natural home of the sailing boat. Here the 

 necessity for hauling up does not exist, and deep sail boats, from the 

 hooker of twenty tons to the pookawn of three, may be found stowed away 

 in creeks close to the cottages of the owners. The pookawn, or the glo- 

 thogue (a small hooker), take the place filled by the donkey and cart in 

 districts not so cut up by arms of the sea. The peat is taken to market, 

 the weed gathered for kelp, or for manure, by these boats ; in them, also, 

 the supplies of flour and meal arrive, the cattle go to the fair, and the 

 people to Mass. The youngsters quickly become sailors, and for excite- 

 ment, smart sailing, and close contest, nothing can beat a pookawn race at 

 one of the local regattas. All these craft — hookers, glothogues, and 

 pookawns — are built on exquisitely graceful lines under water, but the 

 " tumble home " above water and the immense strength of their frames 

 tends to give them a clumsy appearance. The rig of the pookawn is a high- 

 peaked dipping lug, with a peak halyard to support the outer end of the 

 yard, and a jib. This lug-sail is evidently a modified lateen, the peak 

 halyard testifying to the alterations made in or after the seventeenth cen- 

 tury, when jibs were invented ; therefore it seems as though the pookawn 

 is a relic of Spanish influence, the sails in other parts of the British Islands 

 being chiefly referable to the Scandinavian type. In the Mediterranean 

 the modified lateen of the pookawn may frequently be seen. 



Glothogues and hookers are rigged in the ordinary smack or cutter rig of 

 the present day. The sails of all these craft are made of strong calico 

 soaked in a composition of tar and butter, and when freshly coated are 

 almost black. 



The clever boatwrights of this Connemara shore took quickly to the new 

 models presented to them by the Congested Districts Board, and, with 

 little instruction, after being taught the necessity of bending planks by 

 steam, have turned out Nobbies and Zulus as well as the best. 



The managers of the industrial schools of Killybegs and Baltimore have 



