ON THE ETHNOGRAPHICAL SURVEY OF THE UNITED KINGDOM. 425 



paper). The numbei' of inhabited houses was 215. Of the population 

 above five years of age 46 per cent, are returned as illiterate. A large 

 proportion of the marriages are consanguineous, but no cases of malforma- 

 tion or congenital disease are ascribed to this. The sanitary state of the 

 houses is not by any means good. The people contrast strongly with the 

 Aran Islanders in their taste for music and dancing. The surnames to be 

 met with on the islands are fifty-one, of wliich Dr. Browne gives a list ; 

 the most largely distributed being 'Scuffle,' possibly a corruption of 

 Scholfield or Scovell, of which there are twenty-two families. The 

 majority are more or less Anglicised forms of old Irish names. Every 

 family combines fishing and farming, and has some share in a boat. As 

 is the case in many fishing communities, the fields are not well kept. 

 Kelp-burning, formerly one of the industries of the islands, is now prac- 

 tically extinct. The one tailor still adheres to the old method of measuring 

 his clients without a tape, using instead a sheet of paper, on which the 

 several lengths are recorded by notches cut with the scissors. The people 

 marry young, generally from purely family reasons, the match being 

 ari-ano-ed by the parents. Infants are carefully watched after birth, lest 

 they should be changed. An old Irish dirge is sung at funerals. Alco- 

 holic liquors are not much drunk. The houses are, as a rule, built of dry 

 stones without any mortar, and consist of a kitchen, into which at night 

 the cattle, fowls, and pigs are taken, and one or two bedrooms. The 

 legendary lore of the islands has been fully dealt with by Lady Wilde in 

 h«- 'Ancient Legends of Ireland' (London, 1887), but Dr. Browne was 

 able to collect some additional information. An old woman in Bofin is 

 considered to be a witch. There are two holy wells on the islands. There 

 is a legend to account for the name ' Inis-bo-finne,' the Island of the White 

 Cow, and others, which are given at length in Dr. Browne's paper. An 

 impression in the rock is said to be the footprint of St. Leo. The 

 apparatus used for shark-fishing is very rude and primitive. The archi- 

 tectural antiquities on the islands are few. The earliest reference to the 

 district in history is that in the second century a.d. a tribe of the Firbolgs 

 (Clann Humoir) occupied the neighbouring mainland, and were enslaved 

 by Tuathal Teachtmar, a Scotic or Milesian monarch. In the seventh 

 century St. Colman founded the abbey in Knock-quarter. Thence to the 

 seventeenth, when (1652) the islands surrendered to the Parliamentary 

 forces, their history is a blank, and indeed they have been seldom men- 

 tioned since. Photographs of eleven men (including Michael Halloran, 

 ' King ' of Shark) and five women were taken, and also of the quern and 

 spinning-wheel, still in use, and the method of washing clothes. 



11. Since this report was in type, a collection of peculiarities of dialect 

 for Brettenham and Bildeston, in the county of Suffolk, made by Mr. C. G. 

 de Betham, has been received through Miss Layard. 



12. The Committee would be glad to be able to make inore rapi-l 

 progress with their work, the practicability and utility of which have, 

 they submit, been clearly shown in this and their previous report. The grant 

 of \0l. has been more than expended in printing, stationery, and postage, 

 and in procuring two sets of the cheaper forms of instruments for lending to 

 observers. Tliey recommend that they be reappointed, and would be glad 

 if a grant could be made sufficiently libei'al to enable them to provide for 

 the expenses that will be necessarily incurred if observations are to be 

 prosecuted in any sufficient number of the places which have been indi- 

 cated to them as suitable. 



