IRELAND.

389

fangled pair of Gally-cushes,” i. e. English shirts, as we find bythe Corporation Hook of Kilkenny (1573), eighteenpence wascharged if done with silk or cut work. Ninepence extra wascharged for every ounce of silk worked in.

An Irish smock wrought with silk and gold was considered anobject worthy of a king’s wardrobe, as the inventory of KingEdward IV. 6 attests:—“Item, one Irishe smocke wrought withgold and silke.”

The licbellion at an end, a friendly intercourse, as regardsfashion, was kept up between the English and the Irish. The ruffof geometric design, falling band, and cravat of Flanders lace, allappeared in due succession. The Irish, always lovers of pomp andshow, early used lace at the interments of the great, as appearsfrom an anecdote related in a letter of Mr. O’Halloran :—“ Thelate Lord Glandore told me,” he writes, “ that when a boy, undera spacious tomb in the ruined monastery at his seat, ArdfertAbbey (Co. Kerry), he perceived something white. He drew itforth, and it proved to bo a shroud of Flanders lace, the coveringof some person long since deceased.”

In the beginning of the eighteenth century a patriotic feelingarose among the Irish, who joined hand in hand to encourage theproductions of their own country. Swift was among the first tosupport the movement, and in a prologue he composed, in 1721,to a play acted for the benefit of the Irish weavers, he says:—

“ Since waiting-women, Iiko exacting jades,

Hold up the prices of their old brocades,

We’ll dross in manufactures made at home.”

Shortly afterwards, at a meeting, he proposed the followingresolution:—

“ That the ladies wear Irish manufactures. There is broughtannually into this kingdom near 90,0001. worth of silk, whereofthe greater part is manufactured; 30,0001. more is expended inmuslin, liolland, cambric, and calico. What the price of laceamounts to is not easy to be collected from the custom-housebook, being a kind of goods that, taking up little room, is easilyrun; but, considering the prodigious price of a woman’s head-dress at ten, twelve, twenty pounds a yard, it must be very great.”

kerchor, bendel, neckercliour, mocket, or linen in their shirts or smocks.

linen enppo colored or dyed with B iiTron,” 5 4 Edw. IV. Hurl. MSS. No. 1419.

and not to uso moro than seven yards of b.-g. 494.