Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 165, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 July 1915 — ALL WOMEN WEAR THE SHAWL [ARTICLE]

ALL WOMEN WEAR THE SHAWL

Little Chance to Show Beauty of Form or Clothinfl in the Mill Towns of Ulster. In the mill cities of Ulster all alike, young girls and matrons, envelop themselves in drab-colored shawls, hideous wrappings of tweed or knitted wool or drugget cloth, which cover them from waist to hatless head —garments alw-ays either rain-sodden or dust-choked, which to the hygienist shout aloud of dirt germs and disease. In such a garb there can be no place for feminine coquetry or individuality of adornment; it is as if they had all sealed themselves to labor with a common seal of ugliness, even as women in the East blacken their teeth with betel nut in token that they renounce the pomps and vanities of feminine allurements. Their voices have the curious rhythmic lilt and fall which marks the Ulsterman’s speech all the world over, and their speech is characterized by a Rabelaisian raciness and forcible directness which, to the ear of a stranger, are qualities more admirable in men than in women. The Belfast mill girl’s vocabulary is’ indeed a fearful and wonderful thing—a local dialect peculiar to the linen industry and themselves, which is heard at its brightest and best in fierce ordeals or wordy battle —a trumpet tongue of invective and*grim humor, the speech of a breed which believes implicitly in physical prowess and the survival of the fittest.