Welsh Costume: M.A. Erny
M.A. Erny (1838-?) was a Frenchman who toured Wales in 1862 and published a detailed account of his visit to Wales, in French, in 1867.
His publication included four images of very poor people, all with patched clothes. Most of the women are shown wearing kerchiefs rather than hats over their heads: ‘Poverty at Merthyr Tydfil’ (two women); Cinder searchers at Cyfarthfa (four women); ‘Ragpickers at Swansea’ (three children and a man); ‘A woman and young mining worker at Pontypool’
There is also a print entitled ‘Welsh fishwomen’ (three cockle pickers, probably at Tenby) and another entitled ‘Costumes of Wales’, a group of women at a street market stall in Chester. Part of the latter was later printed in an English language magazine.
Published (and indeed, unpublished drawings and paintings) of Welsh people in patched and torn costumes are extremely rare. A French-American, Louis Simond published prints of a ‘Welch Shephard’ and a ‘Welch Beggar Woman’ (Journal of a Tour of Residence in Great Britain, … (1815)). The inclusion of these images might reflect Erny’s political interests by highlighting the poor and the oppressed who were not mentioned in most tourists’ literature nor were they the subject of souvenir prints.
M. Alfred Erny, Voyage dans le Pays de Galles, Paris, L.Hachette et Cie with 19 woodcuts by Émile Bayard Grandsire, (Le Tour du Monde, XV), (1867)
http://etw.bangor.ac.uk/accounts/voyage-dans-le-pays-de-galles
