From the website:
Record Number DWT-100
Title Aran Islands.
Collection D W Thompson D W Thompson
Image Type lantern slide
Originator D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson
Location Co Galway, Ireland
Date 1935

Description
Three barefoot children in skirts or kilts and cloth caps, by drystone wall in village lane, cottages behind.

Notes
DWT-100 (ms 45721/iv) pc/
D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson teaching slides.

DETAIL: Two of the children have what appear to be school exercise books, the other has a shoulder bag.

BIOG: D'arcy Wentworth Thompson (1860-1948), Professor of Biology at University College, Dundee from December 1884 to December 1917, when he took up a chair in Natural History at the University of St Andrews, remaining here until his death in 1948. His main areas of research were evolutionary cell structure and fisheries. He was also a mathematician, bibliophile and classicist, writer and lecturer of renown and was knighted in 1937.

ADD: The tradition of dressing boys as girls on the Aran Islands until about seven years of age possibly began as a protective measure and dates back to the times when Viking raiders would plunder the islands and kidnap male children to use as slaves. Although it may also be a form of Celic kilt. A fable then grew up that the boys were dressed as girls to prevent the fairies taking them away.