This salmon fishery, together with the fisheries on the coast, constitute the staple industries of the district; and, as a business proposition, might appeal largely to some company promoter were he able to corner the supply and control the traffic. The hardihood of the population, their aptitude for seamanship, their industrious habits, and their thrifty instincts make them so capable of rising to any opportunities that may be offered to them, that there is no reason why Galway should not become as great a fishing-port as any on the east coast of England.
Galway is full of memorials of its ancient days of commercial greatness, when wealthy merchant families inhabited the fine stone mansions now fallen into ruins; and tales of former glories are on everybody’s lips. There is no dearth of anecdote about Galway. Some of it is fact; much of it doubtless is not; but there seems no reason why one could not expand a short chapter of its history into a great book were he so inclined.
Galway was practically “discovered” by the English in the thirteenth century, “when they took possession of the desirable little town,” and portioned it out among thirteen English families—those of Athy, Blake, Bodkin, Browne, Deane, D’Arcy, Lynch, Joyce, Kirwan, Martin, Morris, Skerret, and French. These became known as the Tribes of Galway, and before long became “more Irish than the Irish themselves.” This we learn from the written records; but, since they exist so completely and lucidly, there seems no reason to quarrel with the statement.
The Lynches were, and are, the most numerous and important of the Tribes of Galway. The name is said to be aboriginal or at least Celtic, and again tradition has it that all the Lynches are descended from the daughter and heiress of a certain lord marshal of the county of Galway in the year 1280. In 1442 a certain Edmond Lynch FitzThomas built at his own expense a bridge called the West Bridge, and twenty years later another, Gorman Lynch, held a patent for coining money; and yet another, James Lynch FitzStephen, the famous Warden of Galway, whose notoriety has been described in Dutton’s “Survey of Galway” (1824), lived at the end of the same century.
As described by Dutton, the “notorious” incident arose from Lynch FitzStephen having sent his only son to Spain on some commercial affairs, who, returning with the son of his father’s Spanish friend and a valuable cargo, conspired with the crew to murder and throw him overboard, and convert the property to their own use. One of the party, as providentially happens in most such cases, revealed the horrid transaction to the mayor. He tried and condemned his son to death, and appointed a day for his execution. It was imagined by his relatives that, through their intercession, and the consideration of his being an only son, he would not proceed to put the sentence into execution. He told them to come to him on a certain day, and they should have his determination. Early on the day appointed, they found the son hanging out of one of the windows of his father’s house. It was commemorated by the cross-bones in Lombard Street.
Further records have it that the stone bearing the cross-bones was not put up for many years after the transaction, when it was erected on the wall of St. Nicholas’s churchyard, and bore the inscription:
1524
Remember Death.
All is vanity of vanities.