Wanderings in Ireland

by Michael Myers Shoemaker

While Galway is a town of but some fourteen thousand people, the crowds on its streets to-night would convey the impression of a much greater population. They simply swarm all over the place.

The city dates far enough back to have been mentioned by Ptolemy, and probably took its name from the Gaels or foreign merchants who once lived here. Galway appears on the pages of history in 1124 A.D. and from that date onward it was fought for by every tribe of the island. Just hereabouts there were thirteen tribes who strictly guarded themselves against all intercourse with the native Irish. Indeed there was a law that "none bearing an O or Mac in his name shall struttle one swaggere through the streets of Galway."

But those days are past and there must certainly be many who bear such prefixes to their names who are strutting these streets in this year of grace 1907.

This was one of the most important seaports trading with Spain, and there may be seen, even at this date, Spanish traits and features intermingled with the Celtic, and many of its ancient houses hold the touch of the South in their lines. Galway was loyal to King Charles and suffered horribly from the forces of Cromwell in consequence.

While there are quaint structures still to be found in the streets they require looking for and one must be prepared to endure much squalor and dirt and endless smells which will not recall the perfume bazaars of the Orient, though it has always struck me that the perfumes of the Orient were thickly strewed that they might drown out much more horrible smells than were ever to be found in Ireland.

The most interesting and famous of all the old houses is that of the Lynch family whose façade holds some curious carvings, notably that of a monkey carrying off a child, one of the children of the family having been saved from death by fire by a pet monkey.

From the window of this house in 1493, its owner, James Lynch, hanged his own son for murder.

Legend and truth are probably greatly mixed in the story told to-day. The murder was that of a young Spaniard of whom the son was jealous, and whom he stabbed to death. His mother besought her kinsfolk to save him and them the disgrace of a public death by hanging, the father being determined that the law should be obeyed. They met and roused the populace which collected in a multitude outside the old house, to-day so full of its noisy poor. The father, finding it would be impossible to conduct his son to the place of execution, led him to one of the great windows high up in the mansion and from thence launched him into eternity at the rope's end. The people, awed into silence by his stern justice, dispersed in quiet to their homes. To-day the street is called Dead Man's Lane, and it is claimed that the tablet with skull and cross-bones and its motto, "Remember deathe—vanite of vanite and all is but vanite," was placed there to commemorate the dark occurrence, but if so it was not until more than a century had rolled by.

It is said that this stern, sorrowing father never appeared in public after his execution of his son.

The family of Lynch appeared here from Austria in 1274 and until 1654 was of great prominence; then it vanished entirely.