One Irish Summer

by William Eleroy Curtis

Good Lord deliver us.”

There are some quaint old houses—one of them on the principal street, known as “the mansion,” being elaborately decorated with carved moldings, drip stones, cornices, balustrades, medallions, crests, coats of arms, and other ornaments in which the lynx and the monkey, which were used upon the family arms, appear frequently. The same story is told to account for the monkey that is used to explain the appearance of that animal upon the escutcheon of the Earl of Desmond—that the heir to the house was rescued by a monkey when it was burning.

The Burkes, the Joyces, and the Lynches were the leading families there. The records show that eighty-four members of the Lynch family have held the office of mayor. A tragic story of James Lynch, the second mayor after the charter of the city was granted by Richard III., is kept in the minds of the people by a tablet imbedded in the wall of a ruined house on one of the principal streets. It bears this inscription:

“This memorial of the stern and unbending justice of the chief magistrate of this city, James Lynch Fitzstephen, elected mayor, A.D. 1493, who condemned and executed his own guilty son, Walter, on this spot, has been restored to its ancient site, with the approval of the town commissioners, by their chairman, the Very Rev. Peter Daly, P.P. and Vicar of St. Nicholas.”

The Rev. Mr. Daly has immortalized himself in this simple way, and his character may be judged by the fact that his name appears even more prominently on the tablet than that of the unnatural father whose act he perpetuates. The story goes that Mayor Lynch, being one of the most successful of the shipping merchants in the city, visited Spain in the very year that Columbus discovered America, to make the personal acquaintance of his customers, and, being treated with generous hospitality, invited the son of one of his friends to return with him to Ireland. The young man spent several months in Galway, as the guest of Mayor Lynch, and as the companion of his son, Walter. The latter, a great favorite in the city, was engaged to a young lady of good family, who behaved rather imprudently with the young Spaniard. This excited the jealousy of Walter Lynch, who murdered his playmate, and then, from remorse, gave himself up to justice. He was tried, convicted, and condemned to death by his own father, sitting as judge of the court, and when the sheriff, in obedience to public opinion, refused to carry out the sentence, Judge Lynch hanged his own son with his own hands. As there were other judges and courts in Ireland and as changes of venue were common in those days, as they are now, one cannot sympathize with this Spartan heartlessness.

There is a quaint old church, built in 1320, in honor of St. Fechin, who was born about the year 600, in County Sligo, was the founder of numerous monasteries and churches along the western coast of Ireland, and was the first to bring the gospel to County Galway. Queen’s College, supported by the government, has a fine Gothic building, copied after All Souls of Oxford, with about three hundred students, and there is another college, under the Christian Brothers, which is very prosperous.

The most interesting sight in Galway is the thousands of fat salmon lying motionless on the bottom of the river which carries the water of Lough Corrib—one of the largest fresh-water lakes in the country—into Galway Bay. The river is short and swift and flows through the center of the city. Its banks are walled up with masonry and it is crossed by a series of ancient iron bridges. From the railings of the bridges one can see the salmon through the transparent water lying with their noses up stream so closely that the bottom of the river is hidden; and I am told that when they are running in the spring the stream is black with them. They come in from the sea and go up a ladder that has been built for them over the rapids into Lough Corrib.

The exclusive right of fishing that river was granted in 1221 by King John to one of his favorites, and the monopoly has been recognized ever since. It has been sold many times. The last purchaser was an ancestor of a Mrs. Hallett, who enjoys the privilege at present, and lives in a big stone house on the river banks, surrounded by high walls. A series of traps extends from her garden across the river, covering four-fifths of its width, one-fifth being always kept open by act of parliament, so that the fish can go up and down freely, but as they are all strangers in Galway, and young and reckless, many of them run into the traps instead of the passageway and become the property of Mrs. Hallett. She ships them to London and makes three or four thousand pounds a year by selling them. The fishermen in charge told me that in the spring they often caught as many as two or three hundred a day in each of the traps. Any one who desires to try his luck with a fly can do so by getting a permit from Mrs. Hallett, for which the fee is $2.50 a day or $25 a year.

Near the mouth of the river and at the head of the Bay of Galway is an ancient village called Claddagh, whose inhabitants have been engaged in the herring and salmon fisheries for ten centuries, and have lived apart from the world, having their own municipal organization, their own laws and courts and customs and manner of dress. From the beginning of time they have been ruled by one of their own number, elected by themselves for a term of years, who exercises executive, legislative, and judicial functions, from which there is no appeal. They have no written laws, no records of their judicial proceedings, but when there is a dispute between any of the fishermen they take it to their chosen umpire, who decides it according to the merits of the case. And his decision is always accepted. I am told that no citizen of Claddagh has ever been before a Galway court, either as a plaintiff or defendant. They live in low thatched cottages, grouped in irregular streets on the bank of the river, with a large and very modern-looking church, which they attend regularly. They are remarkable for their piety and their morals. They will not work, nor will they leave their village for any reason, on Sundays or religious holidays. They never allow strangers to live among them, their young men and women never marry outside of the colony, they take care of their own sick and poor, and, although they are only five minutes’ walk from the principal street of Galway, they are as isolated as if they were on an island in the middle of the ocean.