There is a good hotel connected with the railway, and we had dinner there, and then went forth to see the town. We were struck at once by its picturesqueness, its foreign air. The narrow curving streets do not somehow look like Irish streets, nor do the houses look like Irish houses; rather might one fancy oneself in some old town of France or Belgium. We were fascinated by it, and wandered about for a long time, along dim lanes, into dark courts, looking at the shawled women and listening to the soft talk of the strolling girls.

Nobody knows certainly how Galway got its name. Some say it was because a woman named Galva was drowned in the river; others maintain that the name was derived from the GallÆci of Spain, who used to trade here; and still others think that it came from the Gaels, who eventually occupied it in the course of their conquest of Ireland. Whatever the origin of the name, the town was but a poor place, a mere trading village of little importance, until the English came. Richard de Burgo was granted the county of Connaught by the English king in 1226, and six years later he entered Galway, rebuilt and enlarged the castle which had been put up by the Connaught men, threw a wall around the town, and so established another of those centres of Norman power, which were soon to overshadow the whole of Ireland. It was a very English colony, at first, with a deep-seated contempt for the wild Irish. Over the west gate, which looked toward Connemara, was the inscription,

The years wore away this animosity, as they have a fashion of doing in Ireland, and by Cromwell's time, the citizens of the town had become so Irish that they were contemptuously called "the tribes of Galway" by the Puritan soldiers. But, as was the case of the Beggars in Holland, a name given in contempt was adopted as a badge of honour, and the "Tribes of Galway" became a mark of distinction for men who had suffered and fought and had never been conquered. There were thirteen of these tribes; and the Blakes and Lynches and Joyces and Martins who still form the greater part of the old town's population are their descendants—but how fallen from their high estate!

For many years, Galway had a practical monopoly of the trade with Spain, there was always a large Spanish colony here, and it is to this long-continued intercourse that many persons attribute the foreign air of the town. I have even seen it asserted that the people are of a decided Spanish type; but we were unable to discern it, and I am inclined to think the Spanish influence has been much exaggerated. Its period of prosperity ended with the coming of the Parliamentary army, which took the place and plundered it; and the final blow was struck forty years later, when the army of William of Orange, fresh from its victories to the east, laid siege to it and captured it in two days. The old families found themselves ruined, trade utterly ceased, the great warehouses fell to decay, and the mansions of the aristocracy, no longer able to maintain them, were given over to use as tenements. There is to-day about Galway an air of ruin and decay such as I have seen equalled in few other Irish towns; but there are also some signs of reawakening, and it may be that, after three centuries, the tide has turned.

We found the streets crowded, next morning, with the most picturesque people we had seen anywhere in Ireland, for it was Saturday and so market day, and the country-folk had gathered in from many miles around. The men were for the most part buttoned up in cutaways of stiff frieze, nearly as hard and unyielding as iron; and the women, almost without exception, wore bright red skirts, made of fuzzy homespun flannel, which they had themselves woven from wool dyed with the rich crimson of madder. The shaggier the flannel, the more it is esteemed, and some of the skirts we saw had a nap half an inch deep. They are made very full and short, somewhat after the fashion of the Dutch; but the resemblance ended there, for most of these women were barefooted, and strode about with a disregard of cobbles and sharp paving-stones which proved the toughness of their soles.

Galway, as well as most other Irish towns, boasts a number of millinery stores, with windows full of befeathered and beribboned hats; but one wonders where their customers come from, for hats are a luxury unknown to most Irish women, who habitually go either bareheaded, or with the head muffled in a shawl. All the women here in Galway were shawled, and beautiful shawls they were, of a delicate fawn-colour, and very soft and thick.

We went at once to the market, and found the country women ranged along the curb, with great baskets in front of them containing eggs and butter and other products of the farm. How far they had walked, that morning, carrying these heavy burdens, I did not like to guess, but we met one later who had eight miles to go before she would be home again. A few had carts drawn by little grey donkeys; and the old woman in one of these was so typical that I wanted to get her picture. She was sitting there watching the crowd with her elbows on her knees, and a chicken in her hands, but when she saw me unlimbering my camera, she shook her head menacingly.

There was a constable in the crowd, and he offered to clear the bystanders away, so that I could get a good picture of her. I remarked that she seemed to object, and he said that he didn't see why that made any difference, and that it wouldn't do her any harm. But I preferred diplomacy to force, and finally I asked a quaint-looking old man standing by if I might take his picture.

"Ye may, and welcome," was the prompt response.

So I stood him up in front of the cart and got my focus.

"Will ye be seein' the ould saftie!" cried the woman. "Look at the ould saftie standin' there to get his picter took." And she went on to say other, and presumably much less complimentary things, in Irish; but my subject only grinned pleasantly and paid no heed. If you will look at the picture opposite this page, you can almost see the scornful invectives issuing from her lips. My subject was very proud indeed when I promised him a print; and I hope it reached him safely.

Eggs are sold by the score in Galway, and the price that day was one shilling twopence, or about twenty-eight cents—which is not as cheap as one would expect them to be in a country where wages are so low. But perhaps it is only labour that is cheap in Ireland!

One row of women were offering for sale a kind of seaweed, whose Celtic name, as they pronounced it, I could not catch, but which in English they called dillisk; a red weed which they assured us they had gathered from the rocks along the beach that very morning, and which many people were buying and stuffing into their mouths and chewing with the greatest relish. It did not look especially inviting, but the women insisted, with much laughter, that we sample it, and we finally did, somewhat gingerly. The only taste I detected in it was that of the salt-water in which it had been soaked; but it is supposed to be very healthy, and to be especially efficacious in straightening out a man who has had a drop too much. No matter how tangled his legs may be, so the women assured us, a few mouthfuls of dillisk will set him right again; and no man with a pocketful of dillisk was ever known to go astray or spend the night in a ditch. I regret that we were not able to experiment with this interesting plant; but if it really possesses this remarkable property, it deserves a wider popularity than it now enjoys.

While I was talking to the women and the constable—who was a Dublin man and very lonesome among these Irish-speaking people, who regarded him with scorn and derision—Betty had been exploring the junk-shops of the neighbourhood, and presently came back with the news that she had discovered a Dutch masterpiece. Now we are both very fond of Dutch art, so I hastened to look at the picture; and, indeed, it may have been an Ostade, for it was a small panel showing two boors drinking, and it seemed to me excellently painted; but when the keeper of the shop saw that we were interested, he named a price out of all reason, and I was not certain enough of my own judgment to back it to that extent. I intended to go back later on and do a little bargaining; but I didn't; and the first connoisseur who goes to Galway should take a look at the picture—it is in a little shop just a few doors from the cathedral—and he may pick up a bargain.

We went on down the street, and crossed the Corrib River to the Claddagh—a picturesque huddle of thatched and whitewashed cottages, the homes of fishermen and their families, Irish of the Irish, who, from time immemorial have formed a unique community, almost a race apart. Galway, within its walls on the other side of the river, was very, very English; here on this strip of land next to the bay, the despised Irish built their cabins, and formed a colony which made its own laws, which was always ruled by one of its own members, where no strangers were permitted to dwell, and whose people always intermarried with each other. That old semi-feudal condition is, of course, no longer strictly maintained; but the Claddagh people still keep to themselves, the men follow the sea for a living just as they have always done, and the women peddle the catch about the streets of Galway, as has been their custom ever since the English settled there. They wear a quaint and distinctive costume, one feature of which is the red petticoat I have already described, and common to all Connemara women. But in addition to this is a blue mantle, and a white kerchief bound tightly round the head, and then over this, if the woman is unusually well-to-do, a fawn-coloured shawl. The feet are usually bare, and so are the sturdy legs, some inches of which, very red and rough from exposure to every weather, are visible below the short skirts.

The houses of the Claddagh have been built wherever fancy dictated, and in consequence form a most confusing jumble, for one man's back door usually opens into another man's front yard. How a man gets home from the tavern on a dark night I don't know, but I suspect that the consumption of dillisk is large. We stopped to talk to a woman leaning over a half-door; and her children, who had been playing in the dirt, gathered around, and there is a picture of her quaint little house opposite the next page. Then while I foraged for more pictures, Betty sat down on a stone, and a perfect horde of children soon assembled to stare at her. They were very shy at first and perfectly well-behaved; but gradually they grew bolder, and finally, under careful encouragement, their tongues loosened, until they were chattering away like magpies.

The people of the Claddagh are said to be a very moral and religious race, who never go to sea or even away from home on any Sunday or religious holiday; and these dirty, unkempt, neglected, but chubby and red-cheeked children were capital illustrations of Kipling's lines:

The Claddagh people are dark as a rule, though here and there one sees a genuine Titian blond, and Spanish blood has been ascribed to them; but they probably date much farther back than the Spaniards—back, indeed, to that ancient, original Irish race, "men of the leathern wallet," antedating the Milesians or Gaels who now form the bulk of the Irish people. The older race took refuge in the bleak Connemara hills before the stronger invaders, to come creeping down again and found their colony here at the mouth of the Corrib when the invaders had swept on eastward to the kindlier and more fertile country there. Their whole life is bound up in this topsy-turvy little settlement, where they live just as they have lived for centuries, undisturbed by the march of civilisation.

We tore ourselves away, at last, from this primeval place, and recrossed the river to the turf market, with its familiar little carts piled high with the dark fuel.

"The bogs are very wet this year, are they not?" I asked an old man.

"They are, sir, God save ye," he replied, his wrinkled face lighting up at the chance to talk to a stranger. "There never was such a year for rain. I'm sixty year, God bless ye, and I've never seen such another." And then he went on to relate the story of his life, with a "God save ye" to every clause. A hearty old fellow he was, in spite of his sixty years; and he had driven his cart of turf down ten miles out of the mountains, that morning, and would drive ten miles back that night; and if he was lucky he would get half a crown—sixty cents—for the load of turf which had taken a hard day's labour to cut, and numerous turnings during a month to dry.

We went on past some fragments of the old walls, with a most romantic arched gateway, and through the fish market, over which the red-skirted women from the Claddagh presided—great strapping creatures, with broad hips and straight backs and shining, good-humoured faces. Most of them were selling an ugly, big-mouthed, unappetising-looking fish, whose name I couldn't catch; but they told us it was a fish for poor people, not for the likes of us, God bless ye—full of bones and scarcely worth the trouble of eating, but plentiful and therefore cheap.

The principal street of Galway is called Shop Street—a name so singularly lacking in imagination that it would prove the English origin of the town at once, were any proof needed—and about midway of this stands a beautiful four-storied building, known as Lynch's Castle, once a fine mansion but now a chandler's shop. The walls are ornamented with carved medallions, and there is a row of sculptured supports for a vanished balcony sticking out like gargoyles all around the top; and over the door there is the stone figure of a monkey holding a child, commemorating the saving of one of the Lynch children from a fire, by a favourite monkey, some centuries ago.

The Lynches were great people in old Galway, and another memorial of them exists just around the corner—a fragment of wall, with a doorway below and a mullioned window above, and it was from this window, so legend says, that James Lynch Fitzstephen, sometime mayor of Galway, hanged his son with his own hands. The principal inscription reads:

Below the window is a skull and crossbones, with a much more interesting inscription:

The story of the very upright Fitzstephen runs in this wise: He was a merchant, prominent in the Spanish trade, and fortunate in everything except in his only son, Walter, who was as bad a nut as was to be found anywhere. But he had shown some fondness for a Galway lady of good family, and it was hoped she might reform him; when, unhappily, she looked, or was thought to look, too favourably upon a handsome young hidalgo, who had come from Spain as the guest of the elder Fitzstephen. So young Walter waited for him one night at a dark corner, thrust a knife into his heart, and then gave himself up to his father, as the town's chief magistrate.

Walter, as is often the way with rake-hellies, was a great favourite in the town, and everybody interceded for his pardon, but his father condemned him to death. Whereupon a number of young bloods organised a rescue party, but just as they were breaking into the house, the inexorable parent put a noose about his son's neck, and hanged him from the window mullion above the crowd's head—the same mullion, I suppose, which you can see in the picture opposite the preceding page.

Just behind the reminder of this fifteenth-century Brutus, stands the fourteenth-century church of St. Nicholas, a venerable and beautiful structure, with good windows and splendid doorways, and containing some interesting tombs—one of them in honour of Mayor Lynch, the hero of the tragedy I have just related. On the south wall is a large tablet to "Jane Eyre, relict of Edward Eyre," (I wonder if Charlotte BrontË ever heard of her), who died in 1760, aged 88. At the bottom of the slab the fact is commemorated that "The sum of 300L was given by the Widow Jane Eyre to the Corporation of Galway for the yearly sum of 24L to be distributed in bread to 36 poor objects, on every Sunday forever." The sexton told us that the yearly income from this bequest was now thirty-six pounds, but that the weekly distribution of bread had occasioned so much disturbance that it had been discontinued, and the income of the bequest was now divided equally among twelve deserving families.

As we stood there, the peal of bells in the tower began to ring for service, but their musical invitation went quite unheeded by the crowd in the market-place outside, all of whom, of course, were Catholics. One woman, clad in black, slipped into a pew just before the curate began to read the lesson. We waited a while to see if any one else would come, but no one did, and at last we quietly took ourselves off.

There was one other sight in Galway we wanted to see—the most famous of its kind in Ireland—and that was the salmon making their way up the Corrib River from the sea to spawn in the lake above; and the place to see them is from the bridge which leads from the courthouse on the east bank of the river to the great walled jail on the west bank. Just above the bridge is the weir which backs up the water from Lough Corrib to afford power for some dozen mills—though all the mills, so far as I could see, are decayed and ruined and empty. But below this weir the salmon gather in such numbers that sometimes they lie side by side solidly clear across the bed of the stream.

A number of fishermen were flogging the water, and we sat down under the trees on the eastern bank to watch them for a while before going out on the bridge. Two or three of them were stationed on a narrow plank platform built out over the water just in front of us, and the others were on the farther bank, in the shadow of the grey wall of the jail. This is supposed to be the very best place in all Ireland to catch salmon, and, in the season, more anglers than the short stretch of shore can accommodate are eager to pay the fifteen shillings, which is the fee for a day's fishing there. They fish quite close together, which is somewhat awkward, but has its advantages occasionally; as, for instance, on that day, not very long ago, when one enthusiast, having hooked a noble fish, dropped dead in the act of playing it. The long account of this sad event which the Galway paper published, concluded with the following paragraph:

One cannot but admire the quick wit of Mr. Martin, who, seeing at a glance that his fellow-townsman was past all human aid, realised that the only thing to do was to save the fish, and saved it!

But no fish were caught while we were there. We had rather expected to see one hooked every minute, but we watched for half an hour, and there was not even a rise; so at last we walked out on the bridge to see if there were really any fish in the stream.

The bridge has a high parapet, worn glassy-smooth by the coat-sleeves of countless lookers-on, and there are convenient places to rest the feet, so we leaned over and looked down. The water was quite clear, and we could see the stones on the bottom plainly—but no fish.

"Look, there's one," said a voice at my elbow, and following the pointing finger, I saw a great salmon, his greenish back almost exactly the colour of the water, poised in the stream, swaying slowly from side to side, exerting himself just enough to hold his place against the current. Then the finger pointed to another and another, and we saw that the river was alive with fish—and then I looked around to see whose finger it was, and found myself gazing into the smiling eyes of a young priest—not exactly young, either, for his hair was sprinkled with grey; but his face was fresh and youthful.

"Of course you're from America," he said. "One can see that." And when I nodded assent, he added, "Well, you Americans brag like hell, but you have good reason to."

I glanced at him again, thinking perhaps I had mistaken his vocation; but there was no mistaking his rabat.

"I have been to America," he went on. "I went there as a beggar for a church here; and after my mission was done, I rested and enjoyed myself; and I want to say that there is no country like America."

The words were said with an earnestness that warmed my heart; and of course I agreed with him; and then, when he learned we were from Ohio, he told us how he had crossed our State on his way to San Francisco, and that seemed to establish a kind of relationship; and when we were satisfied with looking at the fish, he insisted on taking us through the marble works, just across the river, where some great columns of Connemara marble were being polished. It comes from a quarry high on Lissoughter, which we were soon to visit—though we didn't know it then!—and it is very beautiful indeed, usually a deep green, but sometimes a warm brown, and always gorgeously veined.

And then he asked us if we wouldn't like to see Queen's College, the Galway branch of the National University of Ireland; and of course we said we would, and so we started for it, he pushing his wheel before him; and on the way, we met a handsome old man, who stopped when he saw us, and smilingly asked for an introduction. It proved to be Bishop O'Dee, and even in the short chat we had with him, it was easy to see that he deserved his reputation for culture and scholarship. He has two pet aversions, so our guide told us, as we went on together, bribery and drunkenness. I don't imagine there is much bribery in Connaught, but I fear the Bishop has a formidable antagonist in John Barleycorn.

We came to the college presently—a fine Gothic building, with a good quadrangle, and we went through its somewhat heterogeneous museum and looked in at some of the halls. There are now about a hundred and forty pupils, so our guide said, and the new seminary, which drew students from all the west of Ireland, and which was just getting nicely started, was certain to increase this number greatly.

The National University of Ireland was established in 1908, as I understand it, for the purpose of affording Catholic youth an opportunity for higher education. The act provides that "no test whatever of religious belief shall be imposed on any person as a condition of his becoming or continuing to be a professor, lecturer, fellow, scholar or student" of the college; nevertheless it is well understood that its spirit and atmosphere are Catholic, and such Protestant youth as desire higher education usually enter Trinity College, Dublin, or Queen's College, Belfast. There are three colleges in the National University of Ireland—University College, Dublin, which is the parent institution, Queen's College, Cork, and Queen's College, Galway. All of them are maintained by state grants.

I am not quite clear as to the maintenance of the new seminary, to which our guide next conducted us; but it is a mammoth building, with queer squat towers, giving it an aspect quite oriental. Our guide said that the architecture was Irish-Romanesque, but it reminded me of nothing so much as of the pictures I had seen of the temples of ancient Syria and Egypt. The seminary is really an intermediate school, and is planned on a very extensive scale. Its promoters are hoping great things for it, which I trust will come to pass. We mounted to the top of the main tower, and looked out over the bay and the hills, and talked of America and of Ireland, and of many other things, and then our guide asked us if we wouldn't come and have tea with him.

"Ah, I hope you will come," he urged, seeing that we hesitated. "When I was in America, the welcome I got was so warm and open-hearted, that I feel I am forever indebted to all Americans, and it is a great pleasure to me when I am able to repay a little of that kindness. It's few opportunities I have, and I hope you won't refuse me this one."

So we accepted the invitation, telling him how kind we thought it, and started back through the streets, with the women and children courtesying to our guide as we passed, and he never failing to give them a pleasant word.

"'Tis not to my own quarters I'll be taking you," he explained, "but to those of a brother priest, who will be proud to have them put to this use," and he stopped in front of a row of little houses, called St. Joseph's Terrace, and opened the door of one of them, and ushered us in, and called the old servant, and bade her get us tea.

It was served in a bare little dining-room—with bread and butter and jam and cake—and very good it tasted, though the tea was far too strong for us, and we had to ask for some hot water with which to weaken it. Our host laughed at us; he drank his straight, without milk or sugar, and he told us about the first time he ordered tea in New York. When he started to pour it, he thought the cook had forgot to put any tea in the pot, so he called the waiter and sent it back; and the waiter, who was Irish and understood, laughed and took the pot back and put some more tea in.

"It was still far too weak," went on our host; "but I was ashamed to say anything more, so I drank it, though I might as well have been drinking hot water. Indeed, I got no good tea in America. And I nearly burnt my mouth off me once, trying to eat ice-cream. I took a great spoonful, without knowing what it would be like, and I thought it would be the death of me. And I shall never forget the first time they served Indian corn. It was in great long ears, such as I had never seen before; and I had no idea how to eat it, so I said it didn't agree with me; and then I was astonished to see the other people at the table—educated, cultured people they were, too—pick it up in their fingers and gnaw it off just as an animal would! Ah, that was a strange sight!"

I do not know when I have spent a pleasanter half-hour; but he had to bid us good-bye, at last, for he was due at some service; and he wrung our hands and wished us Godspeed, and sprang on his bicycle and pedalled off down the road, turning at the corner to wave his hat to us. And I am sure his heart was light at thought of the good deed he had done that day!

Galway possesses a tram-line, which starts at the head of Shop Street and runs out to a suburb called Salthill; and as this happens to pass St. Joseph's Terrace, we walked slowly on until a tram should come along. And in a moment a woman stopped us—a woman so ragged and forlorn and with such a tale of woe that, in spite of my dislike for beggars and suspicion of them, I gave her sixpence; and she fairly broke down and wept at sight of that bit of silver, and we walked on followed by her blessings and thinking sadly of the want and misery of Ireland's people.

We had another instance of it, before long, for after we had got on the tram, an old man stopped it and tried to clamber aboard, but the conductor put him off, after a short sharp altercation, and he followed us along the sidewalk, shaking his stick and, I suppose, hurling curses after us. The conductor explained that the old fellow had no money to pay for a ticket, but had proposed to pay for it after he had collected some money which was due him in Galway. This he no doubt considered an entirely reasonable proposition, and he was justly incensed when the conductor refused to extend the small necessary credit.

"Them ones gave us trouble enough at first," the conductor added. "They thought because the trams were owned by the town that they should all ride free, and that only strangers should be made to pay. Even yet, they think it downright savage of us to put them off just because they haven't the price of a ticket. It costs us no more, they say, to take them than to leave them, and so, out of kindness and charity, we ought to take them. Och, but they're a thick-headed people!" he concluded, and retired to the rear platform to ruminate upon the trials of his position.

We got down at the head of Shop Street, and Betty went on to the hotel to rest, while I spent a pleasant half-hour wandering about the streets and through the calf-market. There were numbers of little red calves, cooped up in tiny pens, and groups of countrymen standing about looking at them, their hands under their coat-tails and their faces quite destitute of expression. At long intervals there would be a little bargaining; which, if the would-be purchaser was in earnest, grew sharper and sharper, sometimes ending in mutual recriminations, and sometimes in an agreement, in which case buyer and seller struck hands on it. Then the calf in question would be caught and his legs tied together, and a piece of gunny-sack wrapped about him, and he would be carried away by his new owner. Or perhaps he might be sent somewhere by parcel-post. Calves tied up in gunny-sacks with their heads sticking out form a considerable portion of the Irish mail—how often have I seen the postmen lifting them on and off the cars or lugging them away to the parcel-room!

Betty rejoined me, after a time, and we got on the tram to ride out to Salthill. Curiously enough, when we had climbed to the top of it, we found sitting there the old man whom we had seen put off earlier in the afternoon. I don't know whether he recognised us; but he at once proceeded to relate to us the story of that misadventure, with great warmth and in minutest detail—just as he would relate it, no doubt, to every listener for a month to come.

"Why, God bless ye, sir, I told the felly he should have his penny," he explained, with the utmost earnestness. "There was a man in the town would be owin' me eight shillin's, and he had promised to pay me this very evenin'—but it was no use; he put me off into the road, bad cess to him, and it was in my mind to lay my stick across his head. But he can't put me off now," he added triumphantly, and held up his ticket for us to see.

And then he told us how he had five miles to walk beyond the end of the tram-line before he would be home; but he seemed to think nothing of having had to walk ten or twelve miles to collect his wages. Indeed, most Irish regard such a walk as not worth thinking of; which is as well, since many children have to walk four or five miles to school, and men and women alike will trudge twice that distance in going from one tiny field to another to do a bit of cultivating. Our new-found friend seemed quite taken with us, for when the tram came to a stop, he asked us if we wouldn't have a drink with him; and when we declined, bade us a warm good-bye, with many kind wishes, and then shambled over to the public-house for a last drink by himself. Twenty minutes later, we saw him go past along the road, his face to the west, on the long walk to his tiny home among the hills.

Salthill is a popular summer resort, and has a picturesque beach. The view out over Galway Bay is very beautiful, and the wide stretch of water seems to offer a perfect harbour; but there were no ships riding at anchor there. Time was when the people of the town fancied their bay was to become a world-famous port because of its nearness to America, and a steamship company was formed, and the government was persuaded to build a great breakwater and half a mile of quays and a floating dock five acres in extent. But the company's life was a short one, for one of its boats sank and another burned, and the other companies all preferred to go on to Liverpool or London or Southampton, and the docks and quays and harbour of Galway were left deserted, save for the little hookers of the Claddagh fishermen.