GALWAY is so synonymous with racy Irish life that a peep at Ireland must be incomplete unless it includes a peep at Galway. It is full of the strangest monuments of the past. It was once a town of the Irishry, in the O’Flaherty country. But with the Norman Conquest there came in that group of Anglo-Norman families known as the Tribes, who in course of time went the way of all their compeers, becoming more Irish than the Irish. “Lord!” said Edmund Spenser, “how quickly doth that country alter men’s natures!” The Tribes were, and are—for happily there are still the Tribes of Galway—thirteen, viz.: Athy, Blake, Bodkin, Browne, D’Arcy, Font, French, Joyce, Kirwan, Lynch, Martin, Morris, and Skerrett. These Tribes became responsible in time for so much of the wild and picturesque life of the Irish gentry of the eighteenth century—the duelling, the drinking, the racing, the gambling, the general devil-may-care life—that Galway looms more largely, perhaps, than any town in the social history of Ireland. Galway drew up a code for duellists known as the Galway Code; and in the irresponsible life of the eighteenth century, such as you find in Miss Edgeworth’s “Castle Rackrent” and in Lever’s novels, the life which the Encumbered Estates Act put a period to, the names of the Tribes figure oftener than more Celtic names. For the picturesque wildness of Irish life was the wildness of the settlers rather than the wildness of the native Irish.

However, in the great days of Galway’s trade with Spain and other continental ports, traces of which are scattered all over the old ruined city, which is as much Spanish as it is Irish, the Tribes were just merchant princes, not anticipating the time when, more Hibernico, they should fling trade to the winds and become the maddest crew of dare-devils known in the social life of any country. And here I find, in the record of the duelling and drinking days, traces and indications of the English descent of the roysterers. For certainly there was a lack of humour in the actors, though none for the spectator; there was a solemnity—not always a drunken solemnity—in the way their pranks were performed that was not Celtic; for the Celt has a terrible sense of the ridiculous. Doubtless it was from his Anglo-Irish betters that the Celt derived the habit of “trailing his coat” through a fair when he was spoiling for a fight, though, to do him justice, he practised it only when he was drunk. The Anglo-Irish duellists inaugurated the custom. When on no pretext could they find a friend or neighbour to kill or be killed by, they went out and “trailed the coat,” like the gentleman who rode on a tailless horse, with his face to the crupper, and, seeing an unwary stranger smile, immediately challenged him, and rode home in huge delight to look to his pistols. They were extremely solemn over their pranks. One wonders how often the Celtic servants had a smile behind their hand at such strange goings-on of their masters, which would not have been possible to the self-conscious Celt.

Over one of the gates of Galway was the pious legend, “From the ferocious O’Flaherties, good Lord deliver us!” I have heard of other inscriptions referring to other Irish septs over the remaining gates of the town, but those I think are apocryphal. The fact remains that the Tribes, having seized the town of the Irish after their rapacious Norman manner, were obliged to wall it against the O’Flaherties, and doubtless often slept ill at night because of the wild Irish battering at their gates, as did their brothers of the English pale up in Dublin.

Galway would at that time have been well worth sacking. A traveller of the early seventeenth century reports: “The merchants of Galway are rich and great adventurers at sea: their commonalitie is composed of the descendants of the ancient English families of the towne: and rairlie admit of any new English among them, and never of any of the Irish; they keep good hospitalitie and are kind to strangers, and in their manner of entertainment and in fashioninge and apparellynge themselves and their wives do most preserve the ancient manners and state of annie towne that ever I saw.”

They had their enactments against the Irish, including the MacWilliam Burkes, who had gone over to the Irish, bag and baggage:

“That none of the towne buy cattle out of the country but only of true men.

“That no man of the towne shall sell galley, bote or barque to an Irishman.

“That no person shall give or sell to the Irish any munition as hand-povins, calivres, poulter, leade, nor salt-peter, nor yet large bowes, cross-bowes, cross-bowe strings, nor yearne to make the same, nor any kind of weapon on payn to forfayt the same and an hundred shyllinges.

“If anie man being an Irishman to brag and boste upon the towne, to forfayt 12 pence.

“That no man of this towne shall ostle or receive into their house at Christmasse or Easter nor no feast elles, anny of the Burkes MacWilliams, the Kellies, nor no septs elles, without the licence of the Maior and Council on payn to forfayt £5. That neither O’ ne Mac shall strutt or swagger through the streets of Galway.”

You still find traces of the commerce of the Tribes with Spain, not only in the old Spanish buildings of the town, but in the black Spanish eyes and hair of the people. I remember to have been struck in Donegal by a dignity, a loftiness of bearing, as well as by a height and stateliness of the peasant people that made one murmur “Spanish” to one’s own ear.

One of the sights of Galway is the ruins of the house from the window of which James Lynch Fitz Stephen, a Chief Magistrate of Galway in 1493, hanged his only son for murder with his own hand, lest the townspeople should rescue him. The house is called The Cross Bones nowadays, and is situated most appropriately in Dead-Man’s Lane. There remains but an old wall, with a couple of doorways having the pointed Spanish arches and some ornate window-spaces above. There is a tablet on the wall, bearing a skull and cross-bones, with the inscription:

Some people believe that this Lynch is the “onlie begetter” of Lynch Law. This, however, I do not believe, and I think it more likely to have been derived from a Lynch of the mining-camps in Southern California, who was the first to promulgate and put in practice the wild justice of execution without judge or jury. Anyhow, I cannot see that the example of James Lynch FitzStephen was an admirable one, and I do not believe the legend that he died heart-broken as a result of his own stern sense of justice.

The palmy days of the Tribes were over with the Reformation, for they did not cease to be Catholics, and so were in no great favour with the predominant partner. Galway also stood for the King against the Parliament, was besieged and taken by the Parliamentary soldiers under Ludlow, who stabled his horses, according to report, in St. Nicholas’s Cathedral. After that Galway’s great prosperity as a trading centre passed away, and the Tribes scattered among the ferocious O’Flaherties and others of their sort and became country gentlemen, with a noble contempt for trade. The situation of Galway, on its magnificent Bay, still cries out for commerce. The spectacle of Galway as a port of call for American steamers has dangled before the eyes of the Galwegians for a long time without being realized, although they made preparations for it long ago, by building a hotel that would house a Mauretania-load of travellers.

Only the other day I listened to a Galway Tribesman conversing with someone who had lived in Galway, and who asked after the old places and persons. “What’s become of So-and-so?” “He’s just the same as ever; not a bit of change in him. He comes home every night strapped to the outside car to keep him from falling off.” “And what’s become of So-and-so?” “Oh, he’s done very well for himself. His father says, ‘Mac’s all right; he’s got the run of a kitchen in Yorkshire,’ meaning that he married an English heiress.”

This conversation made me feel that to some extent Galway stands where it did.

The Claddagh fishing village by Galway is something not to be missed. It keeps itself to itself, with a reserve Celtic or Spanish or anything else you like, but not English. It used to be ruled by its own King, who was just a fisherman like his subjects, and was not exalted in his manner of living by his royal state. He was chosen for his governing powers and his mental and moral qualities, and his subjects were ruled by him with a despotism that was never anything but fatherly. They intermarried, too, among themselves—I do not know if this usage survives—and their ring of betrothal, handed on from one generation to another, has a design of two hands holding up a heart. At the Claddagh they still have the Blessing of the Sea, but they will not make a show of it, and even the Galway people are kept in ignorance of the time when the ceremony takes place.