The old city (Galway) certainly has some relics of its former stateliness; and indeed, is the only town in Ireland I have seen, where an antiquary can find much subject for study, or a lover of the picturesque an occasion for using his pencil. It is a wild, fierce, and most original old town. Joyce’s Castle in one of the principal streets, a huge square grey tower, with many carvings and ornaments, is a gallant relic of its old days of prosperity, and gives one an awful idea of the tenements which the other families inhabited, and which are designed in the interesting plate which Mr. Hardiman gives in his work. The Collegiate Church, too, is still extant, without its fourteen altars, and looks to be something between a church and a castle, and as if it should be served by Templars with sword and helmet in place of mitre and crozier. The old houses in the Main Street are like fortresses the windows look into a court within; there is but a small low door, and a few grim windows peering suspiciously into the street.
Sketch of Irish Life in 1842
Then there is Lombard Street otherwise called Deadman’s Lane, with a raw-head and cross-bones and a “memento mori” over the door where the dreadful tragedy of the Lynches was acted in 1493. If Galway is the Rome of Connaught, James Lynch Fitzstephen, the Mayor, may be considered as the Lucius Junius Brutus thereof. Lynch had a son who went to Spain as master of one of his father’s ships, and being of an extravagant, wild turn, there contracted debts, and drew bills, and alarmed his father’s correspondent, who sent a clerk and nephew of his own back in young Lynch’s ship to Galway to settle accounts. On the fifteenth day, young Lynch threw the Spaniard overboard. Coming back to his own country, he reformed his life a little, and was on the point of marrying one of the Blakes, Burkes, Bodkins, or others, when a seaman who had sailed with him, being on the point of death, confessed the murder in which he had been a participator.
Hereon the father, who was chief magistrate of the town, tried his son, and sentenced him to death; and when the clan Lynch rose in a body to rescue the young man, and avert such a disgrace from their family, it is said that Fitzstephen Lynch hung the culprit with his own hand. A tragedy called “The Warden of Galway” has been written on the subject, and was acted a few nights before my arrival.
Sketch of Irish Life in 1842
The waters of Lough Corrib, which “permeate” under the bridges of the town, go rushing and roaring to the sea with a noise and eagerness only known in Galway; and along the banks you see all sorts of strange figures washing all sorts of wonderful rags, with red petticoats and redder shanks standing in the stream. Pigs are in every street: the whole town shrieks with them. There are numbers of idlers on the bridges, thousands in the streets, humming and swarming in and out of dark old ruinous houses; congregated round numberless apple-stalls, nail-stalls, bottle-stalls, pigsfoot-stalls; in queer old shops, that look to be two centuries old; loitering about warehouses, ruined or not; looking at the washerwomen washing in the river, or at the fish-donkeys, or at the potato-stalls, or at a vessel coming into the quay, or at the boats putting out to sea.
Galway docks in September 2015
Galway docks in September 2015
The boat at the quay, by the little old gate, is bound for Arranmore; and one next to it has a freight of passengers for the cliffs of Mohir on the Clare coast; and as the sketch is taken, a hundred of people have stopped in the street to look on, and are buzzing behind in Irish, telling the little boys in that language — who will persist in placing themselves exactly in the front of the designer — to get out of his way: which they do for some time; but at length curiosity is so intense that you are entirely hemmed in and the view rendered quite invisible. A sailor’s wife comes up — who speaks English — with a very wistful face, and begins to hint that them black pictures are very bad likenesses, and very dear too for a poor woman, and how much would a painted one cost does his honour think? And she has her husband that is going to sea to the West Indies to-morrow, and she’d give anything to have a picture of him. So I made bold to offer to take his likeness for nothing. But he never came, except, one day at dinner, and not at all on the next day, though I stayed on purpose to accommodate him. It is true that it was pouring with rain; and as English waterproof cloaks are not waterproof in Ireland, the traveller who has but one coat must of necessity respect it, and had better stay where he is, unless he prefers to go to bed while he has his clothes dried at the next stage.
The houses in the fashionable street where the club-house stands (a strong building, with an agreeable Old Bailey look,) have the appearance of so many little Newgates. The Catholic chapels are numerous, unfinished, and ugly. Great warehouses and mills rise up by the stream, or in the midst of unfinished streets here and there; and handsome convents with their gardens, justice-houses, barracks, and hospitals adorn the large, poor, bustling, rough-and-ready-looking town. A man who sells hunting-whips, gunpowder, guns, fishing-tackle, and brass and iron ware, has a few books on his counter; and a lady in a bystreet, who carries on the profession of a milliner, ekes out her stock in a similar way. But there were no regular book-shops that I saw, and when it came on to rain I had no resource but the hedge-school volumes again. They, like Patrick Spelman’s sign, present some very rude flowers of poetry and “entertainment” of an exceeding humble sort; but such shelter is not to be despised when no better is to be had: nay, possibly its novelty may be piquant to some readers, as an admirer of Shakspeare will occasionally condescend to listen to Mr. Punch, or an epicure to content himself with a homely dish of beans and bacon.
William Makepeace Thackeray writing about Galway in 1842
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