Part 39

But sometimes they won't be let alone. In the summer of 1908 there was a riot in the town of Thurles and a mob did a lot of damage in order to show its disapproval of legal proceedings that had been taken against a fellow townsman. Richard Burke, who was "licensed to sell spirits not to be consumed on the premises," was unable to meet his obligations and went into bankruptcy. The sheriff took charge of the establishment under the orders of the court, and the license, good will, and the stock in hand were offered for sale to the highest bidder. But the bids did not come up to the valuation of the court and were all rejected. A few days later a private offer from Mr. Cody, who has been competing with Mr. Burke to quench the thirst of Thurles for several years, to take the entire place for £2,000 was accepted. Mr. Burke, who has been in the habit of consuming too much of his own merchandise for the good of his business, became very indignant because his old enemy was going to step into his place, gathered together a few sympathetic friends, raided his own establishment, smashed the bottles, knocked in the heads of the barrels, and invited the whole town to help themselves, which they did with an energy that would have been commendable in another cause. Then, when almost every citizen of the town, young and old, was drunk, they started up the street smashing their own windows and doors and doing what is estimated at $15,000 worth of damages to their own property, besides $7,000 worth of destruction in Mr. Cody's place.

Although Cody had signed the papers, he had not paid for Mr. Burke's former stock, and naturally he now refuses to do so, since it does not exist, so that Mr. Burke and his creditors suffer the entire loss of his own raid and hospitality, and the taxpayers of Thurles have been assessed to pay for the other foolishness.

There are twenty thousand Galway people in the United States, or "across the herring pond," as a banker there expressed it, who have been in the habit of making remittances to their fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters here in generous amounts, and many families are partly and a large number are wholly dependent upon them. Most of the Galway emigrants are in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and other large cities, earning good wages, but they were out of employment after the recent panic and have had all that they could do to take care of themselves. Hence very little money has been received here from America for nearly a year. The postmaster told me that the American money orders cashed at the Galway post office have averaged £40,000 a year for the last eight or ten years, and in 1908 the total will not reach £15,000. An even larger sum of money has been coming in checks and drafts and the bankers say that the remittances in that form are not more than ten per cent of the usual amount. The merchants complain that their customers are not bringing in any American checks, which have been presented in payment daily for ten or twelve years. Christmas checks were very scarce in 1907, and that is the principal reason for the poverty. Wages are very low in Galway--ten shillings a week, and two shillings a day is the average for ordinary labor. The Allan Line steamers have been touching at Galway since 1881, and have carried to Quebec an enormous number of emigrants for the United States as well as Canada, but the faster boats, touching at Queenstown, have reduced the business considerably. The steerage passage is $27.50 and $30; the average emigrants are chiefly between seventeen and twenty-three years of age, and most of them go to Boston.

Galway is a foreign-looking little town, unlike any other we saw in Ireland, and much of the architecture is Dutch and Spanish, departing from the plain, ugly brick front without cornice or eaves which is so common elsewhere. The streets are irregular and run all sorts of ways; some very narrow and some very wide, and they vary in width at different places, with occasionally an odd-shaped space at the intersection. Everything looks old and shabby and out of repair. It is queer as well as significant to see buildings half in ruins in the principal streets and others with the glass broken out of the windows. There are some smart-looking shops, however, and neatly kept residences, but they are not frequent. Nor is the town well kept. The Common Council evidently lacks a sense of the æsthetic, because the streets are dirty, the park is scraggly, and the grass and trees are very much neglected. It is altogether the untidiest public park I saw in Ireland. Many of the people we met on the principal streets, particularly the women, are repulsive in their rags and dirty faces and unkempt hair and bare feet. We saw a few barefooted women in Tipperary and Limerick, but in Galway none of the working women wears shoes, although the men seem to be well shod. The women cover their heads with thick shawls that are often greasy and torn, and their faces show evidences of sorrow and privation, and perhaps other causes have left a mark.

The foreign appearance of Galway is accounted for by the fact that many Frenchmen, Spaniards, and Dutchmen were in business there in early times. The town was named from the Gauls, and for centuries an extensive trade was carried on with the Continent by foreign merchants and foreign fleets. Richard de Burgo, founder of the Burke family, was given the country of Connaught by the king, and, having in 1232 crushed the O'Connors, who were formerly kings there, he enlarged the Castle of Galway and made it his residence, calling around him a flourishing foreign colony. But the "tribes of Galway," as Cromwell called the natives, would not submit to him, and kept up a guerrilla warfare that was very annoying. The English took all the measures they could to protect themselves, and in 1518 a law was passed forbidding the people of the town "to recieve into their housses at Christemas, Easter nor no feaste elles, any of the MacWilliams, Kellies, Joyces, Lynches nor to cepte Elles without permission of the Mayor and Councill; on payn to forfeit £'5 and that no one called O' nor Mac shalle strutte ne swaggere thro the streetes of Galway." And the following inscription was formerly to be seen over the west gate to the city:

"From the fury of the O'Flaherties 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.

Formerly the Claddagh people wore a distinctive dress, resembling that of the fisher folks of Holland,--a red skirt, a blue waist, elaborate headdress, and bare feet and legs,--but this costume has been discarded by the younger women and is only worn by their grandmothers now. But all the women go barefooted. They never wear shoes or stockings. The men are engaged exclusively in fishing, although they do all of their own masonry, carpentering, and boat building. They pack their fish in the village, but carry a portion of each catch across the river to the fish market of Galway.

There is an attractive resort for city people on the Bay of Galway, with a long promenade, several hotels, and a number of comfortable villas.

XXXI

CONNEMARA AND THE NORTHWEST COAST

Clifden is the extreme western point of Ireland, and for that reason Marconi selected it for his wireless telegraph station in communicating with Canada and the United States. It is 1,620 miles in a direct line of St. John, New Brunswick, and, as a native remarked, "There's not a spheck of droy land upon which a burrd could rist the sole of its foot bechune this blessed spot and Americky." If you will examine the map you will understand the situation better, and a geological chart of the island will show you that the western coast, from Mizzen Head to Bloody Foreland, is protected by a chain of mountains, bleak, rugged, and abrupt, which nature has placed as a buttress to support the rest of Ireland against the fierce attack of the Atlantic. They have terrible storms there, and a northwest gale several times a year that is terrific. The east winds, which we dread, bring good weather in Ireland, but the west wind brings storms and cold and mists that are almost as bad as the London fog.

Connemara is the congested district, but it does not bear that name because the population is overcrowded, but because there are too many people for the inhospitable soil to support. The inhabitants are scattered over a vast area. I could see everything from one point as far as a radius of twenty-two miles, and there wasn't a human habitation in sight, nor was there any inducement to build one because the country was a bleak, barren, rocky wilderness without soil for crops or shelter for cattle. There is the greatest degree of poverty and suffering in Ireland, and there the government is doing its greatest benevolent work in trying to place the people upon farms that are large enough to support them, and finding them other occupations by which they can earn a few additional dollars.

A railway was built from Galway along the edge of the ocean to Clifden a few years ago, and the track hugs the coast as closely as possible. An hour after leaving Galway nature begins to disclose her unfriendliness, the mountains begin to loom up to a height of two thousand and twenty-two hundred feet, the landscape becomes stern and forbidding, and there is no vegetation except heather, which, when in full bloom, adds a purple hue to the wilderness. Heather seems to be as brave, as enduring, and as self-reliant as the sage brush that decorates the arid plains of our western States, and nothing seems to discourage its growth. Alternating with the rocks are peat beds, in which both men and women spend much time getting out a supply of fuel for the next winter and stacking it in little piles to dry.

The most prominent feature of the landscape is a group of mountains called the Twelve Bens--sometimes written the "Twelve Pins." They are so called because of their conical, dome-like peaks and the similar individuality of each. They rise almost from the level of the Atlantic, and for that reason look higher than they really are. The highest is Ben Baun, 2,393 feet, and the lowest is Ben Brach, 1,922 feet. Their sides are scarred with the wounds of terrestrial convulsions and glacial action, and they are composed very largely of quartzite, which frequently furnishes a white surface that glistens in the sunlight and adds to the picturesque effect. From these mountains comes the Connemara marble, the most valuable stone in the United Kingdom, often as fine in grain as the malachite and lapis lazuli of the Urals and the onyx of Mexico. It is used both for construction and for ornamental purposes, and the quarries are very profitable.

The landscape is dotted with little lakes and ponds which have no visible outlet, but are all connected somehow underground. Most of them cover only an acre or two, but Lough Corrib is the largest in Ireland except Lough Neagh, near Belfast. Lough Mask and Lough Cong are also several miles in length and two or three miles in width. There are said to be 365 lakes in Ireland, and one would judge that the larger number of them are in Connemara. They are fed by springs and rainfall and are said to abound in fish. The railway companies advertise this as the best fishing ground in the world, and announce that they have leased several of the loughs in order to provide free fishing to all excursionists. That is a great attraction for city people when they take their vacations, because elsewhere as a rule when a man wants to go fishing he is compelled to take out a license and pay handsomely for the privilege--from $2.50 to $5 a day. Therefore the advertisements of free fishing in Connemara, combined with the scenery, which is highly admired and considered second only to that of Switzerland, tempt a great many people there. But most of them are disappointed. There is plenty of water to fish in, there are plenty of boats to hire, but fish are scarce, and, no matter where you go, the oldest inhabitant always insists that he never knew a time when fishing was so bad as it is now. There are many skeptics and a few cynics about who give you a true statement of the situation. "Boots" at the hotel asserted that if anything could be caught in the lakes we might be sure that the fishing would not be free, and added sarcastically that the only reason it was free was that nobody ever caught anything.

The O'Briens were once kings of that country and they were driven out by the O'Flahertys, who in turn were driven out by the English. You can see the ruins of Castle Bally Quirk, the principal fortress of the O'Flahertys, from the car window, and read the terrible story of how the chief of that clan was imprisoned in its keep in the time of Queen Elizabeth and starved to death. The O'Flahertys were always "agin the government," and were so impertinent in their replies and so arrogant in their demeanor that Queen Elizabeth decided to bring them to submission, and nearly exterminated the family before she did so. "The O'Flaherty," the head of the family at present, is a justice of the peace, who lives at Lemonfield, upon the ancient estates, but retains very little of them.

If Clifden wasn't such a dirty town it might be made a popular health resort. The air is glorious; the natural surroundings are grand and would tempt many artists as well as admirers of scenery. There are excellent small hotels, but the town is decidedly unattractive, the streets are filthy, the walks in the neighborhood of the town are used so much by the cattle that they are quite unclean, and the people do not seem to have any idea of neatness or order. The principal business seems to be the sale of liquor, which can be purchased at thirty-three places within this little town of eight hundred people, as advertised by the sign boards. And they all look as if they were doing a good trade. There is considerable fishing at Cleggan, a neighboring village, which has been encouraged and assisted by the government, and large shipments of fish are made to Dublin every day. Early in the morning several ancient fishwives appear in a triangular space between the rows of houses in the center of the village with baskets of fish, and from our windows in the comfortable Railway Hotel we can see the inhabitants come strolling along in an indolent and indifferent manner to buy their breakfasts. They have the choice of a variety of fish, and the prices are remarkably low. A fine, fat mackerel costs a penny, a codfish sixpence, and for a shilling one can get a haddock big enough to last a large-sized family for a week.

Upon the hillside overlooking the town is an imposing church which has an air of magnificence in comparison with the rest of the town; it is ten times as large and ten times as glorious for Clifden as St. Peter's is for Rome. It was built only a few years ago from the contributions of the peasants, the same people that the government is trying to make comfortable and aid in earning a living. It will seat nine hundred people and is filled twice on Sunday with devout worshipers. Father Lynch, the curate, told me that it was necessary to have two masses and sometimes three on Sunday to accommodate them all, and some of them come eleven and even twelve miles, most of them on foot, to attend worship. Here, as everywhere in Ireland, religion is the first and most important thing in life, and the church is the gateway to happiness and Heaven. There is also a Protestant church, much smaller, but not insignificant, which stands upon an opposite hill, surrounded by a graveyard, in which there are some venerable tombs.

Clifden is the seat of several important families, including the Martins, who formerly lived at Ballynaninch Castle, a plain, large, stern-looking embattled building, which was the scene of Charles Lever's novel, "The Martins of Cro' Martin." It was the home of Col. Richard Martin, M.P., the inventor and organizer of the first society for the prevention of cruelty to animals in the world, and the author of "Martin's Acts," punishing those who are guilty of that offense. He spent large sums of money in the enforcement of this law and in organizing societies and establishing hospitals for diseased and wounded animals throughout the kingdom, but was otherwise extravagant and went through his fortune.

Colonel Martin was the original of "Godfrey O'Malley," the hero of Lever's novel, and the sketch is said to be very accurate. He was a reckless, extravagant, but generous, warm-hearted man and died a sacrifice to his efforts to relieve the sufferings of his tenants at the time of the famine.