CONNEMARA AND GALWAY FIFTY YEARS AGO.
The Town of Galway is a relic of the times when Spain maintained an
active commerce with the west of Ireland, and meddled not a little in
the intrigues of the time. Everybody has read of the warden of Galway,
who hanged his son outside a window of his own house, to prevent a
rescue from justice by a popular rising in the young man's favour. That
house still stood, and probably yet stands, a mournful memento of a most
dismal tragedy. In 1833 it was in ruins, as was also the whole long row
of massive cut stone buildings of which it formed part. In front there
was a tablet recording the above event; the walls were entire, but the
roof was quite gone, and the upper stories open to the winds and storms.
The basement story appeared to have been solidly arched, and in its
cavernous recesses, and those of the adjoining cellars along that side
of the street, dwelt a race of butchers and of small hucksters, dealing
in potatoes, oats, some groceries and rough wares of many kinds. The
first floor of a brick store opposite was occupied by a hair-dresser
with whom our London fellow-passenger claimed acquaintance. One day we
were sitting at his window, looking across at the old warden's house,
when a singular scene was enacted under our astonished eyes. A
beggarman, so ragged as barely to comply with the demands of common
decency, and bearing an old sack suspended over his shoulder on a short
cudgel, came lounging along the middle of the street seeking alms. A
butcher's dog of aristocratic tastes took offence at the man's rags, and
attacked him savagely. The old man struck at the dog, the dog's owner
darted out of his cellar and struck at the beggar, somebody else took a
part, and in the twinkling of an eye as it were, the narrow street was
blocked up with men furiously-wielding shillelaghs, striking right and
left at whoever happened to be most handy, and yelling like Dante's
devils in full chorus. Another minute, and a squad of policemen in green
uniforms--peelers, they are popularly called--appeared as if by magic,
and with the effect of magic; for instantly, and with a celerity
evidently the result of long practice, the crowd, beggarman, butcher,
dog and all, vanished into the yawning cellars, and the street was left
as quiet as before, the police marching leisurely back to their
barracks.
We spent much of our time in rambling along the shore of Galway Bay, a
beautiful and extensive harbour, where we found many curious specimens
of sea-weeds, particularly the edible dilosk, and rare shells and
minerals. Some of our people went out shooting snipe, and were warned on
all hands to go in parties, and to take care of their guns, which would
prove too strong a temptation for the native peasantry, as the spirit of
Ribbonism was rife throughout Connemara. Another amusement was, to watch
the groups of visitors from Tuam and the surrounding parts of Clare and
other counties, who were attracted by the marvel of a ship of five
hundred tons in their bay, no such phenomenon having happened within the
memory of man. At another time we explored the rapid river Corrib, and
the beautiful lake of the same name, a few miles distant. The salmon
weirs on the river were exceedingly interesting, where we saw the
largest fish confined in cribs for market, and apparently quite
unconscious of their captivity. The castle of one of the Lynch family
was visible from the bay, an ancient structure with its walls mounted
with cannon to keep sheriffs' officers at a distance. Other feudal
castles were also in sight.
Across the bay loomed the rugged mountains of Clare, seemingly utterly
barren in their bleak nakedness. With the aid of the captain's telescope
we could see on these inhospitable hills dark objects, which turned out
to be the mud cabins of a numerous peasantry, the very class for whom,
in this present year of 1883, Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues are
trying to create an elysium of rural contentment. We traversed the
country roads for miles, to observe the mode of farming there, and could
find nothing, even up to the very streets of Galway, but mud cabins with
one or two rooms, shared with the cow and pigs, and entrenched, as it
were, behind a huge pile of manure that must have been the accumulation
of years. Anything in the shape of valuable improvements was
conspicuously absent.
Everything in Connemara seems paradoxical. These rough-coated,
hard-worked, down-trodden Celts proved to be the liveliest, brightest,
wittiest of mankind. They came in shoals to our ship, danced reels by
the hour upon deck to a whistled accompaniment, with the most
extravagant leaps and snapping of fingers. It was an amusing sight to
see women driving huge pigs into the sea, held by a string tied to the
hind leg, and there scraping and sluicing the unwieldy, squealing
creatures until they came out as white as new cream. These Galway women
are singularly handsome, with a decidedly Murillo cast of features,
betokening plainly their Iberian ancestry. They might well have sat as
models to the chief of Spanish painters.
In the suburbs of Galway are many acres of boggy land, which are
cultivated as potato plots, highly enriched with salt sea-weed manure,
and very productive. These farms--by which title they are
dignified--were rented, we were told, at three to four pounds sterling
per acre. Rents in the open country ranged from one pound upwards. Yet
we bought cup potatoes at twopence per stone of sixteen lbs.; and for a
leg of mutton paid sixpence English.
Enquiring the cause of these singular anomalies, we were assured on all
hands, that the system of renting through middlemen was the bane of
Ireland. A farm might be sub-let two or three times, each tenant paying
an increased rental, and the landlord-in-chief, a Blake, a Lynch, or a
Martin, realizing less rent than he would obtain in Scotland or England.
We heard of no Protestant oppressors here; the gentry and nobility
worshipped at the same altar with the humblest of their dependents, and
certainly meant them well and treated them considerately.
We attended the English service in the ancient Gothic Abbey Church. The
ministrations were of the strictest Puritan type; the sculptured
escutcheons and tablets on the walls--the groined arches and bosses of
the roof--were almost obliterated by thick coat upon coat of whitewash,
laid on in an iconoclastic spirit which I have since seen equalled in
the Dutch Cathedral of Rotterdam, and nowhere else. Another Sunday we
visited a small Roman Catholic chapel at some distance. It was
impossible to get inside the building, as the crowd of worshippers not
only filled the sacred edifice, but spread themselves over a pretty
extensive and well-filled churchyard, where they knelt throughout
morning prayer, lasting a full hour or more.
The party-feuds of the town are quite free from sectarian feeling. The
fishermen, who were dressed from head to foot in hoddengray, and the
butchers, who clothed themselves entirely in sky-blue--coats,
waistcoats, breeches, and stockings alike, with black hats and
shoes--constituted the belligerent powers. Every Saturday night, or
oftener, they would marshal their forces respectively on the wide
fish-market place, by the sea-shore, or on the long wharf extending into
deep water, and with their shillelaghs hold high tournament for the
honour of their craft and the love of fair maidens. One night, while the
_Asia_ lay off the wharf, an unfortunate combatant fell senseless into
the water and was drowned. But no inquiry followed, and no surprise was
expressed at a circumstance so trivial.
By the way, it would be unpardonable to quit Connemara without recording
its "potheen." Every homestead had its peat-stack, and every peat-stack
might be the hiding-place of a keg of illicit native spirits. We were
invited, and encouraged by example, to taste a glass; but a single
mouthful almost choked us; and never again did we dare to put the fiery
liquid to our lips.
Our recollections of Galway are of a mixed character--painful, because
of the consciousness that the empire at large must be held responsible
for the unequal distribution of nature's blessings amongst her
people--pleasant, because of the uniform hospitality and courtesy shown
to us by all classes and creeds of the townsfolk.