The Macleay Chronicle 25th July, 1917 p.6 (Kempsey NSW) Galway. Talk of making Galway, with its magnificent harbour in which the whole British navy could ride at anchor, a port for direct trade with America is again to the fore; but probably nothing will come of it. Little over four hundred years ago, the seaport of Galway, on the west coast of Ireland, was one of the great trade centres of Western Europe. It did special business with Spain. Galway merchants went to Spain, and Spanish merchants came to Galway, to talk trade, exchange views, and plan new enterprises. Galway men of affairs were wealthy and prosperous, and it came to be a saying, in those days “as proud as a Galway merchant.” So well off, indeed, was the city, and so many its extravagances, that, towards the end of the Sixteenth Century, an inquiry was held by direction of the Lord Deputy, Sir John Perrot, with the result that rigid sumptuary laws were passed. No young man, “prentice or other wise, ” was to wear ‘ gorgeous apparell ne silks, either within or without their garments, non yet fyne knitt stockings either of silk or other costlie wise. ‘ And there was much else to the same purpose. Galway, in fact, had always been a specially favored town. There is little known as to its history, it is true, before the coming of the English, but, once William Fitzandelm de Burgo, the Norman, under a grant from Henry II, had finally dispossessed Rory O’Connor, and converted the town into his own principal stronghold, it grew rapidly in importance. After the building of the walls and fortifications, about the year 1270, its trade, indeed, increased by leaps and bounds. It was at about this time too, that there came to the city those famous settlers from England, known, in subsequent history, as the ‘tribes of Galway,’ the Blakes, the Bodkins;, the Joyces, the Lynches, the Martins, and so on. There were fourteen of them altogether. This strong growth of an urban community, as one writer justly points out, self-controlled and distinct was typical of the time. While the country was torn with perpetual strife between English, Irish, and Anglo Irish rulers, the towns of Waterford, Limerick, and Galway virtually developed into self-governing republics. “They elected their own magistrates, excluded the King’s judges, contributed nothing to the King’s revenue, declared war and concluded peace, without the smallest regard for the Deputy and the Dublin Parliament. ” Thus, in 1524, Limerick and Galway went to war with each other, and the hostilities were ultimately concluded in the most formal manner by a formal treaty. It was the civil war in England which finally put an end to this prosperity and independence. It dealt hardly with Galway. The city stood for the King, but ultimately was obliged to surrender to the Parliamentary forces under Sir Charles Coote. The surrender, it is true, was made on honorable terms, but the treaty was shamelessly broken. The town was plundered, and the ancient inhabitants were, for the most part, driven out, many hundreds of them being sold as slaves to the West Indies.
Advocate (Melbourne) Thursday 9th May, 1935 p.11 Determined to make its peat scheme a success, the present Government is sending a mission to the Continent to study the work done there through the medium of peat. Already much has been accomplished in substituting this native fuel for imported coal. In thousands of city homes peat is now burned almost exclusively. Travellers from the country claim that as they come near Dublin the fragrance of turf meets them as it rises up from the capital. The scheme now in operation provides a guaranteed price for the turf cutter and a fixed price for the consumer, the Government taking responsibility for the quality. The projected tour abroad is for other employments for peat. The delegation, headed by Dr. Henry Kennedy, secretary of the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society (the co-operative society founded by Sir Horace Plunkett), includes also a representative of the Electricity Supply Board, which controls and directs the Shannon Scheme. In Russia, which the delegation are to visit, some of the greatest power stations burn only peat.
Catholic Freeman’s Journal, Sydney, 24th May, 1934 p.38
Headford, Co. Galway
Dear Gumblossom, Thanks very much for sending on my letter to Mary Downes. I did not know her whole address. She sent me a lovely long letter full of news. Thanks, dear Gumblossom, for your kind invitation. If any of the Pageites write to me I will answer them during the holidays, as I am only allowed to write one letter home every week during the school term. I am at school in the Dominican College, Galway and I like it well. We have a fairly good time. Our games are tennis, camogie and basketball, and there are swings for the small children. We are let out to matinees at the pictures and Irish plays. We have drill and dancing too. We get a month’s holiday at Christmas, a fortnight at Easter and from the middle of June to the beginning of September in summer. Now I must tell you about Headford. Do you like the pictures enclosed? One is of the part of the street in which our house is, and the other of Ross Abbey. Ross is about a mile from Headford and is a noted ruin. It is used as a burial ground since the seventeenth century. Before that it was a Franciscan Monastery till Cromwell sacked it. Headford is a small town. It has a population of about 500. It is about seventeen miles from Galway city and Lough Corrib is three miles away. Last summer we did a lot of bathing and boating on the Lough. I even did a little fishing, but I have no patience. I enjoy reading the letters in your Page, the Arrows write such funny ones. Here is a storyette before I finish. When the English King was sick and had to have a transfusion of blood an Irish man offered himself. After the operation the Royal Physician asked, “How do you feel, your Majesty?” “Majesty be hanged,” was the reply. “Up with the Republic.” Wishing yourself and all the Pageites every success. Yours sincerely, Ruby Canavan
The Newcastle Chronicle (NSW) Tue 21st December, 1869 p2.(abridged) There was a party gathered one Hallowe’en. They sat round the fire burning nuts and telling stories just as we do tonight. One among them was a lady newly betrothed, the gayest, the proudest, the must beautiful of them all. Her lover sat by her side. Her wild and wilful ways had often given him a heartache, but he loved her dearly. Someone among the party dared her to go and cast the reel – through a high staircase window that looked down on a dark plantation. The one who tries this charm must stand at a window alone while the clocks toll for midnight, and, throwing the reel, must wind the thread upon her hand, and call three times; and at the third time, if her heart fail not, they say, her future bridegroom will answer from below. The lady I tell you of, sprung up and said she would go, for she feared nothing in this world or the next, and though her lover prayed her to remain, she still persisted. ‘You shall see,’she said, ‘whether you have a rival!’ She took a light in her hand, and went alone up the staircase. When she reached the casement she stood still and waited, minute after minute, ’til the clock sounded the first stroke of twelve. Then she flung the reel far down into the darkness, and began to wind the thread. ‘Who is there?’ she cried. All was still, for the very wind seemed to pause and listen to her call. Again she called; ‘Who’s there?’ This time there came a soft and smothered sound from below, as though one fetched a heavy sigh. The lady’s hand grew cold, and her breath came short; but she had a dauntless spirit, and said to herself, ‘Tis but the night wind in the trees.’ She waited. Just as the last stroke of the hour sounded, she called aloud for the third time, ‘Who is there?’ And in the stillness an awful voice came up fiom the darkness, saying; ‘I am here.’ The lady shrieked and fled downstairs. When she entered the room again, where her companions were sitting in the pleasant fire-light, she was pale and cold as a corpse. When her lover ran to meet her, she held him off and stared at him as if she scarcely knew him. After that night she was changed. A secret fire within her seemed burning her away. Her old wild temper was gone. Her proud spirit drooped day by day, and the next Hallowe’en she lay a dying. All through the night she lay as if asleep, but when the clock began to toll for midnight she looked up. Like one startled and afraid, she panted, in a failing voice, ‘Who is there?
Only she heard the reply.
With a shriek she fell back dead.
Her future groom had indeed called. His name was Death.
Allhallow’s Eve, the night before All Saints’ Day, being the last joyous feast of the ecclesiastical year, before Advent, was anciently kept with cheerful sociability in many rural households, by rich and the poor. It was an occasion that seemed to mark the close of the harvest season, and the beginning of winter, the time of home delights, when the comforts of a well to-do life are enjoyed. There was, moreover, a superstitious notion that on this particular sight of the year (as on the Walpurgisnacht in Germany; which is made such a strange, wild time in Goethe’s ‘Faust’) all the fiends, imps, goblins, witches, and other un-blessed agents of supernatural power would come out and frisk about the world till daylight or cockcrow. Hence it was supposed to be a most favorable occasion for divining people’s fortunes by different methods of conjuration or chance experiment. In the south of Ireland it is usual for country people to hold their sportive meetings not on the night before November 1, or All Saints’ Day, but on the eve of November 2, which is All Souls’ Day, the day appointed by the Roman Catholic Church for a solemn service for the repose of the dead. The fairies of Celtic fancy are more frolicsome than wicked, and there is something graceful and amiable in the Irish popular superstitions, compared with the ghastly horrors of Teutonic and Scandinavian tradition. There is dipping for sixpences, to be caught up with the teeth at the bottom of a tub of water. There is bobbing for apples, fastened alternately with lighted candles around a hoop, suspended and kept twirling at the level of the lips, so that one risks being burnt in the attempt to snatch a morsel. There is, of course, the prescribed ordeal of burning pairs of chestnuts to represent pairs of lovers, and to show which of the two is destined to bounce off, or whether they shall remain constant to each other in one steady flame of affection. But the Irish festive fortune-tempters have another method peculiar to themselves. Three or four saucers are placed on the table, in one of which is laid a ring, which denotes marriage; in the second a lump of clay, signifying death; and into the third is poured water, the meaning of which is the sea-that is emigration across the Atlantic. There may be a fourth saucer, containing salt, which means the the person is to be preserved, during the year, from all those fates. A man or woman is blind folded, and the saucers are then changed or shifted, after which he or she is bidden to lay hands upon one of them. The one so accidentally touched is a sure token of what will befall him or her within the next twelvemonth.
Gympie Times and Mary River Mining Gazette (QLD) 29th Oct. 1896 p. 4 A Singular Revolt in Galway (Times, September 13.) A singular revolt against ecclesiastical authority in the Roman Catholic parish of of Killannin, in the county Galway— a revolt which has been in existence for the last three years — has now assumed a formidable aspect. Some three or four years ago Dr. MacEvilly Archbishop of Tuam transferred the parish from the diocese of Tuam to that of Galway. The parishioners indignantly protested against the change, and the parish priest, the Rev. Father Coyne, strenuously opposed it by every possible means, and finally went to Rome to present an appeal to the Pope on the subject, his parishioners undertaking to defray the expenses of his journey. He complains that by the influence of ecclesiastics surrounding his Holiness, his appeal was intercepted and never brought before the proper tribunal, and that a decree had been obtained against him by misrepresentation and suppression of the facts. After waiting in Rome for over 12 months in the hope of having his case heard, he returned to Galway and was the object of a great popular demonstration. In the meantime, Dr. MacCormack, Bishop of Galway, took over the parish and appointed another priest, the Rev. Father Conry, to administer it.
The parishioners built up the chapel doors with masonry and secured the windows, and before mass could be celebrated in it the building had to be broken open amidst a scene of great excitement, by a party armed with crowbars and pickaxes, protected by the police with fixed bayonets and loaded rifles. Some of the parishioners repudiated the right of Bishop MacCormack’s nominee, and an angry controversy, in which violent language was used on both sides, has raged ever since. The novel spectacle of two rival priests in the same parish is now presented. The parishioners are about equally divided, and one portion of them attends the ministrations of the Rev. Father Coyne, who celebrates mass in his house and performs the rites of marriage and baptism, while the other party attends the chapel.
In order to vindicate his authority and put an end to the opposition, Father Conry announced a public meeting on Sunday week, which was a failure. Another was organized for Sunday last, and the country was covered with placards calling on the people to assemble in their thousands to denounce ‘the Killannin Jumpers, Heretics, and Schismatics.’
A large crowd, headed by the Rev. Father Conry, assembled, and it was proposed to hold the meeting opposite the Rev. Father Coyne’s house, but that Rev. gentleman, surrounded by about 400 people, looked so menacing that it was thought expedient to hold it in front of Father Conry’s house. Father Conry presided, and motions were proposed calling upon the faithful to have no dealings with ‘these pompous heretics and schismatics,’ and recommending that neither the young men nor the women of the faith should marry or speak to them. Father Coyne’s supporters having come up when this resolution was passed are reported to have received it with roars of laughter, and the proceedings ended amid the shouts and yells of the rival parties.
The W. A. Record (Perth) 7th Sept, 1907 p4. Mr Marconi is engaged in perfecting the arrangements for receiving wireless telegraphic messages from Canada at the new station provided at Clifden, County Galway. The distinguished electrician believes that the station at Clifden is much more powerful and better than the one at Poldhu in Cornwall.
The Telegraph, Brisbane, Qld. 26th December 1928 p.6
Books Burned Galway Public Library The destruction of books belonging to the County Galway Public Libraries, following a report from the Archbishop of Tuam, the officially appointed censor to the Libraries Committee, led to discussion at the meeting of the committee. Mr. Lynch asked for a list of the books destroyed, as it was rumoured that some by George Bernard Shaw had been burned. The secretary said, “George Bernard Shaw is not burned, but they are put where they can be got only with the sanction of the sub-committee or this committee.” The books burned were strongly objected to by the Archbishop, and apart from the Archbishop’s views in having them destroyed he thought the committee did well. Father O’Dea said there was a lot of talk about this matter by people who did not know what they were talking about because they did not know what books had been burned, and these people wore not going to find out from the committee. There had been talk in “The Statesman’ about a priest in Galway having ordered Bernard Shaw’s books to be burned. No priest In Galway had done that. Mr. Lynch; Books by Arnold Bennett and Victor Hugo were destroyed. Father O’Dea: If we object to his notion the Archbishop of Tuam is condemned. He is the censor. One member of the committee proposed that the books be destroyed, and it was seconded and passed, and I do not think it is anybody’s business to be concerned further. It was only the business of the Archbishop as censor. Mr. Lynch said the doctrine of infallibility and impeccability did not arise when they referred to the Archbishop of Tuam as censor. Father O’Dea; Whose Judgment, then, is to be final in the matter? Mr. Lynch: You know he does not read any of them. There is a big principle involved. Tomorrow, we might get an attack on books on sociology. If the Archbishop is going to give an undertaking that he will read any particular book, I will agree to his decision. Mr. Pringle: The only alternative is to rescind the resolution appointing him as censor. Father O’Dea:
Then we would all get out of the committee. The Chairman: That would mean the bursting up of the committee and the scheme. We will not agree to any change in the censorship, except it might be well to have a discussion by the sub-committee on the selection of books. This was agreed to. The Free State Censorship Bill certainly promises to add to the gaiety of the nation (writes the Irish, correspondent of the “Manchester- Guardian”). In the debate on the second reading one of the two ablest members of the cabinet Professor O’Sullivan, the Minister for Education, preserved a discreet silence. The other, Mr. Hogan, the Minister for Agriculture, expressed a lively sympathy with those who oppose the censorship of books. Still worse, he made fun of the Bill and suggested that it was undesirable to limit its scope to sexual morality, as the Minister for Justice wishes to do. He alleged that all the pornographers between them have not done so much harm to Irish morality as certain, political writings which sought to show when an oath is not an oath and when, robbery is the height of patriotism. The Minister for Justice, Mr. Fitzgerald Kennedy, had the painful task of closing the debate immediately after his colleague’s amazing speech. He made it plain that he would not agree to exclude hooks from the Jurisdiction of the censor, but suggested that it was only “cheap” editions of objectionable books that were in danger. Balzac and Aristophanes would, he said be safe. No member of the Dail, except professor Thrift, ventured to allude even distantly to the ban on the birth-control controversy. It was therefore not surprising to see that Bill allowed its second reading without division in spite of the anxiety expressed by members every party. In spite of the hostile criticism of the Minister’ for Agriculture and In spite of the refusal of the Minister in charge to promise any amendment beyond limiting the scope of the Bill to sexual morality
The Daily News and Evening Chronicle (Sydney, NSW) 3rd Nov. 1848 p.1
There is enough in the brief space of one week to show how the war of extermination is sustained, legislatively and executively, against the people. A letter from the Rev. Mr Mullarky says; This townland is now made the theatre of many a melancholy and heart rending scene. The whole townland, I may say, presents the appearance of a battlefield the day after the fight. Nothing is to be seen but the shattered ruins of what were so lately the abodes of men. No less than thirty-three families, numbering in all one hundred and forty-five human beings, have been thrown on the world. It would be impossible for me to give a full and fair description of the wretched and deplorable condition of these unfortunate creatures stretched along ditches and hedges – many of them children and decrepit old parents, falling victims to cold, hunger and destitution.
The Limerick and Clare Examiner, received during the past week, gives from a special correspondent an account of wholesale evictions in the Kilrush union. It;
brings frightful details of the clearance system in unhappy Clare, and communicates the awful fact, that since last November one-thousand houses have been levelled with the ground in the Kilrush union.
The same journal, and under the same date states; We have been informed that upwards of one hundred tenant farmers have received notice to quit in the neighbourhood of Broadford.
On Thursday, says another journal, ten families were ejected, under the superintendence of Dragoons, from the property, near Loughrea, of Mr. P. Connelan, who resides at Coolmore, county Kilkenny brother to Mr. Corry Connelan, Private Secretary to the Castle.
The Leinster Express and able Conservative organ, had during the past week, the following announcement; More evictions at Clonaheen; On Saturday last the sub sheriff the Queen’s County, John A. Fitzgerald Esq., accompanied by 100 constabulary, under Sub-Inspector G.S.Hill, and a company of the 71st Regt. accompanied by Capt. Colville, proceeded to the townland of Clonaheen, and ejected twenty-one families, numbering more than eighty individuals, including an old woman over ninety years of age! This property has been most fertile in the production of outrages; and this proceeding, especially at this season of the year, when the people had good crops, is not likely to diminish crime, or remove its causes.
This is a portion, a small portion only, of the published records of the week’s extermination.
The Age, Melbourne, Vic. 11 Sept. 1858 p.5 (From the Times Correspondent.) Dublin, Saturday June 19th. The fine steamer Indian Empire, which was to leave Galway on the 18th June, with the first mails from Ireland direct to the United States, while on her passage round from Southampton to Galway to take on board the mails, and when close on St. Margaret’s Rocks, was run hard ashore by the pilot who had charge of her from Southampton. Fortunately, however, the spot where she struck was not dangerous, and the ship eventually floated off and proceeded to Galway, having sustained but trifling damage and such as will not impair or otherwise prevent her from sailing on her appointed date. The authorities in Galway, on learning the particulars of the vessel’s going ashore, caused the pilot to be arrested, and after undergoing a preliminary investigation, he was committed to prison on a charge of having wilfully and knowingly run the Indian Empire on a hidden rock, the ship being in his charge at the time.
The people of Galway have had to endure another disappointment – only, however, a temporary one. On a close examination of the Indian Empire it was ascertained that some trifling repairs were required, which, owing to the slowness of the workmen, would, it was feared, necessitate the postponement of her sailing till this evening. The mail sent by this conveyance was very small – not 1000 letters, the average number being from 12,000 to 15, 000. The somewhat sinister accident which befel the steamship on her first entrace into Galway Bay has created quite a sensation here, and the result of the trial of the two pilots is looked for with no ordinary anxiety. The following narrative of the transaction is condensed from the Evening Mail.-
“She was boarded at Blackhead by two men, representing themselves as regular pilots, who undertook to guide her safely to her moorings. It was night, but calm and cloudless, and in the twilight of a summer’s sky landmarks and objects at sea, familiar to to the experienced mariner’s eye, were distinctly visible. The vessel was taken in charge by those men, whose bearing, however, was so little satisfactory or assuring to the captain that (contrary, it is said, to their advice) he slackened her speed to one-third of the rate at which he had been steaming. It was well that he did so, for in less than half an hour after they took the helm she struck upon a rock, and there remained for two hours before she could be relieved. Had she been going with all her steam up at the moment of the collision, there can be little doubt that she would, at least, have received irreparable injury. Happily, however, no material damage was sustained and she has this day departed, we trust, notwithstanding the omen melioribus fatis. The rock of St. Margaret, which was so near being disastrous to the enterprise, is so far out of the usual course by which ships approach or leave the port of Galway, that more than half a century has passed since any vessel was known to have come in contact with it. Its place is well known on the charts. It is, moreover, marked by a large buoy, so conspicuous that Captain Courtney decried it at a distance of a mile, and called the attention of one of the self-styled pilots to it. But that trusty guardian assured him it was only a small boat; and then there was scarcely time to order the engineers to back the ship when she came bump (sic.) upon the rocks. Other indications of wilful blindness have been mentioned, but we content ourselves for the present with those which have been proved in a public court. They present a case full of suspicion. A numerous bench of magistrates, comprising men of all the varieties of our social and political state, have committed the two pilots for trial at the approaching assizes. There was no difference of opinion on that subject. Whether it was through criminal neglect or ignorance equally criminal, or from a still more nefarious motive than either, that so untoward an event has been brought to pass, we leave to the investigations of justice to ascertain. We hope that a strict and searching inquiry will be made, and that neither pains or expense will be spared to trace it to the source.”
Another Dublin journal (the Express) deals more mysteriously with the conduct of the pilots:- “It remains for a jury to decide whether they were guilty or not of the crime of intending to destroy the steamer. It seem to be the general opinion in Galway that the facts cannot be accounted for except on the presumption of their guilt. This, however, should be left to the decision of a jury of their countrymen. If they should be found guilty, the crime is one of the foulest on record. But if they are guilty, others are guilty too. If they did run the steamer on the rock intentionally, they were the agents of a diabolical conspiracy, which should be traced out; and, if the chief criminals can be detected, no punishment would be too severe for them. Suspicion points to Liverpool as the seat of this conspiracy. The motives assigned are commercial jealousy, and the self-interest of parties engaged in the Liverpool shipping trade. Should this prove to be the case, which we trust it may not, for the credit of our civilisation and the honor of our humanity, it would furnish the strongest possible argument in favour of the enterprise of Mr Lever. If those who are most capable of judging did not apprehend that it would be completely successful – that it would at least attract all the Irish traffic and especially all the Irish emigrants, and so interfere materially with their own interest – they would not adopt such atrocious means to defeat the project. Base, horrible and execerable as the attempt was – assuming that it was made, – it furnishes a most satisfactory augury of auccess, especially as it was so providentially and so mercifully frustrated.”
The Tablet takes a cooler view of the question, and thinks it is hardly credible – however strong the suspicion and evidence may be – that the vessel could have been purposely run on a sunken rock by the pilots. The Tablet is inclined to believe that the accident can only be attributed to the natural defects of the harbor and that these should be remedied before perfect success can be achieved in the way of Transatlantic communication between Galway and America.
The Burren and Beyond 