Flanigan

Thus Galway has its legends — as many as an Italian town. A ghastly monument of the one just related—a skull and cross-bones, executed in black marble, with the inscription, ’Remember death! Vaniti of vanitii, and all but vaniti”—is situated in Lombard Street, commemorating an example of more than Roman severity.

Suffice it to say that a map of Galway, dated 1651, informs us that the city was then entirely surrounded by walls, defended by fourteen towers, entered by as many gates, and not only the centre of a great trade, but the seat of many rich and powerful families.

Adjoining the city of Galway—a small bridge divides them—is the village of Claddagh, with a population composed entirely of fishermen and their families. With an exclusiveness not to be expected from their humble condition, they hold themselves quite aloof from all inhabitants of the neighboring city and country, save in the relations of trade. Until quite recently a king, elected at certain intervals, administered justice, and from his judgment there was no appeal. Its fisheries are now declining in importance, and its population gradually decreasing. Instead of a king, a sombre policeman now represents the majesty of the law, which, however, is seldom offended in the precincts of their own village. It consists of a group of thatched huts, from the doors of which emerge chickens, pigs, and children, and one is puzzled to know how, amidst such rags and filth, these ruddy youngsters retain their bright eyes and faces, radiant with health and beauty. Here, as elsewhere in Ireland, beggars start up as it were from the ground, and pour upon the passer-by those exuberant blessings which, in imaginative richness, remind one of the Orientals. “May God take hould o’ ye!” might be received as a blessing or curse according to the state of one’s conscience; but ”May the Holy Ghost walk beside ye the rest o’ yer days!” “May the Son o’ Glory watch over ye!” with a thousand others of the same character, are expressions acceptable alike to saint and sinner. After exhausting my supply of small change I excused myself to one of these eloquent pleaders by saying I had not a copper, when he quickly returned, “May the Lord soon send ye one!”

A traveler’s satisfaction with the country he visits is generally proportioned to the length of his purse. If that be well filled, hotel bills made by the yard do not annoy him, and on every side he meets with a cheerful politeness and amiability which is all the more excessive because it knows it will be paid for. Flattered by the consideration shown him, he feels that he never was appreciated before, and is too much occupied with the pleasant contemplation of those virtues and charms universally attributed to him to perceive that as his heart is filled with satisfaction on one hand, his purse is depleted of gold on the other. But when one desires to see and know as much of the world as possible with limited means, the obsequiousness of attentive landlords and waiters is rather viewed as a gilded snare to increased expenditure, and the smiles and blessings of shop-men and beggars but insidious attacks upon the fair citadel of his purse. Chaffering over bills is a very sure way of breaking through the amiable surface and arriving at the rugged and wolfish nature beneath; disputing the charge for attendance with a landlord, and seeing it crop out—having increased its dimensions in the transfer—under the head of candles, or going to swell the price of a cup of tea or a bottle of wine, are sure ways of laying bare the treachery of men. Recommend a beggar to work or to the hospitality of a poor-house, or accuse a shop-keeper of cheating, and you will surely think the people among whom these incidents occur brutal, bad-tempered, and dishonest. Many an excellent dinner has been spoiled by too much anxiety as to its price. A predetermination to travel a certain route upon so many dollars has brought many a tourist to the end of it with the weary yet relieved sensation of one who has passed through a horrid nightmare, in which no scene has been fully enjoyed, no meal eaten with ease or pleasure, no night’s rest that was not either begun or terminated in the middle of it for the want of time, so that the recollection of the tour is a confused one of exorbitant hotel bills, of squabbles with coachmen, of fierce and deadly encounters with custom-house officers, all enveloped in one sad mist of fatigue.