[Illustration: CASTLE KIRKE AND UPPER LOUGH CORRIB]
In the graveyard here you can see what is common in all Connaught up to the present day--tombstones carved with the insignia of the dead man's trade, the carpenter's plane and saw, the smith's hammer, and so forth.
Apart from this the road is over flat land, little raised above the level of Lough Corrib, till you near Galway, when it rises over low hills of limestone rock, in springtime blue with gentian, at all times singular enough with their flooring of stone. At the last rise you reach a view point, looking west from which the city comes suddenly into sight with its bay beyond, and beyond the bay the hills of Burren. It tells something of what Galway was that the name of this spot is _Bois le h-eadan_, "Hand to Brow", for here it was supposed that you would stop and shade your eyes to consider the glory that lay before you.
Little enough glory is there to-day; but the city keeps a picturesqueness at this distance, couching there at the outflow of the vast sheet of water which is comprised in Corrib and Mask; and that blue expanse of bay reaching up into the level land--brown rather than green, since bog and stone and scrub cover most of it--has a beauty all its own; and southward the eye follows with delight the open gap between the hills of Burren by the western sea, and that other line, Slieve Echtge, which divides the plain of Gort from the Shannon. Here was the boundary and pass between Connaught and Munster, the country of the O'Kellys, Hy Many; and no place in Ireland was so often fought over. As you go south from Athenry to Ennis, the whole landscape is studded with old castles and peel-towers, set for the most part in pairs, every one watching his neighbour, like players lined up at football.
Galway town, once you have entered it, is depressing beyond words, but also more picturesque than any town in Ireland. A hundred years ago it was the greatest port of the country, in its own way a rival to Bristol and Liverpool. Those were the days of small towns, and Galway numbered forty thousand people. To-day the population is barely fourteen thousand--but it is not the drop in numbers that signifies most. Go about the streets and you will find tall, solid buildings of black stone built very high, for the town was walled and space was scarce in it. Some of these were dwelling-houses, and over their doorways are the great scutcheons carved in stone belonging to this or that one of the thirteen "tribes"--Blakes, Lynches, Bodkins, Brownes, Skerrets, Kirwans, Morrises, Ffrenches, Martins, and the rest--names which to-day sound Irish of the Irish, yet which in truth belonged to English settlers of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries who established here a flourishing merchant community. In those early days the great trade was with Spain; for a glance at the map will show how short a run it is from the west of Ireland to that other western outpost of Europe--a run which can be made either way with the prevailing westerly wind. "Spanish Parade" keeps its memorial of that traffic, but more clearly is it preserved by a famous story. In the wall which surrounds the old Church of St. Nicholas is a stone engraven with skull and crossbones, and a recent inscription commemorating the austere virtue of James Lynch Fitzstephen, Mayor of Galway in 1493. The Mayor was a merchant in close commerce with Spain, and on one of his journeys he brought back with him a young Spaniard, son of his host and friend. But at home in Galway, quarrel broke out (it is said, over a lady) between Lynch's own son and his guest, and the Galway man stabbed the Spaniard. For his offence he was arraigned, and his father passed sentence of death; but a compassionate horror seized the townspeople, and none would execute the sentence. So, that justice might be done, the laws of hospitality asserted--and perhaps, too, lest there should be a break in the friendly relations with Spain--Lynch Fitzstephen hanged his son with his own hand.