Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-01-13
Joyes, Kirwans. Martin,
Morris Skerret, French"
AN IRISH BRUTUs.


| and entrusted his son. Walter Lynch. with an
important sum of money with which to pro-
ceed there and purchase, and return with a
S Sut obtaned ia n credit and the COMPANY of the
Spanish merchants nephew in returning
to receive payment at Galway. Young
Lynch conceived the idea of hiding
his prohigacy from his friends by muir
dering the agent and bribing his crew into
silence, which he did. He returned, was re-
ceived with honor, prospered. was betrothed to
titled and beautiful lady, but on confession
of the conspiracy by one of the sailors who
was with HIM, he was apprehended, given sum-
mary trial by his own father, condemned, and
DESPITE the fury of the populace, which had
of his mothers powerful friends, was heroically
executed at his own fathers hands. The half
forgotten record of the event relates: They
(the mothers friends who attempted to pre-
vent the execution) flew to arms, and pro-
digious concourse soon assembled to support
them, whose outcries OF mercy for the culprlt
would have shaken any nerves less hrm tnan
those of the Mayor of Galway. He exhorted
them to weld submission to the laws OF their
country; but finding all his efforts fruitless to
accomplish the ends OF Justice at the accus-
toned place, and by the usual hands, he, by
desperate victory over parental feeling, resolved
himself to pay the sacrifice which he had vowed
to pay on its altar.
Still retaining a hold Of his unfortunate son,
he mounted with him by winding stair within
the building, that lei to an arched window over
looking the street, which he saw hlled with the
maddened populace. Here he secured the end
of the rope-which had been previously fixed
around the neck of his son-to an iron staple
which projected from the wall, and, after taking
from him last embrace, he launched him into
eternity The intrepid magistrate expected
instant death from the populace; but the peo-
pie seemed so overawed or confounded by the
magnanimous act, that they retired slowly and
peaceably to their several dwellings"
AN UNHoNoRED HERO.
To my mind this act of exalted heroism,
standing alone in the annals of sacred or pro.
fame history a sacrifice made, not only with
out the prospect of any form of reward, but
with the certainty of instant and horrible
death. and wholly without the not altogether
unseltish motive OF Brutus, or the certain ex-
pectation of divine personal approval inspiring
Abraham is a surprising tribute to abstract
Justice Incompatible in its nature, and incom-
parably Incompatible in a time and age when
Justice was too often subserved to the piques and
prejudices of power. But because this man,
who so loved his country that the preservation
OF its laws, through the most awful conceivable
struggle of the human heart, was infinitely
more sacred a thing than human ties of mex
pressibly solemn tenderness, was an 1rishman,
and did not have a Latin name. Greek name,
or Hebrew name, to jingle in pedantic pratt
tie, the act fact and man are lost from among
the transcendent deeds examples and person
alties of men. 1t is a curious commentary upon
the vagarous applicability of human thought to
seryiceable incidents, that TINS act OF moral
grandeur alone gave an irradicable appellation
to that most abhorrent misuse of punishment
in the name of justice, and enthusiastically
if not exclusively American institution Of
horror and crime, our notorious lynch law.
But Galway is more noted for its fish-wives
than its heroes or history. There are perhaps
800 in the old seaport CITY, They are not, as
has been generally supposed, wives of the
equally celebrated fishermen of the Claddagh;
but they sell the fish these men bring back
from the coves and the sea. They have no
other means OF livelihood, and wish none. If
any are mothers you cannot discover that fact
wiz knows
loved, or if any ever knew as we know. the
home, neither can be ascertained- What they
grow out OF into their state and honor in what
is literally their calling, no human can know.
Here they are from generation to generation,
Just as you and 1 see them to-day, a wild,
tender, savage, merry, lawless, honest mob,
dressed, or half-dressed, as females, grotesquely
Indifferent from women, radiantly Indifferent
to either man or woman, incomparably brave
and more enduring than any men. As know
TO my own despair, before amity was estab-
outrageous and indescribable blackguards on
earth; and yet defy sny honest analyst to find
an atom of viciousness beneath their soul
blasting speech.
PICTURESQUE SPOT.
The Claddagh fishermen came in with the
early tide with their catches" of herring,
hake, cod and conger eels. Then the ancient
ana picturesque flsh-market, with gables lean
ing over it. wicket-windows peering into it, and
shadowy arches leading out of it. and with the
almost hiding the blue of the
sea. is alive with startling colors, forms and
sound. The dexterity with which the fish are
handled and cleaned by these fish-wives, the
shrill, wild calling from one to another, the
wordy wars between them and fishermen about
weight. quality and luck. and between them
early buyers as to price, the bedlamite ballads
that are hurled upon the air as the cleaning |
knives fash and the scales fly like driven sleet,
and the torrents of fierce, though secretly
merry billingsgate and abuse, with passes of
as if for murder. cloutings from
conger eels, rushings and drubbings bestowed
upon innocent strangers or meddlesome in |
truders, are something marvellous, indis- |
awful and utterly beyond compre- |
the larger fish are shipped to Dublin; and |
enough graduate of the band, one |
Molly Noon, parsonage of stupendous infiu- |
ence and girth, practically controls the busi- |
ness; but the herring are hawked about Gal |
way by the fsh-wives in way to startle one
new to their strange ways With their herring
skib," or basket, upon their bare heads, with |
their bare, brown, fat breasts naked to the |
waist. barefooted in winter and summer. with
legs bare to the knees, divested of their cloaks
and only covered with petticoats of tuck
fannel," ," with anything at all convenient pro-
tecting the shoulders and arms, they move with
incredible rapidity from point to point all their
merriment gone; with an anxious, terrified
look in their faces; and as they glide and dart
and sweep along, their unearthly cries OF
Ern-n-ngs!' meet, cross,
echo and re-echo, until it seems that, from the
Mountains of Conemara to the
purple hills of Clare. a thousand monster CALI
opes have been brought together for contest,
such wild, fierce choristers are they.
A RARE OLD TOWN.
But at other times how charmingly they fit |
INTO the picturesque scenes of the rare old
.own. Wander in the night and you will come
upon them in groups wrapped In their black
Draideens, silent as hooded monks at prayer. |
In this tap-room and that they give you
yoodly company. Buy for them their porter
md stout, and listen. You will hear the
thoughts that ever came to man. Tramp in and |
put of hooks and underneath arches in the |
gray of mornings You will stumble on dozen |
IF them squatted and crouched upon the stone |
Die, and the smoke of their pipes curling out |
IF their braideen hoods, for all the world like a
1iminutive bunch Of tepess. They are un- |
to law, yet no law could |
Drey yet they are scrupulously honest. |
They know no such thing as we count |
for morality, yet their virtue is immaculate. |
No such drinkers of spirits live, yet there is |
way is closed upon them, yet they do not trans |
yress the incest laws of hospitality among |
5ownspeople, while utterly without awe of |
hing or being upon or above the EARTH not |
even royalty itself; for was it not my good |
friend, venerable Nell Morris herself, who as |
Victoria's son, the Duke of Edinburgh, was |
Darading the streets of Galway in 1885, on the |
occasion of little lofty distribution of charity
20 famine sufferers of that year-gave the illus
,rious ninny glorious hug. and then shaking |
him out of his paralysis with her two great |
hands, with an inimitable wink and leer, |
-oared at him:
"Yer welcome to ould Galway, me buck |
EDGAR L. wAKEMAN.
Breaking the News.