Galway: Black's Guide to Ireland (1880's)

"In the course of our former rambles we have visited many towns remarkable for their antiquity that quite justifies the Milesian superlative "auld ancient;" but such a town, or relict of a town, as Galway, does not exist elsewhere in Ireland.

"Its situation is flat and unpicturesque, but the universality of red petticoats, and the same brilliant colour in most other articles of female dress, give a foreign aspect to the population, which prepares you somewhat for the completely Italian or Spanish look of most of the streets of the town." "In Galway", writes Kohl, "the metropolis of the west, and a Hesperian colony, he (the traveller) will find a quaint and peculiar city, with antiquities such as he will meet nowhere else. The old town is throughout of Spanish architecture, with wide gateways, broad stairs, and all the fantastic ornaments calculated to carry the imagination back to Granada and Valencia. Then the town, with its monks, churches, and convents, has a completely Catholic air; and the population of the adjoining country have preserved something of their picturesque national costume."

From the earliest times, and especially about the fourteenth century, and until a later period, extensive trade was carried on betwixt Spain and Ireland. Galway was always one of the principle ports frequented by foreigners. The richer merchants of the town made periodical visits to Spain, and returned with Spanish luxuries and Spanish ideas, the result of which was, that mansions in the Spanish style arose, and were filled with Spanish furniture, while the ladies sported in their dresses the bright colours and light textures of Spain. It is reasonable, too, to suppose that in many instances Spanish servant, seamen, and even workmen, formed alliances with the natives of the soil, and thus the population became not only in dress but in blood allied to their foreign visitors. Many of the houses built for the merchant princes of Galway still remain, though in a dilapidated state, having passed into the occupation of the poorest inhabitants. Truly, "Galway was a famous town when its Spanish merchants were princes; but their fine dwellings were at one time usurped and defaced by the rabble, and little remains of the interiors to shew their ancient glory." It is probably that, besides the Spaniards, the Italians also traded with Galway, and that banks were instituted by Jews from Lombardy. Little more than fifty years ago, "the tribes of Galway" claimed to themselves the exclusive right of exercising certain civil privileges.

One indignant writer in Dutton's Survey of County Galway (July 1792) remarks that

"Those advocates of the dignity of the thirteen tribes contend that their ancestors have been the original inhabitants of Galway, and that by right of inheritance no other are entitled to derive a privilege from any grant made in favour of their predecessors. Allowing them to be the aborigines of the town, does it follow that those other names or families who since settled in Galway are entitled to no other privileges but that of occasional visitors?"

During the last few years much improvement has taken place in the erection of modern buildings in Galway. Large shops have been built in the main streets, and several handsome residences have been erected in the suburbs among which may be noticed Lenaboy, the seat of James O'Hara, Esq., and Mount Vernon, the residence of T. M. Pearse Esq. The town which is admirably placed in a commercial point of view, in connection with the sea and the great lakes, Lough Corrib, and Lough Mask, etc. will increase in importance."