Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/470

 436 Col/ectanea.

was shown ineffaceably marked on a stone long since covered up and now forgotten. The real site of the battle, however, is said to have been in Cam in Moygownach.i The date of these tragic events is not, I believe, accurately fixed. MacFirbis ^ adds it as a sort of postscript to his Hy Fiachrach. It was probably in the fourteenth century, before the Burkes were established all through the Barretts' lands.

Lynch. — I had not intended to touch on the legends of Galway city but must briefly allude to one so locally famous though a mere variant of a story widespread and as old as the legend of Brutus and his sons. How much truth lies behind it I have been unable to find, as I know of no contemporary records, and the early hsts of city magistrates in western Ireland I have found most unreliable, notably in the case of Limerick. It is said to have occurred in 1492, a period of extensive trade and great prosperity in Galway, which has left its mark on the Collegiate Church of St. Nicholas and many other buildings in " The City of the Tribes." The son of the mayor. Lynch, murdered, under aggravated circumstances, a Spaniard with whom he had long been on most friendly terms. His father brought him to trial, his guilt was established, and he was sentenced to death. Then an outburst of horror and pity carried away the minds of the citizens. The stern judge, unmoved by threats and heart-broken entreaties, would not reprieve the prisoner. He got to hear that there was an attempt to rescue his son and (being unable to find anyone to act as executioner) he hanged him, with his own hands, from the window of his house, in presence of the excited, but overawed and horror-stricken, crowd. A tablet, with a skull and cross- bones and a far later date, is reputed to commemorate the event, a modern tablet records the tale ; they are set in the ruins of the Lynch house, near St. Nicholas' Church and are familiar to all visitors to the city as well as the earlier and richly elaborate house of the unrelenting magistrate in the principal street.

Inish Bofin. — Guarim and Bosco were two fierce tyrants and


 * Ord. Survey Letters, vol. i. p. 295.

2 Genealogies, Tribes and Customs of Hy Fiachraih, pp. 336-9, ed. John O'Donovan.