Galway, a municipal and parliamentary borough of Ireland, a seaport, and county of itself, stands at the mouth of the river Corrib, on the north shore of Galway Bay, 50 miles NNW. of Limerick, and 127 W. of Dublin by rail. The old town of Galway is poorly built and irregular. In the wall of a house here is the 'Lynch Stone,' bearing a skull and crossbones, and commemorating a mayor of Galway, James Lynch Fitzstephen, commonly called 'Mayor Lynch,' who, in 1493, like Brutus of old, condemned his own son to death for the murder of a Spaniard, and to prevent his being rescued, actually caused him to be hanged from a window of the old prison on that site. Hence some have derived Lynch Law (q.v.). The new town consists of well-planned and spacious streets, and is built on a rising-ground which slopes gradually toward the sea and the river. A suburb, called Claddagh, is inhabited by fishermen, who exclude all strangers from their society. Galway is the see of a Catholic bishop, but is in the Protestant Episcopal diocese of Tuam. The principal buildings are the cruciform church (Episcopal) of St Nicholas (1320), St Augustine's
Catholic Church (1859), monasteries, nunneries, the county court-house, barracks, prison, infirmary, &c. Queen's College (1849) has eighteen professors and about a hundred students; its quadrangular buildings are spacious and handsome. Galway has flour-mills, a distillery, a foundry, extensive salmon and sea fishing, a good harbour, with docks that admit vessels of 500 tons, and a lighthouse. During 1858-64 a line of steamers plied between Galway and the United States. The exports consist mainly of agricultural produce, wool, and black marble. Galway returns one member to parliament. Pop. (1851) 20,686; (1881) 15,471; (1891) 13,746 (nine-tenths are Catholics).
Galway was taken by Richard de Burgh in 1232, and the ancestors of many of the leading families now resident in this quarter settled here about that time. From the 13th till the middle of the 17th century the place continued to rise in commercial importance. In 1652 it was taken by Sir Charles Coote after a blockade of several months; and in July 1691 it was compelled to surrender to General Ginkell. See Hardiman's History of the Town and County of Galway (Dublin, 1820).