The Dis’n’Gal

On the grounds of our campus lie forgotten some relics of a not too distant past. A past of war and piety. Naturally the Lit’n’Deb was closely associated with these forgotten ruins in its earlier form as the town’s Fraternity for Discourse in Galvia.

Beyond the concourse building and the terminus of Distillery Road lies the site of the St. James’ Chapel. In the last century it had been reduced in status to a mere cattle shed which no doubt also served at the time as a redoubt of the college’s Ag. Science students before they too went along the way of chivalry and disappeared from the halls of UCG. In any event sometime early this century the college authorities in a fit a pique - no doubt fearing the establishment of a college bar in this shebeen - demolished and replaced it with, well, nothing. ‘Vandalism for Morality’ being the slogan of the day. Though the cattle lost a dry, fashionably retro-chic, Gothic shelter - despite the periodic midnight eviction by inebriated scholars - the bovine misfortunates did gain an unobstructed view of the Corrib.

What the Lit ‘n’ Deb thought of this is perhaps recorded in the minutes but that does not concern us here; rather we flit back through the wastes of time until find ourselves in the year of 1510. An interesting year it was, the second documented case of industrial espionage was recorded when an indignant Peter Henle of Nuremberg discovered his invention of the watch had been stolen by some enterprising Swiss clock makers; Aodh Dubh O’Domhnaill of Tir Connel went on holiday to Rome on the pretext of pilgrimage though the following year was slightly more eventful, when on his return he discovered his wife pregnant; and the future Hip Hop music was guaranteed by the introduction of the first slaves to America. 1510 was also the year that James Lynch Fitz Stephen, the mayor of Galway built the chapel in honour of St. James the Great. Its foundation was not without controversy. In 1876 an old codex was discovered in an antique booksellers in New York, it was the loosely bound and tattered minutes of the Dis’n’Gal. Unfortunately no sooner discovered then it was again lost. Yet for prosperity some record of the debates was transcribed, The Dis’n’Gal met not far from the modern Kirwan Theatre in Newcastle Castle. A surviving wall and reduced tower (now serving as the college’s radioactive waste store) standing between the present day Philosophy Dept. and the canteen are all that remain of this not insubstantial fortified residence. Then in the snug upper hall, outside the walls of Galway and beyond the corporation’s jurisdiction, public debate uncensored by lord or cleric held sway.

This small gathering of orators fell in wrath that year on an attempt by the aforementioned mayor to invite the new King Henry VIII to Galway. It may have been a successful Norman merchant colony but its loyalty to a distant crown did not appreciate testing. The young blades of the merchant families assembled in that hall were even more upset when it was made known that there was to be a river pageant ‘a la Thames’ on the Corrib in front of their very meeting place and a pavilion was to be built to shelter the royal party. For many gathered at the Dis ‘n’ Gal the prospect of this uncomfortably close presence of the Royal Standard was totally unacceptable threat to the established freedoms and privileges of Galway.

Many agreed in the town but dared not dissent openly for fear of thwarting Fitz Stephens’ ambition. This did not deter the stalwarts of the fraternity. They denounced the intended royal visit, covering the town walls during the small hours of darkness with bills denouncing the invitation, much to the distress of the Magistrate of Buildings. So much so that Fitz Stephen threatened the freedom of speech by surrounding the tower house with his retainers who attempted to heckle the speakers into silence but they, being merely products of the town’s school of mechanical studies, were no match for the indigenous obstructionists of the fraternity who were quite happy to turn their attention on new prey. The Mayor even went to the extent of trying to close the inn where the fraternity often ended their nights staring into cups of cheap imported Spanish wine. That didn’t work either. He had forgot that most meetings were awash with tokens, for free tankards of a beer from the New World, that were redeemable in a bar run by one of the Ferocious O’Flatherty’s. A bar he dared not close. Letters were even send to a fly sheet published in the Dublinia, known for its moral stance on the selling of indulgences, papal corruption, that the world was round and berating the Exchequer for its fiscal ineptitude in its management of the pipe rolls. Despite its lack of concern for the west, which it quite properly considered to be beyond the Pale, it followed the argument keenly - for awhile. Soon its letters page was once again swamped by its traditional incumbents of first cuckoo sightings and complaints about a plan to built a new two lane dirt track way between the city and Dundalk with moneys from the Christendom Cohesion Fund; money many felt that should be spent on crusades against the Turk or the redecoration of the Sistine Harem not encouraging traffic, travelling peddlers, and the polluting odour of all that horse dung.

In any event the King got the hint, and decided to concentrate his attentions on finding a long necked woman to wed while leaving the charms of the west of Ireland to be discovered by his suffering soldiers in later years. The Mayor annoyed at having been denied the opportunity to ensure Galway’s place as a natural focus for any future royal progress, and its associated tourist spin offs, had to content himself with the lower income market of religious pilgrimages. Unfortunately the Virgin was block booked until 1879 but that did not stop him from converting the royal pavilion into a small church dedicated to St. James believing him to have the ear of Mary in the hope of a quick visitation. It didn’t happen. The Dis’n’Gal had won. A humiliating defeat for Fitz Stephens but tempered later by the knowledge that he had outlived the fraternity which several years later ruptured on the motion that ‘Luther was a dour old pus who deserved the pox’.

Justin Walsh

Postgraduate