Galway Notes

The Tuam Herald, Saturday, February 9, 1918.

(From our own Correspondent.)

Robert Martin, of Ross, the writer of many popular songs, the best remembered of which will be probably Ballyhooley, was a well known personality in London and Dublin and sister, just deceased, Miss Violet Martin, thus describes her talented brother: — "Robert was a nervous, warm—hearted boy, dark—eyed, romantic looking; the sensitive nature that expanded to affection was always his and made him cling to those who were kind to him." He spent his early years at Ross and his early schoolroom work there was got through with the ease that may be imagined by any one who has known his quickness in assimilating ideas and his cast iron memory. A strange feature in his early education and in the establishment at Ross was James Tucker, an ex—hedge schoolmaster, whose long face, blue shaven chin, shabby black clothes and gift for poetry have passed inextricably into the annals of the household. He entered it first at the time of the Famine, ostensibly to give temporary help in the management and accounts of school which Miss Marian Martin had started for the tenants' children; he remained for many years and filled many important positions. He taught the Martin children the three R's with rigor and perseverance; he wrote odes for their birth days; he was controller in chief of the diary. Later on when Mr. Martin, the father of Robert and Violet, was appointed Poor Law Auditor, Tucker filled in the blue abstracts of the Auditor's work in admirably neat columns. Such was the old family teacher.

The famine ruined the Martins, for they stuck to the people, exacted no rents during it's continuance and accordingly suffered. It left its legacy of debt and lowered rental.

Miss Martin described the Galway Trench and Nolan election and its effect on the Martin tenantry; "The polling place for that part of the county was in Oughterard, about five miles away; my father drove there on the election day and on the bill above the town was met by a man who advised him to turn back. A troop of cavalry glittered in the main street and the crowd seethed about them. My father drove on and saw a company of infantry keeping the way for Mr. Arthur Guinness, afterwards Lord Ardilaun, as he conveyed to the poll a handful of his tenants from Ashford at the other side of Lough Corrib to vote for Captain Trench, he himself walking in front with the oldest of them on his arm. During that morning my father ranged through the crowd incredulously asking for this and that tenant, unable to believe that they had deserted him. It was a futile search with a few valiant exceptions the Ross tenants, following the example of the rest of the constituency, voted according to the orders of the church and Captain Nolen was elected by a majority of four to one." It was the end of the landlords' power in Galway indeed all through Ireland.