Great Galway Man Friend of Royalty's

Galway Observer, July 7, 1930.

East and West

Mr. D. L. Kelleher, in his book, "Ireland of the Welcomes" tells the tale of an old Galway family. Here is what this versatile author says of the Martin's; —

At Ballnahinch Castle, in Connemara, beside the lake and between the sweet plantations and the mountains, the Martins, held sway. They owned half the country round and grew richer and richer in their generations. They were not really Irish at all, but had come over in the thirteenth century and had taken their chance. Luck and compromise were there guiding stars. When Cromwell sent word that they would lose the hazard if they continued as Roman Catholics they sent a message back that it would be all right, they would become Protestants. Thereafter prosperity crowded upon them. They absorbed the land of the chieftains O'Flaherty in a series of spoof lawsuits. O'Flaherty won on a sort of appeal, but it was only a technical success. After a while the Martins could drive for forty miles from their own door through all the varying rock, moorland and dazzling lake—scenes of Connaught, and still be on their own estate.

Here a family gifted with nature's blessings, rolling in richers, the virtual rulers of thousands of people; distinction, nobility of character, endurance, all the boasted fruits of breeding from the good old stock should be evident. But these boasts are a fraud; there is no truth in breeding where it becomes a boast.

All the same, here is "Humanity Martin," at last, to send up a rocket form the deeps. His dueling escapades and his chivalry will give the Martins a romantic and semi—permanence when their breed is extinct. Odd, horrid, inevitable that the "foolish" win fame and remembrance so often, while the virtuous vanish with the plain deal coffin for ever.

"A good woman has no history," says the proverb. "It is so very dull, being good," says history to virtue. But what can a man or a woman do, being alive and alert? So Christianity came in with "forgiveness" written upon its banners, as the only way and the only logic, where life has none.

But "Humanity Martin"? He was the last and most luminous of the family. It was King George IV. His personal friend, who gave him the flattering name, because he pioneered the agitation against cruelty to animals in England, and, as a member of the London Parliament, succeeded in getting the Act on the Statute Book. In Ireland, as in England, he had seen, how often the poor beast suffered from cruel, thoughtless herds and drovers.

"A woman, a dog and a mulberry tree, The more that you beat them, the better they be".

It was unchallenged truth, at least so far as the dog, the ass, and the ox were concerned. Martin was 68 when the bill to prevent "the cruel and improper treatment of cattle" received the Royal assent. It was the apex day of the Martin history.

The crash soon came. Warm—hearted generosity burst in "Humanity" he gave away money and lavished his substance in hospitality. It was the insane reaction after the centuries of crafty holding. His son, the last of the line to keep the family plate together for a while, broke his heart over the Irish famine and caught the cholera and died after a visit to the dying peasants in the sheds at Clifden.

The Caravans' Pass

So Ballinahinch Castle went to the brokers, the wind sang banshee songs over its unlit hearths; the birds abandoned it, bewildered at the empty windows that once were their providence of crumbs and morsels. Why, oh why, when they had grown so good, kind and thoughtful, were the ancient Martins taken by the neck and flung out of all this world's favours? Virtue, says the preacher, is very laudable, but you must not start too late! Exeunt, therefore, the Martins out of the easy, sporting, fishing, riding, dueling, gaming, well—fed, well—lubricated luxury in which no man of them need earn a living since he could always rely upon the hat—in—hand deference of the dispossessed, chivvied natives around him. Emigrants they are themselves at last, like the tens of thousands of others that set out from Galway before the, hunger—driven, to the ends of the earth. So peace to thy cold stones. Ballynahinch, peace and rest!

Until, one day in 1926, a vision of sallow faced women and tall turbans over men's bronzed faces comes down the road. This caravan moving up from the East is a mystical sight for the folk still watching their own caravans moving South to Galway en route for the emigrant ship. What transfers of values in this, with East flowing over to the West and West drifting away further West again? But look! The caravan is up to the castle door of Ballynahinch, stately moving, as though this were the hot Indian day, with no word spoken in the hypnotic sun!

Kumor Shri Ranjitsinhii, the cricketer and prince it is who is the leader of the migration from the East. He will stock the lake with fish, shoot over the moors, give a touch of Oriental splendor to the old Martin home. The hand that lifted the hearts of schoolboys and men as happy as schoolboys a million times when he lifted that but at Lords or the Oval will caress the water for truth in unwatched Connemara. It is charming to be an Indian Prince, with skill and taste and riches; and delightful, after India and the handchapping cricket—fields, to hear only the tiny noises of the leaves and the thin whisper of the water under one's falling line in Connemara.

[Note. —— Prince Ranjitsinhii Mahanajah of Nawanger began his cricket career in 1895 with Sussex. In one season he scored 2,780 runs with an average of 60. His three addresses are: Nawanger, Staines, and Ballynahinch.]