Williamsgate Street: An Choiste Bodhar - The Deaf Coach

For four hundred and sixteen years, from 1236 through 1652, this street was the main entrance to the medieval walled city of Galway, The entrance to the city consisted of an enormous citadel, a fortress, with a massive gate slung between two formidable stone towers, and a portcullis, an iron-clad portal, that was lifted by turning two huge wheels, winding the chains that lifted the heavy gate. Above the gate, the city fathers had a plaque installed that stated in huge carved letters, ‘Neither O’ nor Mac shall strut nor swagger, within the walls of Galway’, meaning of course that no person with an Irish name, such as O’Neill, O’Flaherty, McSullivan or McGuinness, could be inside the gates of Galway after sundown, on pain of death. Well, that was fine, until someone of the Normans died and needed to be taken away by the undertaker, usually an Irish undertaker, for the Normans were too uppity for such base trades as Funeral director, and so the tradition was born that a special coach would come to the city, to collect the deceased and bring him and or her to the Augustinian, the Franciscan or the Dominican abbey, each abbey being located outside the city walls. Galway city was destroyed by the Cromwellian army in 1652 and the fourteen tribes or merchant families who created the wealth of the city were expelled, fleeing Galway to settle in faraway places, America, Australia, Canada, Barbados and all across Europe. Today, when a member of one of those merchant families passes away, no matter where in the world, whether in Europe, or America, a coach is said to pass through the place where the city gate once stood, coming to pick up the soul of the deceased. No one can see the coach, or hear the iron-shod hooves of the horses, or the iron-rimmed wheels of the coach, save the immediate family of the deceased. The ‘Choiste Bodhar’, or ‘Deaf Coach’ still comes to Galway, a terrifying sight and sound for those that can see or hear it, but of no consequence for us ordinary mortals! Oh, and yes, it’s always driven by a headless coachman…maybe one of those headless Spaniards, moonlighting!