City of the Tribes

The banner contains the crests of the fourteen tribes and is housed in St. Nicholas's Church. The middle one is not a family crest.

There is no hesitation in pressing the title into commercial service. This shop is in the main pedestrian area and sells souvenirs and the like.

For those whose experience of tribes is confined to the Red Indians (PC = Native Americans) remedial services are at hand.

The Tribes
The city bears the nickname City of the Tribes / Cathair na dTreabh, because fourteen "Tribes" (merchant families) led the city in its Hiberno-Norman period. The term Tribes was originally a derogatory phrase from Cromwellian times. The merchants would have seen themselves as English nobility, and hence were loyal to the King. Their uncertain reaction to the siege of Galway by Cromwellian forces earned them this label, which they subsequently adopted in defiance.

They were the merchant families of Athy, Blake, Bodkin, Browne, Darcy, Deane, Font, Ffrench, Joyce, Kirwin, Lynch, Martin, Morris, Skerrett. (12 of Norman origin and 2 of Irish origin)

Following the fall of the city to Cromwellian forces (Coote) in 1652, the Catholic merchant families of the city, the "Tribes of Galway," had to pay heavy fines and were excluded from the municipal government of Galway.