Tuam itself is well worth a visit for things old and things new--or shall I say the survival of the remote and the recent past. Its long street of thatched houses, its marketplace crowded with Irish-speaking men and women all in characteristic western dress, make it more typically Irish than any town in Connaught except only Galway--and Galway is a thing apart. The modern cathedral, too, is of interest for the sake of sculptured heads wrought by a local craftsman who was a kind of Cruickshank in stone--preserving in his craft a glorious tradition of the place. For the great sculptured arch which can be seen in the ancient cathedral, restored more than a quarter of a century ago for Protestant worship, is the finest example of native Irish decorative architecture, before Continental influences came in. It is the Romanesque half-circle, with six concentric orders of arches included in the great span. The red sandstone of which it is wrought lent itself freely to carving, and the unknown and unnamed workers bestowed a wealth of detail upon it, blending, after the Celtic fashion, shapes of man, bird, and beast, into the interlaced scroll of the design. The rest of the building must have been worthy of this glorious centre: but, in years of desolation, plunder was made of carved stones for common building work, and the tall cross which stands now, imperfectly put together, in the marketplace, was rescued by sections from various houses and buildings. Eight stones went to complete it and only five are there: it is a pity that their places are not filled in with uncarved slabs, for the proportion of the monument is destroyed. If you drive or motor from Tuam to Galway it is easy to visit another famous ruin, the Abbey Knockmoy erected for the Cistercians by Cathal O'Conor of the Red Hand, as a thankoffering for his victory over the first Norman party of invaders whom, with their leader, Almeric St. Laurence, he destroyed near the abbey's site. There is a trace of frescoes discernible on the chancel walls; and it is easy enough to see how the original and most beautiful twelfth-century building was, so to say, cut down and curtailed for a reduced community of monks who may have been there in some interval between persecution and persecution. [Illustration: CASTLE KIRKE AND UPPER LOUGH CORRIB] In the graveyard here you can see what is common in all Connaught up to the present day--tombstones carved with the insignia of the dead man's trade, the carpenter's plane and saw, the smith's hammer, and so forth.