Many and various explanations of the origin of the term Lynch’s law, or lynch-law, have been offered. Some of these explanations are evidently nothing more than the offspring of minds fertile in resources; others have the support of tradition and are entitled to consideration. Not infrequently confusion and apparent contradiction have resulted from the failure to distinguish clearly between the practice itself and the name by which it has been known. To follow back through history the successive outbreaks of such practices is not to discover the origin of “lynch-law,” the term which has now become so firmly established in the English language. The origin is to be found at that time when these practices first came to be known by the name Lynch’s law or lynch-law. According to one account, given more or less indorsement in the encyclopedias, lynch-law owes its name to James Fitzstephen Lynch, mayor and warden of Galway, Ireland. He was the famous “Warden of Galway” who tried, condemned, and executed his own son in the year 1493. The story is told with varying details. One tradition has it that the mayor sent his son to Spain to purchase a cargo of wine. The young man squandered the money intrusted to him, but succeeded in obtaining a cargo on credit from a Spanish friend of his father. This gentleman’s nephew accompanied him on the return voyage to Ireland where the money was to be paid. Young Lynch, to conceal his misuse of the money, caused the Spaniard to be thrown overboard and returned home in triumph with his cargo of wine. But a sailor, on his death-bed, revealed to the mayor of Galway the crime which his son had committed. The young man was tried before his father, convicted and sentenced to be hanged. Another tradition states that the son of the Spanish friend of his father was visiting him at his home in Ireland. This son was fast supplanting him in the affections of a Galway lady to whom he was engaged. One night, in a fit of jealous passion, he stabbed the Spaniard to the heart and threw his body into the sea. The crime was quickly discovered, and on being brought before his father for trial he was condemned to die as a sacrifice to public justice. Public sympathy, however, turned in favor of the young man, and every effort was made to effect his pardon. The father “undauntedly declared that the law should take its course.” On the way to the place of execution a mob appeared, led by members of the mother’s family, demanding mercy. The father, finding that he could not “accomplish the ends of justice at the accustomed place and by the usual hands,” conducted his son up a winding stairway to a window overlooking the public street. “Here he secured the end of a rope, which had been previously fixed around the neck of his son, to an iron staple which projected from the wall, and, after taking from him a last embrace, he launched him into eternity.” The people, “overawed by the magnanimous