Ghost Town

For generations the fisherfolk of Galway had heard the ancient tale, how one day an island city which sank off Connemara would rise again from the sea.

Last week a brutal storm churned the Atlantic, and on Connemara's beach the fisherfolk, whipped like so many witless ducks by rain and spray, stood staring out to sea. For there in the darkness, where no land had been before, blinked the thousand lights of the city itself. Young folks squealed with the delight of it, but the old ones crossed themselves and breathed a prayer. "Go sbahailadh dia sinn" (God protect us), they muttered, for hadn't the ancient tale said, too, that when the lost city reappeared, Galway itself would slide under the water? To a Dublin man who tried to put through a call to Galway, a telephone operator (who didn't know her folklore) gave unwitting confirmation of disaster. "There's no reply," she said, "they must all be dead in there."

All night the fisherfolk watched and wondered, until at dawn, before all Connemara's eyes, the phantom city--a fleet of 30 Spanish trawlers riding out the storm in the lee of the Aran Islands--hauled up its anchors and sailed away.

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