Claddagh ring

The clasped hands are far older than Galway. Fede rings, named from the Italian word for trust, were used in ancient Rome as wedding rings, Justin Meneguzzi writes in National Geographic; a heart was added to the design in the 16th century, and Joyce is credited with crowning it before 1700. The National Museum of Ireland dates the earliest rings in the Claddagh style to about 1700.

The man usually named as the ring’s maker was a real Galway goldsmith. James Hardiman, in his History of the Town and County of Galway (1820), tells how a young man named Joyes, a native of Galway, was captured by an Algerine corsair on his way to the West Indies and bought in Algiers by a wealthy Turk who was a goldsmith, who taught him the trade. One of the first acts of William III’s reign was to send an ambassador to Algiers to demand the release of the British subjects held there, and Joyes was freed. His master offered him his only daughter and half his property if he would stay; Joyes refused, went home, married, and worked as a goldsmith in Galway with considerable success. Hardiman says nothing about a ring. Eoin O’Neill of Galway City Museum told National Geographic that Hardiman’s history is the closest thing there is to a contemporary record, and that the oldest known Claddagh ring, dated about 1700, has Joyce’s stamp inside the band. National Geographic describes its heart as wonky. Church silver by Joyce survives too, among it a monstrance of 1726 and two chalices of 1730 and 1731, all on show at Galway City Museum, Galway City Council reports.

Other Galway goldsmiths made the rings as well. The National Museum’s own examples carry the marks of Austin French (1770–1800), Andrew Robinson (1800–1830) and James Sealy (before 1850). The village’s name came later: from the middle of the 19th century, the museum says, the style was tied to the Claddagh, though it was worn well beyond it. W. Dillon, writing in the Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society in 1905, put its range “roughly from the Aran isles on the west, all through Connemara and Joyce’s Country and then eastwards and southwards for not more than 12 miles.”