BEAUTIES AND ANTIQUITIES OF IRELAND

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BEAUTIES AND ANTIQUITIES
OF IRELAND

BEING

A TOURIST’S GUIDE TO ITS MOST BEAUTIFUL
SCENERY & AN ARCHÆOLOGIST’S MANUAL
FOR ITS MOST INTERESTING RUINS

BY
T. O. RUSSELL
AUTHOR OF “DICK MASSEY,” “TRUE HEART’S TRIALS,” ETC.

LONDON
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., Ltd.
B. HERDER
17 SOUTH BROADWAY
ST LOUIS, MO.
1897

PREFACE

To describe all the beauties and antiquities of Ireland, an encyclopedia, instead of a volume the size of this one would be required. As one of the objects of this book is to show that Irish history is as generally interesting as Irish scenery is generally beautiful, few places are noticed that are not historic; but in a volume of the size of this, all the historic places could not be mentioned. Many books have been published during the last three-quarters of a century that treat on Irish scenery and antiquities. Some of them are very voluminous and copiously illustrated. They were, for the most part, written by persons utterly unfitted for the task they undertook. Their remarks on Irish scenery may be of some value; they may have thought Killarney more beautiful than the Bog of Allen; but wherever they touch on matters connected with history and antiquities, they are so often incorrect and misleading that the books they have published may, for the most part, be said to be useless. It is not too much to say that many of these works would be actually increased in value if the printed matter were torn out of them and nothing left but the illustrations and covers. The people who wrote them were totally unfitted to treat of Irish history and antiquities. They knew little about the history of ancient Ireland, and nothing of the Irish language or its literature. They could hardly be justified to treat of Irish architectural remains, because they were ill-equipped to do so, and were unsympathetic with the race that raised them.

If there is any country in Europe about the scenery and antiquities of which an interesting book could be written, it is Ireland. In no other country are scenery and antiquities so closely allied, for the finest remains of her ancient ruins are generally found where the scenery is most weird, most strange, or most beautiful. In no other country, perhaps, can so many places be identified with historic events, or historic personages, as in Ireland. It contains more relics of a long vanished past than any other European land. Great Britain seems a new country compared with Ireland. In spite of the wanton and disgraceful destruction of her ancient monuments that has been going on for centuries, more of such can be found in a single Irish county than in a dozen in Great Britain. Although Stonehenge is the finest druidic monument known to exist, the quantity of druidic remains is much greater in Ireland than in England. In the latter country we miss the dun, the rath, the lis, the round tower and the sepulchral mound, some of which are found in almost every square mile of Ireland. And coming down to later times, when men began to erect structures of stone, we find the remains of castles and keeps in such extraordinary numbers that we wonder for what purpose so many strongholds were erected. Counting raths, duns, lises, cromlechs, round towers, crumbling castles, and deserted fanes, Ireland may be called a land of ruins beyond any other country in Europe. To make these multitudinous monuments of a far-back past still more interesting, it will be found that mention is made of most of them even in the remnant of Gaelic literature that by the merest chance has been preserved.

The place names of Ireland are as interesting and as extraordinary as her antiquities, and to some are even more fascinating than her beauties. The bewildering immensity of Irish place names is one of the most remarkable things connected with Ireland; but like her ancient monuments, they are every day disappearing—fading away with the language from which they were formed. Even still, there are, probably, as many ancient place names in a single Irish province as in the whole of Great Britain. If it is not absolutely true when speaking of Ireland to say that, “No dust of hers is lost in vulgar mould,” it can at least be said that there is hardly a square mile of her surface where some hoary relic of the past or some beautiful object of nature can be met with that is not mentioned in history, enshrined in legend, or celebrated in song.

T. O. R.

CONTENTS

KILLARNEY

Killarney is famed and known all over the civilized world; but there are places in Ireland where isolated scenes can be found as fair as any in Killarney. Much has been written about this “Eden of the West,” but most of those who have attempted to describe it have omitted to mention its chief charm—namely, diversity of scenic attractions within a small compass. Almost everything that Nature could do has been done within a tract of country hardly ten miles square.

Except some favoured spots in Switzerland, there is no spot of European soil more famed for beauty than Killarney. Its very name is beautiful, as any one can know who has heard Balfe’s grand song, “Killarney.” No sounds more harmonious or more fitted for a refrain could be uttered by the organs of speech. The name signifies in Gaelic the church of the sloe or wild plum-tree. The real name of the lake, or chain of lakes, which is one of the charms of Killarney, is Loch Lein, but the latter name is now almost obsolete.

Before attempting to describe Killarney, it will be well to give the reader an extract from Macaulay’s “History of England.” The passage is a masterpiece of prose. It is a sketch of the scenic characteristics of that part of Ireland where the famous lakes are situated:

“The south-western part of Kerry is now well known as the most beautiful tract in the British Isles. The mountains, the glens, the capes stretching far out into the Atlantic, the crags on which the eagles build, the rivulets branching down rocky passes, the lakes overhung by groves in which the wild deer find covert, attract, every summer, crowds of wanderers sated with business and the pleasures of great cities. The beauties of that country are often, indeed, hidden in the mist and rain that the west wind brings up from the boundless ocean. But, on rare days, when the sun shines out in his glory, the landscape has a freshness and warmth of colouring seldom found in our latitude. The myrtle loves the soil; the arbutus thrives better than in Calabria; the turf has a livelier hue than elsewhere; the hills glow with a richer purple; the varnish of the holly and the ivy is more glossy, and berries of a brighter red peep through foliage of a brighter green.”[1]

Macaulay, in spite of his Celtic name, was not a lover of Ireland and the Irish, and there is no reason to suppose that this most wonderful word-painting was evoked by any liking for the land it describes. He had seen Killarney, and it must have inspired him to write the greatest descriptive passage he ever penned.

Those who expect to find in Killarney the grandeur of the Alps, the Rocky Mountains, or even of the Scottish Highlands, will be disappointed. It is too small to be sublime, for it could be ridden round in a day. The most wonderful of its many wonders is variety of scenery in a small compass. In this respect few parts of the known world can compare with it. Almost every possible phase of Nature, almost everything she could do with land and water, can be found in Killarney, and found on a little spot of earth hardly larger than the space covered by London. Mountains, lakes, rivers, rocks, woods, waterfalls, flowery islands, green meadows and glistening strands, almost exhaust Nature’s materials for forming the beautiful. But all are found at Killarney. Man, who mars Nature so often, has helped her here, for the castles and abbeys he raised of yore still stand, and their ivy and flower-decked ruins, tenanted only by the bat and the bee, put the finishing touch on this earthly Eden, and make it one of the scenic wonders of the world. If Killarney had glaciers and eternally snow-clad peaks, it would have everything that Switzerland has.

Another wonderful thing about Killarney is the admirable proportion its scenic features bear to one another. If the mountains were any higher they would be too high for the lakes, and if the lakes were any bigger they would be too big for the mountains. Even the rivers and waterfalls are almost in exact proportion to the other phases of Nature. The monstrous Mississippi or the thundering Niagara would spoil such a miniature paradise; but the limpid Laune and O’Sullivan’s babbling cascade suit it exactly. Killarney is the most perfect effort of Nature to bring together without disproportion all her choicest charms.

Small as Killarney is, it would take at least a week, or perhaps two weeks, to see it and know all its loveliness. It is only on foot and without hurry that its beauties can be seen in perfection. Its mountains may be ascended, and glorious views of sea and craggy heights obtained; but the charm of Killarney is not grandeur, but beauty. There are mountain views in Scotland finer than can be had from the summits of Mangerton or Carn Thual. It would be something like waste of time to climb those hills. Let the tourist rather wander in the hundreds of shady lanes or paths that skirt the lakes, or take a boat and navigate that most picturesque river, for its length, in the world, the Long Range, that connects the upper with the lower lake. Let him mark the wondrous luxuriance of grass, leaf, weed and flower. The arbutus grows so large that it becomes a tree. Ferns of such gigantic proportions may be found in shady nooks that they seem to belong to some far-back geological age. Softness, freshness, luxuriance and beauté riante are the real glories of Killarney. In these it has no rival.

There are two drawbacks to Killarney; there is the guide nuisance and the rain nuisance. The nuisance of guides is probably no greater than in many other places of tourist resort, and, by a strong effort of the will, can be got rid of. But the rain is a more serious matter and must be borne patiently. Some years come when not a dozen dry days occur throughout the entire summer, but generally there is less rainfall than on the west coasts of Scotland or England. There have been quite as many wet days in Liverpool during the three last summers as there usually are in Killarney. It does, however, too often happen that tourists are confined to the hotel for four or five days at a time owing to the rain. It must be borne in mind that this excessive moisture of atmosphere is what has given the south-west of Ireland, and England too, their exquisite charm of verdure and wild flowers. When a fine day comes after rain in summer or autumn all Nature seems to laugh. Flowers of all hues open their petals, birds in multitudes begin to sing, and wild bees and hosts of insects make the air musical with their hum. The American tourist need have no fear when insects are mentioned, for the mosquito is unknown in Killarney. Midges are the only insect plague, but they never enter houses, and are troublesome only before rain, early in the spring or late in the autumn.

Most tourists go to Killarney early in the summer. June and July are favourite times for Americans to visit it. As it lies almost in the direct route between New York and Liverpool, they generally visit it before going to England or the Continent of Europe. But the time to see Killarney is in the autumn—it is then in all its glory. It should not be visited before the 15th of August; from then until the 1st of October it is the most beautiful place, perhaps, on the earth, provided always that the weather is not wet. There is only one thing that mars the weather in the south of Ireland—namely, rain. Cold, in the general sense of the word, is almost unknown. Every day that is not wet must be fine. There is, it must be confessed, rather more probability of having dry weather in Killarney in the spring or early summer than in the autumn, but, by visiting it in the spring, the tourist would gain nothing, and would lose the wild-flower feast of autumn. No American, or even native of England, no matter from what part of his country he comes, can form the faintest conception of what a Killarney mountain is in September, if the weather be fine. The wild-flower that is the glory of Ireland is the heath. It blossoms only in the autumn. Next in glory to the heath comes the furze. Both furze and heath are indigenous in the whole of the south-west of Europe, but, owing to the mildness and moistness of the climate of Ireland, they grow and blossom there with a luxuriance unknown in any other country. When a great mountain becomes a mighty bouquet of purple and gold, a sight is revealed which surpasses anything on earth in floral beauty. Almost every mountain round about the “Eden of the West” is clothed from base to summit in a vast drapery of heath. Some of the Killarney mountains are wooded for a few hundred feet up their sides, but most of them are entirely covered with heath interspersed with furze. When a fine autumn occurs, tens of thousands of acres of mountain and moorland gleam in the sunlight, an ocean of purple heath and golden furze. Not only do the heath and furze blossom in the autumn, but myriads of other wild-flowers appear only at that time of year, or blossom most luxuriantly then. Even white clover, which rarely blossoms in other countries except in the spring or early summer, open its flowers widest and sends out its most fragrant perfume in an Irish autumn. The air is heavy with fragrance of flowers, the mountains are musical with the hum of bees, and

“Every wingèd thing that loves the sun
Makes the bright noonday full of melody.”

Killarney in a fine autumn becomes not only entrancing, but overpowering in its loveliness.

The whole country round Killarney is a wonderland. Macaulay’s description of it is true to the letter. In all his works nothing can be found of a descriptive character equal to the passage quoted from him. He had a great subject, and he handled it as no other writer of the English language could. He has described one of the loveliest regions in the world in a few lines that will stand for ever as one of the greatest efforts of a great writer. His description is a brilliant gem of composition, just as the place it describes is a brilliant gem of nature.

No one should visit Killarney without visiting Glengariff. It is only about twenty miles from Killarney, and can be reached by a sort of low-backed car peculiar to Ireland. This car is a very curious sort of conveyance. The occupants sit back to back, with their sides to the horses. In fine weather there is no pleasanter mode of travelling than on a low-backed car, but when it rains one is anything but comfortable. Glengariff is thought by some to surpass even Killarney in beauty. It is a deep glen surrounded by mountains of the most fantastic shapes, clothed with a wealth of foliage that would astonish any one who had not seen Killarney. The lake that is seen at Glengariff is sea-water, and opens into Bantry Bay. The tourist will find an excellent hotel there, and no matter how he may be satiated with the beauty of Killarney, he will see other and more striking beauties in Glengariff.

Killarney is well supplied with hotels. There are four or five, and they are all good. Most of them are situated in sequestered places, where a view of some enchanting scene spreads before the door. The village of Killarney is about a mile from the lake; it is a place of no interest at all, but there is a very good hotel in it, and many tourists stop there, for it is just at the railway terminus. Hotel expenses at Killarney in the tourist season are not so high as at some of the fashionable Continental summer resorts. Guides are not much wanted, unless mountains are to be ascended. Then they are indispensable, for mists may suddenly come during the very finest day, and the tourist without a guide would run a chance of spending a night on a bleak mountain or being drowned in a lake or bog-hole. Ponies of a most docile character can be hired cheap. Pony-back travelling is a favourite mode of “doing” Killarney, especially with ladies and lazy men, but no one into whose soul the charm of Killarney really enters would think of travelling through such lovely scenes on horseback. On foot or in a boat is the way to see Killarney.

ROSS CASTLE.

There are ruins of the most interesting kind in Killarney. Muckross Abbey is not so large as some of the ruined shrines of England, but it is a venerable and imposing building. It was built by one of the MacCarthys, chiefs of the district, in 1340. Ross Castle is another imposing ruin. It is situated on a green promontory that juts into the lake. There is some doubt as to the exact time when it was erected, but it could hardly have been before the fourteenth century. The most interesting ruin near Killarney, and by far the most ancient, is the monastery on the supremely beautiful island of Inisfallan. It was founded by Saint Finian in the sixth century. It was there the yet unpublished “Annals of Inisfallan” were compiled. Hardly any of the walls of the old monastery remain. The arbutus and the hawthorn are growing where once were cloisters, and are fast completing the ruin of what was one of the first of the ancient churches that were erected in Ireland.

TARA

The supreme attraction of Tara is its antiquity. It must not, however, be thought that a visit to this famous hill reveals no beauties. It is not situated among mountains; hardly a lake is visible from its summit: yet the view from it is so fine that if there was no historic interest attached to it, the tourist in search of the beautiful alone would have his eyes feasted with as fair a scene from one of its grassy ramparts as could be gazed on in any part of Ireland. Eastward the view is obstructed by the hill of Screen, but on every other side it is superb. Westward the eye ranges over the fairest and most fertile part of Ireland, the great plain of Meath and West Meath, anciently called Magh Breagh, or the fair plain. And fair indeed it is in summer time, one great green sea of grass and wild flowers, reaching to the Shannon, sixty miles away. But it is southward that the view from Tara is most striking. The Dublin and Wicklow mountains are more imposing when seen from Tara than from any other place. They rise in a vast, blue rampart, and seem so colossal as to appear thousands of feet higher than they are. Those old, barbaric Irish kings and chieftains must have been lovers of the beautiful, for they almost invariably fixed their strongholds not only in the fairest parts, but in places commanding the fairest prospects. There are hardly two other places in Ireland the surroundings of which are more beautiful than those of Tara and Uisneach, or from which fairer prospects are to be seen. They were, from far-back antiquity, the seats of those by whom the country was supposed to be ruled, for it often happened that he who was styled chief king had but little control over his vassals.

There is no other spot of European soil the records of which go so far back into the dim twilight of the past as do the records of Tara. Before the first Roman raised a rude hut on the banks of the Tiber, when the place where the Athenian Acropolis now stands was a bare rock, kings, whose names are given in Irish history, ruled in Tara. When one gazes on those grassy mounds, that are almost all that remain of what our ancient poets used to call “the fair, radiant, City of the Western World,” he can hardly believe that such a place could ever have been the abode of royalty, the meeting-place of assemblies, and the permanent home of thousands. Other desolated strongholds of ancient royalty and dominion bear ample evidence of their former greatness. Ruined columns of Persepolis yet remain. The site of Tadmor is marked by still standing pillars of marble, and vast piles of decomposed bricks tell of the greatness of ancient Babylon; but green, grassy mounds and partially obliterated earth-works are almost all that remain of Tara. It is so ruined that it can hardly be ruined any more. Time may yet destroy even what remains of the bricks of Babylon, but time can hardly change what remains of the ruins of Tara.

No other spot of Irish earth can compare with Tara in historic interest or in antiquity. Emania and Rathcroghan are little more than places of yesterday compared with it. It is over three thousand years ago since the first king reigned in Tara. Some may say that it is only bardic history that tells of what took place in Ireland in those very remote times, and that it is unworthy of credence. It is true that there is a great deal of fiction mixed with the early history of Ireland, as there is with the early history of all countries; but the ancient Irish chroniclers did not attempt much more than a mere sketch of the salient points of Irish history of very remote times, say from beyond the third century B.C. Some of the facts they mention have been verified in remarkable ways by what may be called collateral evidence. This evidence is found in place names, and in the names of persons and things. One of those proofs of the general correctness of what is related in Gaelic literature about far-back events of Irish history is so remarkable that it deserves special mention. One of the kings who ruled in Tara considerably over a thousand years B.C. was named Lugh, or in English, Lewy or Louis. He established the games that were held annually at Tailtean, near Kells, that were regularly celebrated down to the time of the Anglo-French invasion, in honour of his mother, whose name was Tailte. Those games were held in the first week in August, and from them the Irish name for the month of August is derived; it is Lughnasa. This is the only name known in Gaelic to the present hour for the month of August, except a periphrastic one meaning “the first month of autumn.” This name for August is known in every part of Ireland and Scotland where the old tongue still lives, but it has been corrupted to Lunasd in the latter country. The meaning of the word Lughnasa is, the games or celebrations of this same Lugh or Lewy, who lived and reigned centuries before Rome was founded, and before a stone of the Athenian Acropolis was laid. It seems almost impossible to conceive that the Gaelic name for the month of August could have had any origin other than that given above on the authority of one of the most learned of ancient Irish ecclesiastics, Cormac MacCuillenan, Archbishop of Cashel, in the ninth century.

The descriptions of Tara given in ancient Gaelic writings have been verified in the most remarkable manner by the researches of modern archæologists. Dr Petrie’s great work, “The Antiquities of Tara Hill,” would go far to remove the prejudices of the most bigoted despiser of Irish historic records. He was one of the most learned and scientific investigators of antiquities that ever lived, and was not only a good Gaelic scholar himself, but had the assistance of the greatest Gaelic scholar of the century, John O’Donovan. Those two gentlemen translated every mention of Tara that they could find in prose or verse in ancient Irish manuscripts; they compared every mention they could find of the monuments of Tara with what remains of them at present; and they found such a general agreement between ancient descriptions of those monuments and the existing remains of them as proved what is said in Gaelic manuscripts about the extent and splendour of Tara in Pagan times to be well worthy of credence. Every one who visits Tara, and who is in any way interested in archæology, should have Doctor Petrie’s map of it, which will be found in his minute and elaborate work on the “Antiquities of Tara Hill.” That map is reproduced here. The book is very scarce, as only a small edition of it was printed, but it can be found in the “Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy.” Armed with Petrie’s map a visit to Tara would be one of the most interesting and enjoyable excursions that could be made from Dublin. Kilmessan Station can be reached from the Broadstone terminus in an hour, and less than two miles of a walk through a beautiful country brings one to the summit of “the Hill of Supremacy,” as it was called of old when he who ruled in Tara ruled Ireland. No matter how confirmed an archæologist he may be who stands for the first time on this celebrated hill, his first feeling will be of joy at the beauty of the prospect that is spread before him. To know how beautiful Ireland is, even in those places that are not on the track of tourists, and that are seldom mentioned in guide books, one should see the view from the hill of Tara.

It would be hard to find any other hill in Ireland so well adapted for a place of assembly or for the dwelling of a ruler as Tara. Uisneach, in Westmeath, is, perhaps, the only hill in Ireland that possesses all the advantages of Tara. In ancient times, when war was the rule and peace the exception, it was imperative that a stronghold should be on a height. Athens had its acropolis and so had Corinth. Tara had the advantage of extent as well as of height, and could be made a permanent dwelling-place as well as an acropolis, for there are fully a hundred acres on what may be called the summit of the hill. It is unfortunate that some of the hill has been enclosed, planted with deal trees, and a church erected on the very track of some of the most ancient monuments. This plantation and church have terribly interfered with the picturesqueness and antique look of Tara. Planting deal trees and erecting a modern church amid the hoariest monuments, and on the most historic spot of European soil, was little less than sacrilege. If there had been a proper national spirit, or a due veneration for their past among the Irish, they never would have allowed a church or any modern building to be erected on the most historic spot on Irish soil; and even now they ought to have the church removed, the wall torn down, and the plantation uprooted. All Greece would rise up in indignation were any one to erect a church or chapel amid the ruins of the Athenian Acropolis.

[Larger Image]

MONUMENTS ON TARA HILL.

(After Petrie’s Map.)

The most interesting and best preserved of the antiquities of Tara is the track of the banquetting-house. It must have been an enormous building, for it was about 800 feet long and about 50 wide. It is wonderful how perfectly plain and well-defined the track of this once great structure appears after nearly fourteen hundred years, and in spite of the way this historic spot has been uprooted and levelled. But not a vestige of stone-work or of stones is to be seen near the ruins of the banquetting-house. It seems absolutely certain that there were no buildings of stone in Tara when it was at the height of its grandeur, and that seems to have been about the middle of the third century, during the reign of Cormac MacAirt. It must not be thought that buildings cannot be fine unless they are of stone; but buildings of stone were very rare in northern countries until comparatively recent times. Moore, in his “History of Ireland,” says, speaking of wooden buildings and of Tara—“However scepticism may now question their architectural beauty, they could boast the admiration of many a century in evidence of their grandeur. That those edifices were of wood is by no means conclusive either against the elegance of their structure or the civilisation of those who erected them. It was in wood that the graceful forms of Grecian architecture first unfolded their beauties.” So the absence of stone buildings in Tara in no way proves that it was not a place of grandeur as well as of beauty; and the tenth century Gaelic poet may have been justified in saying of it,

“World of perishable beauty!
Tara to-day, though a wilderness,
Was once the meeting-place of heroes.
Great was the host to which it was an inheritance,
Though to-day green, grassy land.”

Every mention of Tara in the vast remnant of Gaelic manuscripts of the ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries that still exists shows it to have been, beyond all comparison, the most important place in ancient Ireland. Oengus the Culdee, author of the longest poem in ancient Gaelic, the famous Félire, recently translated by Mr Whitley Stokes, speaks thus of this renowned but now ruined spot:

“Tara’s mighty burgh hath perished
With its kingdom’s splendour;
With a multitude of champions of wisdom
Abideth great Ardmagh.”

The poet contrasts the desolation into which the strongholds of the Pagans had fallen with the then flourishing condition of the centres of Christian teaching. Tara was the political as well as the social centre of ancient Ireland. It is in connection with it that the only mention made of roads having names is found in ancient Gaelic writings. Five great roads, as will be seen by the annexed map, led from Tara to the extremities of the Island. The Slighe Dala went southward; the Slighe Asail went north-west; the Slighe Midhluchra, went north-east; the Slighe Cualann went south-easterly; and the Slighe Mór went in a south-western direction. Traces of those roads may still be seen by the practised eye of the archæologist.

One of the most interesting things connected with Tara is the Lia Fail, or Stone of Destiny. It was upon it the over-kings of Ireland had been inaugurated from far-back antiquity. It is said to have been brought by Fergus, brother of the then reigning chief King, to Scotland, in order that he might be crowned king on it over the part of Scotland he had conquered. It remained under the coronation chair of the Kings of Scotland down to the time of Edward the First, who seized it and brought it to Westminster, where it is now, and the sovereigns of England have been crowned on it ever since his time. Petrie maintains that the Lia Fail is still in Tara, and that the pillar stone that stands over the graves of the men who fell in ’98 is it. He adduces very strong evidence from manuscripts of high authority and of great antiquity to prove what he says. There is, on the other hand, strong testimony to prove that it was brought to Scotland by Fergus. The question will probably never be finally settled. The principal virtue supposed to be possessed by the Lia Fail was that it would bring political power to the country in which it was, particularly if its people were of Celtic stock. It is very remarkable that soon after the stone supposed to be the Lia Fail was taken out of Ireland, her political power began to decline, her over-kings lost a great part of their former authority, and in the long run she lost her independence. Scotland’s political power and national independence vanished not long after she had lost the Lia Fail, and in a few centuries after England had got it she became one of the foremost nations in the world. The English claim to be Saxons, but it is now generally admitted that the Celtic element preponderates in the island of Great Britain, so that the prophecy attached to the Lia Fail seems to be fulfilled.

The Lia Fail is certainly the most extraordinary stone in Europe, if not in the world. The famous Rosetta stone, covered as it is with archaic writing, and verifying, as many suppose, the truth of Old Testament history, is hardly more interesting than the rude granite slab that lies under the coronation chair in Westminster, unmarked with a single letter. It is about 25 inches in length, about 15 in breadth, and 9 in depth. How such a rude, unshapely flag-stone could have such a history, and have been an object of veneration and interest for so many centuries, is what strikes with wonder those who see it. But if it is not the real Lia Fail, if it is a sham, and if the stone still standing in Tara is the genuine one, the wonder increases; for the fact of a spurious article having become invested with such fame and regarded with such veneration is the greatest wonder of all.

Doctor Petrie says, in his “Antiquities of Tara Hill,” that “it is in the highest degree improbable that to gratify the desire of a colony the Irish would have voluntarily parted with a monument so venerable for its antiquity and considered essential to the legitimate succession of their own kings.” He quotes verses from a tenth century poet, Kenith O’Hartigan, who says that the Lia Fail is

“This stone on which are my two heels”;

and he quotes from an ancient tract called the Dinseanchus, another proof that when it was composed, and that time could not have been later than the tenth century, the Lia Fail was in Tara. It often happens, however, that Irish annalists and historians, so fond were they of looking backward to the past, make things appear as they had been, and not as they were when they wrote. The over-kings of Ireland were called Kings of Tara five hundred years after Tara had been abandoned, and when it was as waste and desolate as it is to-day. O’Dugan, in his topographical poem, written in the fourteenth century, tells of clans inhabiting the English Pale, when they had been banished westward by the invaders nearly two hundred years before he wrote. He prefaces his topographical poem by saying

“O’Maolseachlinn, chief King of Tara and Erin,”

but the last O’Maolseachlinn that was nominally chief King of Ireland and Tara had died three hundred years before O’Dugan wrote! Why those old Gaelic poets were so fond of describing things as they had been, and not as they were when they wrote, is hard to understand. They may have got their information from documents that were centuries old when they copied them. It seems a certainty that the men whose writings Petrie quotes to prove that the Lia Fail was in Tara in the tenth century, did what O’Dugan did in his topographical poem—that is, speak of things as they had been hundreds of years before. He never mentions the English at all. This partially accounts for Irish writers of the tenth century speaking of the Lia Fail being then in Tara. They intended to describe where it used to be, but not where it was. When Petrie says that the Lia Fail is spoken of by all ancient Irish writers in such a manner as to leave no doubt that it remained in its original situation at the time when they wrote, he makes a great mistake. Here is a quotation from the “Book of Leinster,” a manuscript of the highest authority, compiled in the early part of the twelfth century, and mostly from writings of a much earlier date:—“It was the Tuatha De Danaans who brought with them the great Fal, that is, the stone of knowledge that was in Tara; from which [the name of] Magh Fail is on Ireland. He under whom it would roar was then [rightful] King of Ireland.”[2]

There is another very strong proof brought to light by the publication of “Silva Gadelica,” by Mr Standish Hays O’Grady, that the Lia Fail was removed from Tara. In the tract called the “Colloquy,” one of the speakers says: “This, then, and the Lia Fail, or stone of destiny, that was there (in Tara) were the two wonders of Tara. When Ireland’s monarch stepped on it, it would cry out under him,” ... “And who was it that lifted that flag, or that carried it away out of Ireland?” asked one of the listeners. “It was a young hero of great spirit that ruled over” ... Here, unfortunately, the tract ends abruptly. The “Colloquy,” or “Agallamh na Seanorach,” is a tract of respectable antiquity. Its language seems to be that of the fifteenth or perhaps the fourteenth century, but the version that has come down to us may be, and probably is, but a transcript of a much more ancient tract, the language of which was modernised.

If Doctor Petrie had known of the existence of those two proofs given of the Lia Fail having been removed from Tara, he never would have said that all ancient Irish writers spoke of it in such a way as to leave no doubt of its being there still. O’Reilly, author of Irish dictionary, says: “Lia Fail, the stone of destiny, on which the ancient Irish monarchs used to be crowned until the time of Mortogh Mac Earc, who sent it into Scotland that his brother Fergus, who had subdued that country, might be crowned on it. It is now in Westminster Abbey.” O’Reilly was the most learned Irish scholar and historian of his day, and was a painstaking, conscientious man, who would hardly state any thing for which he did not have good authority. It must, however, be admitted that up to the present no positive statement seems to have been found in ancient Irish writings as to when and by whom the Lia Fail was brought from Tara to Scotland; neither does it seem to be known where O’Reilly got his information about it.

When Petrie spoke of the improbability of the Irish allowing such a venerated monument as the Lia Fail to be taken out of Ireland, he should have remembered that at the time when it is said to have been taken, in the beginning of the sixth century, Christianity had become established in Ireland. Paganism or Druidism may have survived among a few, but it had got its death-blow. Pagan monuments of every kind had begun to be disregarded. The Lia Fail was essentially a Pagan monument, and consequently an abhorrence to Christians. The fathers, or at least the grandfathers, of the men who allowed Fergus to take it to Scotland, would probably have shed the last drop of their blood to keep it in Ireland. The disrepute into which everything connected with Paganism had fallen after the introduction of Christianity is plainly set forth in the “Book of Leinster” in the very page from which the Gaelic extract about the Lia Fail has been given:—“It happened that Christ was born not long after; it was that which broke the power of the idols.”[3] The Lia Fail was an idol that had lost its power and prestige, so that the people would not be likely to have any objection to its being removed to Scotland or anywhere else.

But there are still other even stronger objections for accepting Petrie’s theory that the Lia Fail is still in Tara. The pillar stone that is there is not a lia, and never would have been called such by the ancient Irish. Lia means a stone of any kind in its general sense; but the pillar stone in Tara would not be called a lia, but a coirthe. Lia is always applied to a flag-stone, both in ancient and modern Gaelic. The stone under the coronation chair in Westminster is a real lia or flag-stone; the one in Tara is a coirthe, or pillar stone, for, judging from its height above the ground, it cannot be much less than eight feet in length; it is very nearly round, and was evidently fashioned into its present shape by man. If the stone in Tara is the real Lia Fail, how did it come to lose its original name and be know even still by an Irish name that connects it with Fergus, the person by whom the real Lia Fail is popularly believed to have been brought to Scotland? This loss of an original name, and its substitution by a new one, could hardly have occurred in the case of such a famous monument as the Lia Fail. If the superstitious reverence with which it had been regarded before the introduction of Christianity had vanished, its original name would have remained. There are many place names in Ireland that have not changed during twenty centuries, and it is almost impossible to conceive how the name of the most venerated monument in all Ireland could have changed had the monument itself remained in the country. Another strong objection against the pillar stone in Tara being the real Lia Fail is its shape. The real Lia Fail was intended to be stood upon by the chief king at his inauguration; but the most flat-footed monarch that ever ruled Ireland would have considerable difficulty in standing steadily on the coirthe in Tara, even if it were prostrate, for it is round and not flat. Standing steadily on it would be nearly as difficult a performance as “rolling off a log” would be an easy one.

Taking everything into consideration, there seem to be very strong reasons to believe that the Lia Fail was taken from Tara to Scotland at the time it is popularly believed to have been taken—namely, about the year 503 of the Christian era; that it was taken in order to have Fergus Mac Earc inaugurated on it as king over that part of Scotland which he had brought under his domination; that it was taken from Scone to Westminster by Edward the First in the year 1296, and that it is now under the coronation chair in Westminster Abbey. It seems strange how a man of Doctor Petrie’s archæological knowledge could have been led to believe that the pillar stone still in Tara, for whatever use it may have been originally intended, was the real Lia Fail, or Stone of Destiny.

It would be most instructive and interesting if a scientific examination was made of the stone under the coronation chair. If it was proved to be a meteoric stone, its fame and the reverence with which it was so long regarded could be easily understood. If an ancient tribe saw a stone falling from heaven among them, they would regard such a thing as a miracle, and think that the stone was sent to them for some special purpose. They would, if possible, take it with them wherever they went. If the Lia Fail was proved to be a meteoric stone, the esteem and honour in which it was so long held, and the power which it was believed to possess, would be easily accounted for.

The history of Tara is, to a great extent, the history of ancient Ireland of pre-Christian times. It was more of a political centre than London or Paris is at present. The event that above all others left a permanent mark as well as a blot on Irish history may be said to have had its origin in Tara. The horrible Leinster Tribute and Tara are closely connected.

In the first century of the Christian era, an over-king called Tuathal, from whom the common Irish surname O’Tool, or Tool, seems to have originated, reigned in Tara. He had two daughters, famed for their beauty. We are told in the “Book of Leinster” that they were “fairer than the clouds of heaven.” Their names were Fihir and Darine. A king of Leinster named Eochy married Fihir, the elder of the two sisters. He got tired of her after a short time, went to Tara, told Tuathal that Fihir was dead, and that he wanted to marry her sister Darine. Tuathal consented, and Eochy took his new wife home to his dun, which was in the western part of the present county of Wicklow. Darine had been only a short time in her new home when she met her sister Fihir, who she had been told was dead. Darine was so overwhelmed by shame that she died, and Fihir was so shocked at the death of her sister that she died of grief. So Tuathal’s two beautiful daughters were dead, and were buried in the same grave. When Tuathal heard of their deaths he summoned his vassals, the kings of Ulster and Connacht; his army and theirs invaded Leinster, defeated and killed its king, ravaged it, and imposed the celebrated Tribute on the unfortunate province—namely, fifteen thousand cows, fifteen thousand sheep, fifteen thousand pigs, fifteen thousand silver chains, fifteen thousand bronze or copper pots, and fifteen thousand linnen (?) cloaks, together with one great cauldron into which, Hibernicè, “twelve beeves and twelve pigs ‘would go,’ in the house of Tara itself.” This was, indeed, a prodigious pot that could boil four-and-twenty quadrupeds of the sort, for Ireland was always famous for its large pigs and beeves. Such a cauldron having been used, shows that however poorly the inhabitants of other parts of Ireland may have fared in ancient times, the people of Tara lived well. When it is remembered that ancient Leinster was little more than half the size of the modern province, such a tribute appears enormous. Ancient Leinster, or, to speak more correctly, the Leinster of the time of Tuathal, went no further north than a line running from Dublin to Athlone. The counties of Meath, Westmeath, Longford, and Louth belonged to the province of Meath that had been carved out of parts of the four old provinces by Tuathal himself. The Tribute was to be paid every year, but it was not, for, as the Leinstermen’s own great Chronicle says, “It never was paid without a fight”; and sometimes when they succeeded, as they very often did, in licking the combined armies of all the other provinces, it used not to be paid for many years. It was, however, paid on and off for over five hundred years, and to forty over-kings. It was remitted in the seventh century; but many attempts were subsequently made to re-impose it on the unfortunate Leinstermen, who paid more dearly for the treacherous act of one of their kings than any other province or nation mentioned in history. One of their poets has said in a yet untranslated poem in the “Book of Leinster”:

“It is beyond the testimony of the Creator,
It is beyond the word of supplicating Christ,
All the kings of the Irish
That make attacks on Leinstermen!”[4]

It is not to be wondered at that the Leinster Tribute totally denationalised the province on which it was levied, and made its harried inhabitants side with the Danes and with the Anglo-Normans against their own countrymen. But what is most astonishing about the Tribute is its enormousness. That part of Leinster which was the ancient province could hardly pay such a tax to-day. This matter seems to show that ancient Ireland, in spite of a state of almost continual intestine warfare, was far richer and more populous than is generally supposed.

The most horrible act recorded in Irish history was committed at Tara—that is, the slaughter of 3030 women by the Leinstermen in the year 241. Here is what the Four Masters say of it under that year:—“The massacre of the girls at Cloonfearta at Tara, by Dunlang, King of Leinster. Thirty royal girls was the number, and a hundred maids with each of them. Twelve princes of the Leinstermen did Cormac put to death in revenge of that massacre, together with the exaction of the Borumha (Tribute) with an increase after Tuathal.” The Cormac here spoken of was the celebrated Cormac Mac Airt, one of the best over-kings that ever ruled ancient Ireland. This horrible massacre of maidens in Tara is so often mentioned in ancient Irish history and annals, and the same number of victims so invariably given, that there cannot be any doubt whatever about its having occurred. But particulars about it seem wanting. There was probably some pagan festival to be celebrated in Tara, at which the children of the upper classes only attended. The ladies may have arrived from the different parts of the country before the men, and when the harried Leinstermen made a raid on Tara, they found it unguarded save by women, and killed them and burned Tara to the ground at the same time; or it may have been that the women tried to help the few men that happened to be there in protecting the place, and Dunlang made an indiscriminate massacre of every one he found in it. This horrible act was caused by the imposition of the Leinster Tribute. It is to be presumed that there were no Leinster girls among those who were slaughtered.

Those interested in Irish history, or in ancient history in general, should read the tract called the Borumha, or Tribute, in the “Book of Leinster.” Translations of it have been recently made in the Revue Celtique and in Silva Gadelica. There is not in any ancient or mediæval literature anything to excel it in general interest. It is an historic gem that has been forgotten or overlooked for centuries. The indifference which the educated classes of the Irish people have heretofore shown about the ancient literature of their country was one of the most shocking, sickening symptoms of national degradation ever shown by any civilised people. They are latterly beginning to take more interest in it; but it is greatly to be feared that they have been induced to turn their attention to it more by the example shown them by foreigners than by any change of opinion originating among themselves. Much as O’Donovan, O’Curry, and Stokes have done to call the attention of the cultured classes of the Irish people to the study of Celtic literature, it is doubtful if they would have succeeded if the scholars of Continental Europe had not taken an interest in it. The renaissance of Celtic studies which seems to have taken place owes a large part of its origin to the Germans and the French.

Many valuable gold ornaments of antique and beautiful design and workmanship have been found in Tara and its immediate vicinity, but very few of them have found their way to the Kildare Street Museum in Dublin, one of the greatest, if not the very greatest, collection of ancient weapons, implements, and ornaments to be seen in Europe. Most of the gold ornaments found in Tara have been melted down. If one is to believe what the peasantry living in its vicinity say, the quantity of gold ornaments found there was very great. The famous Tara Brooch, preserved in the Dublin Museum, and considered the most beautiful piece of metallurgy, either ancient or modern, that is known to exist, was not found in Tara, but on the seashore about three miles from Drogheda, and nine or ten from this famous hill. It was found by an old woman, who is said to have sold it to a shopkeeper in Drogheda for ninepence. The Royal Irish Academy paid £500 for it. Many think that a regular, scientific exploration of Tara Hill ought to be made, such an exploration as Schlieman made of the site of Troy. If this were done under government surveillance, or by some responsible and skilled antiquarian, there is hardly a doubt but that many and precious ornaments in gold, and implements and weapons in bronze, would be found, especially the latter, for there seems every reason to believe that Tara was the seat of government long before iron was known, and long before the bronze age came to an end. It would, however, be a tremendous task to uproot several hundred acres merely on speculation. But the quantity of antique gold ornaments that has been found in Ireland was immense, more, it is thought by some, than has been found in all the rest of Europe. They are being found almost every year. Nearly £300 worth of golden fibulae was found in the County Waterford in 1894. They are now to be seen in the Dublin Museum.

TARA BROOCH.

The many things that are told about Tara in old Gaelic books would fill a large volume. They are all interesting. They may be incredible, grotesque, or funny, but they are never common-place: it is this uniqueness that is the great charm of ancient Irish literature. What could be more unique than this account of the burial of Laoghaire, the chief king who was cotemporary with St Patrick, but of whom the Saint never succeeded in making even a half decent Christian. It is taken from the book of the Dun Cow. When Laoghaire was killed by “the elements,” by lightning probably, “his body was taken from the south and was buried with his warrior weapons in the outward(?) south-eastern rampart of the Kingly Rath Laoghaire in Tara, and its face to the south against the Leinstermen [as if] fighting with them, for he had been an enemy of the Leinstermen when alive.” The idea of facing his enemies with his dead body, for Laoghaire must have given orders as to how and where he should be buried, could only have entered into the brains of ancient Irish kings, for they were grotesque or original in almost everything.

It is strange how long political memories last. The enmity between Leinster and Meath has not even yet quite died out. Meath, as the seat of the over-kings, represented Ireland, and was also the place from which the hateful Leinster Tribute originated. This is not yet forgotten, for whenever wrestling matches, or athletic sports of any kind, are held near Dublin by the people of adjoining counties, the counties of Dublin, Kildare, and Wicklow are always pitted against Meath. Dubhthach Mac U Lugair, one of the first converts St Patrick made in Ireland, tells us, in a poem of his in praise of his native province of Leinster, that its war cry was “The magnification of Leinster, the destruction of Meath.” Dubhthach may have been a good Christian, but there are good grounds for thinking that he was a better Leinsterman; for he says in the same poem that—

“Except the host of Heaven round the Creator
There never was a host like Leinstermen round Crimhthan.”

Crimhthan was a king of Leinster, who is said to have had a stronghold in Howth, where the Bailey Lighthouse now stands.

Although few traces of cultivation are to be seen on the Hill of Tara, there can be no doubt that it has been very much defaced and uprooted. The great rath of King Laoghaire, who was cotemporary with St Patrick, has almost entirely disappeared. Its earthen rampart must have been of a good height, when it served as a sepulchre for Laoghaire with his body in an erect position, with its face turned southward, against the Leinstermen. Laoghaire was never a Christian; or if he was such at one time, there seems strong reason to think that he relapsed into paganism towards the end of his career. At all events it is evident that he was not a favourite of St Patrick’s or of the early Irish Christians, and it is quite likely that when Tara was abandoned, his rath was uprooted, and his body, or what remained of it, consigned to some unmarked grave. But from whatever cause, this rath has certainly been almost entirely obliterated. It must have been considerably over two acres in area, if one can judge by the small segment of it that can still be traced.

The following story is told in the life of St Patrick in the Leabhar Breac. Mr. Whitley Stokes says in his translation of the lives of the Saints from the “Book of Lismore,” that it so disgusted Thomas Carlyle that it caused him to give up the study of Irish history:

“Then three of Ui Meith Mendait Tire (a tribe that were located in the vicinity of Tara) stole and ate one of the two goats that used to carry water for Patrick, and came to swear a lie. Whereupon the goat bleated from the stomachs of the three. ‘By my good judge,’ said Patrick, ‘the goat himself hides not the place where he is.’” It is hardly to be wondered at that a story like this, that would make any right-minded man laugh, only disgusted a hypochondriacal crank like Carlyle.

The last chief king who lived in Tara was Dermot MacCarroll, who died in the year 565. He was evidently only half a Christian, for it has been fully proved that Druidism lingered in Ireland for many years after the death of St Patrick. Dermot got into a dispute with the clergy because they sheltered a man who had done something that displeased him. The end of the dispute was that St. Ruadhan, one of the prominent ecclesiastics of the time, cursed Tara, and it was forever abandoned as the seat of royalty. It is almost certain that the real cause of the cursing of Tara by the clergy was that druidical or pagan rites continued to be practised in it after the bulk of the people had become Christians; for it had been for untold centuries the seat of paganism as well as of royalty. It has to be admitted, however, that great a benefit to the true faith as the abandonment of Tara as a political centre undoubtedly was, it was disastrous to the authority of the chief kings, for they appear to have lost much of their authority over the provincial rulers when they abandoned Tara and made their abodes in various places in Meath, Westmeath, and Donegal.

The vast antiquity given to Tara cannot be reasonably considered as the mere invention of Irish bards or chroniclers. It is inconceivable that they would invent the names of forty or fifty kings, most of whom ruled there over a thousand years before the Christian era. The Irish annalists who wrote about the very remote historical events of Irish history lived and wrote long before Ireland came under English domination. They would have no object in inventing historic falsehoods. The Tuatha de Daanans and Firbolgs, who possessed the country before the Milesians, had vanished more than a thousand years before the most ancient annals we possess were written. What object could men who claimed to be Milesians have in inventing historic falsehoods about races who possessed the country before them? Besides, the general correctness of Irish annalists in recording purely historic events is now admitted by all those capable of forming an opinion. The men who wrote the oldest chronicles that we possess of events in the very far-back past of their country, evidently wrote what had been handed down to them, either in writing or by tradition. They would have had no object in becoming fabricators.

So far, then, Tara with its glamour of greatness and antiquity, its uprootedness, its ruin, and its utter desolation.

LOCH REE

Of all the great lakes of Ireland there is none so little known to tourists or the public in general as Loch Ree. It is the fourth in size, Loch Neagh, Loch Erne, and Loch Corrib being the only Irish lakes of greater extent, but none of them exceeds Loch Ree in beauty. Loch Erne is a noble sheet of water, and is adorned with many beautiful islands, but owing to its peculiar shape, one cannot take in all its charms from any point on its shores; but there are dozens of places on the banks of Loch Ree from which all its great expanse of water, and most of the charming features of the country that surrounds it, can be taken in at a single glance. If the shores of Loch Ree were mountainous it would be one of the most beautiful lakes, not only in Ireland, but in the world. It is strange that it is not more generally known, and it lying almost in the geographical centre of Ireland, and surrounded by some of the richest land and most beautiful paysage scenery to be found anywhere. People rush to Killarney, Connemara, Achill and many other places, and almost totally neglect this noble expanse of the king of Irish rivers, the Shannon. It is the unfortunate commercial state of Ireland that has caused the scenery of the Shannon to be so little known. If there were dozens of thriving and populous towns on its banks, as there would be if it flowed through any other country than Ireland, large and commodious steamers would be plying on its waters, and the beauties of Loch Ree and Loch Dearg would be as well known as those of Windermere or Killarney. Nothing can more plainly show how fast Ireland is retrograding from even the very mediocre trade she enjoyed half a century ago than the fact that the passenger steam-boats that used to ply almost daily in the summer season between Carrick-on-Shannon or Lanesboro’ and Killaloe have long ceased to run, and are now rotting somewhere on the Lower Shannon. The decline in the population, and the consequent decline in trade, became so great that it was found that the money taken did not pay more than seventy per cent. of even the working expenses of those steamers, and they had to stop running. The writer travelled in one of them more than thirty years ago between Athlone and Killaloe. They were large side-wheel steamers that would carry over one hundred passengers, and on which excellent meals could be obtained at a moderate price. There is probably not in Europe a more generally interesting river than that from Athlone to Killaloe, but it is now practically closed, not only to tourists, but to the public in general, for a passenger steamer has not traversed the Upper Shannon for well-nigh thirty years. It is no wonder, then, that the glories of Loch Ree, with its almost countless islands, and the glories of Loch Dearg, with its mountain-girded shores, are now nearly as unknown to tourists and to the Irish public in general as are the reaches of the Congo or the Niger. It is simply heartrending to think that decline of population and general decay have made the mighty waters of the Shannon, that runs almost from one end of Ireland to the other, an almost lifeless stream, for the few little row-boats and sailing smacks one sees on it would not, all told, hold more people than the life-boats of a single Atlantic steamer. Bad as things are, they seem to be getting worse, for there is hardly a single town or city on the Shannon that is not declining in trade and population. At the rate things are going on, a turf boat will soon be the only sort of craft to be seen on the waters of Ireland’s greatest river! It is, however, cheering to be able to state that there is good reason to believe that steps are being taken to re-establish a line of passenger steam-boats on the Upper Shannon.

The tyranny and folly of man may mar towns and turn fields into wildernesses, but they cannot mar nature. If no steam-boats plough the waters of Loch Ree, and if men have given place to cattle and sheep on its banks, it is still as beautiful as ever. Its sinuous shores are still as fair to the eye as they were fifty years ago, when a teeming population lived on them, and when twenty thousand people might be seen at the annual regatta that used to be held every autumn on its waters. Nothing less than an earthquake could destroy the beauty of Loch Ree. It has every element of scenic beauty save mountains, but such are its general beauties that mountains are hardly missed. Loch Dearg is almost surrounded by mountains, but it is not nearly so fair to look upon as Loch Ree. The former lake is almost entirely islandless, but Loch Ree is studded with them. In traversing its entire length, from Lanesboro’ to Athlone, a distance of twenty miles, islands are ever in view. Hare Island is the most beautiful island in the lake; seen from the waters or from the mainland it seems a mass of leaves. The trees grow on it so thickly that they dip their branches into the water almost all round it. Lord Castlemaine has a charming rustic cottage on Hare Island, and the pleasure grounds attached to it are laid out with very great taste and skill. It is one of the most beautiful sylvan island retreats in Europe. Hare Island contains nearly a hundred acres. Inchmore is still larger, but not so well wooded. Then there are Inchbofin, Inis Cloran, Inchturk, Saints’ Island, Hag’s Island, Carberry Island, and many others, the names of which would be tedious to mention. The islands of Loch Ree are of almost all sizes, from a hundred acres to a square perch. Except in the vast St Lawrence alone, with its famed thousand islands, there are few river expansions in the world that contain so many islands as Loch Ree. Its shores are fully as beautiful as its islands. It would be hard to conceive anything in the way of shore scenery more beautiful than the shores of Loch Ree for eight or ten miles on the Leinster side of the lake between the mouth of the river Inny and Athlone. The shores are so irregular and cut up into so many promontories and headlands that, to follow the water’s edge from Athlone to where the Inny enters the Shannon, a distance of not more than ten miles as the crow flies, would involve a journey of over fifty. Every headland is tree-crowned, and every promontory rock-girded. Very little of the shores of this beautiful lake are swampy; they are generally as rocky as those of a Highland tarn, with deep, blue water ever fretting rock and stone into thousands of fantastic shapes. So rocky are most parts of the shores of Loch Ree, that those æsthetic persons living near it who wish to form rock-works in their pleasure grounds find abundance of water-worn stones on the shores of Loch Ree to make rock-work of any shape required.

The shores of Loch Ree, particularly the Leinster shore, are more adorned with gentlemen’s seats than the shores of perhaps any other lake in Ireland. From Athlone to nearly the head of the lake there is a succession of gentlemen’s seats. Many of them are kept with great care and taste, and are in themselves well worth a visit. The house in which Goldsmith spent his early youth is about two miles from Loch Ree, and about two-and-a-half from the village of Glassan. The house is a ruin, but a well-preserved one. When it was built seems unknown, but from what can be gathered from the old men living in its vicinity, it seems to have been built about the year 1700. The walls are still intact. It was two storeys high, and must have contained seven or eight apartments. The name Auburn is still applied to the townland on which the house stands; but the name seems to have originated with Goldsmith himself, for the place does not appear to have been so called before his time. Lissoy is its Irish name, but Auburn does not seem to be an Irish name at all. The “Jolly Pigeons” public-house still exists. It is about a mile from Auburn. There never was a village called Auburn in the locality. The nearest place to Goldsmith’s house that could be called a village is Glassan.

Loch Ree is not void of considerable historic interest. There are many noble ruins on its shores; among them Randown Castle is the most remarkable. It was one of the earliest Norman-French keeps erected in Ireland. It is situated on a bold promontory jutting into the lake on the Connacht side, about ten or twelve miles north of Athlone. It is now generally called St John’s Castle. At Blein Potog, or Pudding Bay, took place in the year 999 one of the most important events in Irish history—namely, the surrender of the sovereignty of Ireland to Brian Boramha by Malachy the Second. The Munster king came up the Shannon with a large army in a flotilla of boats, and Malachy met him there and surrendered to him. Many think that it was, in a political point of view, one of the most disastrous events of Irish history, for the usurpation of the chief sovereignty by Brian caused such weakness and confusion after his death, that each provincial ruler wanted to be chief king, and created such wars and political chaos that no chief king that succeeded possessed complete sway over the country, the so-called chief kings that succeeded being kings only in name. For a full account of the treaty of Blein Potog, the reader is referred to the “Wars of the Gaels and the Galls,” translated by the late Rev. Dr Todd. The site of the treaty is some ten miles north of Athlone, on the Leinster shore of Loch Ree.

Athlone is one of the most picturesque and interesting inland towns in Ireland. Its situation is simply superb,—in the almost exact geographical centre of Ireland, at the foot of one of the most beautiful of lakes, and on the banks of a noble river, deep and wide enough to carry ships on its waters.

Athlone is one of the few towns—perhaps the only one—on the Shannon that is not decaying at present. For many years after the famine it decayed rapidly, but some thirty years ago a woollen factory was established; now there are two woollen factories and a saw-mill that give employment to some hundreds of hands, consequently Athlone has been saved from decay. But comparatively prosperous as it is, it is not one-fourth as prosperous as it ought to be considering its splendid situation and the fertility and beauty of the country that surrounds it. It has recently become a great railway centre; one can go by rail from Athlone to almost any part of Ireland. But all the railways and all the fertility of all the world cannot bring real prosperity to any country in which the population is declining. The decline of the population in Athlone itself and in the country surrounding it has, during the last fifty years, been something frightful, and can only be fully realised by those who remember what it was in former times. A market day in Athlone now is very different from a market day there half a century ago. The writer recollects having been at a market in Athlone when a small boy, about the year 1841 or ’42, and saw more people there in one market than could be seen in twenty markets there now. The town was too small to contain much more than half of them; they flowed out into the fields surrounding it. The crowds in the streets were so dense that it would take hours to jostle one’s way from one end of the town to the other, and, what will hardly be credited by those whose memories do not go back fifty years, there were certainly three persons speaking Irish for one who spoke English. One might attend markets in Athlone now every week in the year and not hear a word of any language but English. Irish has completely died out of the country surrounding Athlone, save in the south-western corner of the county Roscommon, where some old people still speak it. There is something inexpressibly sad in the fading away of any form of National speech, but, above all, in the fading away of a tongue so old and once so cultivated as Irish. It seems to forebode not only the death of all real National aspirations, but the death of heart and soul. It seems to show that Philistinism is rapidly driving away sentiment from the Irish people. But the life of the Irish peasant has been so long such a battle for mere existence that it is no wonder that he came to look with contempt on everything that did not administer to his mere animal wants. He is rapidly improving since he has had a barrier put between him and the generally cruel treatment he was wont to receive from his landlord. None but those who remember what his position was fifty years ago, and who see what it is now, can fully understand all the advance he has made. In spite of the awful decline of population in the rural districts of Ireland during the last fifty years, there is much to be seen in them to gladden the heart of the philanthropist. Small farmers’ cottages, that would formerly be a disgrace to a Zulu or an Esquimaux, are now not only generally clean, but sometimes beautiful. Flowers in pots in the windows and evergreens creeping up the walls of a peasant’s cottage would have caused him to be laughed at by his neighbours fifty years ago, but now they cause him to be respected instead of being laughed at. He will become again what he once was, one of the most soulful and un-Philistine of beings; it is probable he will become such when better laws and freer institutions shall have raised him from the slough of poverty and despondency in which he has been steeping for centuries.

Tourists and the travelling public in general will find good accommodation at the Prince of Wales Hotel in Athlone, in which town boats can be hired by those going either up or down the Shannon.

“EMANIA THE GOLDEN”

Two miles west of the city of Armagh lies an earthen fort known as the “Navan Ring.” This is all that remains of the renowned palace of the Pagan Kings of Ulster, the real name of which was Emain Macha, which has been Latinised Emania, and corrupted into Navan.

After Tara, Emania is the most historic spot of Irish soil. No other place in all Ireland, Tara only excepted, is so often mentioned in the historic and romantic tales that have been preserved in such abundance in ancient Gaelic. Emania is the great centre of that wondrous cycle of legend, history, and song known as the Cuchullainn cycle of Celtic literature. Every tale and legend in it refer more or less to Emania. It is curious that while hardly any of the treasures of ancient Irish manuscript literature we possess were compiled in Ulster, there is hardly a page of them, no matter in what province they were originally composed, that does not mention this now almost obliterated stronghold of the Ulster kings. The “Book of Leinster” was compiled in Kildare or in Glendoloch, and for nearly a thousand years, or from the imposition of the Leinster Tribute early in the second century down to the time of Brian Boramha, Leinster and Ulster were inveterate enemies, yet the “Book of Leinster” teems with mention of Emania. Even in the great manuscript books compiled in Connacht and Munster, the name of Emania occurs next in frequency to that of Tara.

So far as can be gathered from the most authentic sources, the palace of Emain Macha, or Emania, was erected by the over-king Cimboath, about five hundred years before the Incarnation. It continued to be the seat of the Ulster kings down to A.D. 331, when it was destroyed by the three Collas, chieftains of the race of the over-kings of Ireland from a hostile province, that made war on Ulster. The destruction of Emania is recorded by the Four Masters under the year 331, when Fergus, King of Ulster, was defeated and slain by the three Collas. Emania was burned, and the ancient dynasty that had so long ruled the province of Ulster was destroyed. Emania may be said to have been a desolation since then; for though we are told that one of the O’Neill’s built a house within the ruins of the fort in 1387, no vestige of it now remains, and it is not probable that it was long in existence.

None of the ancient palaces or great duns of ancient Ireland shows such utter desolation, or bears evidence of having been so uprooted as does Emania. The great fosse by which it was once surrounded is entirely obliterated save on the west side, where it is nearly twenty feet in depth. Much as Tara has been obliterated, its monuments are more easily traced than are those of Emania. The county Meath seems to have been a grazing country almost from time immemorial. This saved Tara from being entirely uprooted; but the country round this ancient seat of the Ulster kings is essentially agricultural; it is mostly in the possession of small farmers owning from ten to twenty acres; consequently they have levelled most of the great circular embankments that formerly enclosed an area of nearly a dozen acres, and have filled up most of the deep fosse which, if we can judge by the small part of it that still remains, must have been, when Emania was in its glory, between twenty and thirty feet deep. So potatoes are growing and corn is waving over a large extent of the inside of the fortress, where vast wooden buildings once stood, and where mirth and revelry and clash of arms once resounded.

Mons. Darbois de Jubainville, the eminent French archæologist and Celtic scholar, made an exhaustive examination of Emania some years ago. He found that the area within the original enclosure was four and a half hectares, or between eleven and twelve English acres in extent, and that the space enclosed was nearly circular. Like Tara, the buildings in Emania must have been almost entirely of wood. Some of them may, like many of the wooden houses in America, have been built on stone foundations, and there are some traces of stone-work still to be seen. There is a magnificent passage in the Féilere of Oengus the Culdee, written about A.D. 800, in which the greatness and glory of the Christian cities of Ireland are contrasted with the state of utter desolation into which the strongholds of the Pagan kings had fallen. Speaking of Emania he says—

“Emain’s burgh hath vanished
Save that its stones remain;
The Rome of the western world
Is multitudinous Glendaloch.”

There is no doubt that the ruins of Emania were in a much better state of preservation when Oengus wrote, nearly eleven hundred years ago, than they are in at present, and it is certain that many of its stones have been carried away to build walls and houses. But it is also quite certain that neither in Ireland, Great Britain, or in any northern country, were stone buildings general in ancient times, and we may be sure that when Emania was at the height of its splendour its best and largest buildings were of wood.

The area of eleven or twelve acres that was once surrounded by a deep fosse and high embankment, and within which all the buildings of Emania were erected, is not quite circular, nor is its surface level. Considerable inequality of surface evidently existed in it before it was chosen for the site of palace or dun. The highest part within the enclosure is a good deal removed from its centre, and it was evidently on it that the citadel stood. There was a dun within a dun, as there generally was in all ancient Irish fortresses of any great extent. The citadel having been on the highest ground within the enclosure, commanded a view of the surrounding country for a considerable distance. Emania, when at its best, with its vast surrounding fosse and high earthen rampart, capped with a strong fence of wood, might, if properly provisioned and manned, defy almost any army that could be brought against it in ancient times when firearms were unknown.

It is for the antiquarian rather than for the seeker of the picturesque that Emania will ever have the most attraction. There is nothing very striking from a scenic point of view in its environs. Its present shockingly uprooted condition, and the almost total lack of interest the peasantry living in its immediate vicinity take in it, have a depressing effect on anyone interested in Irish literature, history, or antiquities. During the writer’s last visit to this historic spot he met a small farmer whose potatoes were planted over part of the obliterated fosse and rampart of this famous stronghold of Ulster. He had never heard of King Connor MacNessa, of Connall Carnach, of Cuchullainn, or of the Red Branch Knights. He knew no more about them than about the heroes of ancient China. He said that he “ever an’ always hard that the Navan Ring was built by the Danes.” This man had been born and bred in the locality, but he took no more interest in the historic spot that had given him birth than if he were a Hottentot instead of an Irishman. Anglicisation has indeed been carried to an extreme pitch in most parts of Ireland, and is rapidly turning the Irish peasant into the most generally uninteresting, prosy, and least spirituel of mortals. As a rule, the more Anglicised he becomes the more intolerable he is. If the peasantry living round Emania had preserved their native language, while at the same time knowing English, if they were bilingual, like millions of their class in different European countries, many things connected with the history of this celebrated place would be known to them; but having lost the link that bound them to the past, they are like a new race in a new country. It is well known that the masses of the Greek peasantry, notwithstanding that a large percentage of them are illiterate, know more about the history and traditions of their country than any Irishman, save a specialist, knows about the history and traditions of Ireland. In very few European countries will such a knowledge of its past be found among the masses as in Greece, and principally because the Greeks have preserved their language.

Although Tara is more ancient and more historic than Emania, the latter place is connected with the most pathetic, the most dramatic, and most generally beautiful tale in all the vast mass of ancient Gaelic literature—“The Fate of the Children of Uisneach.” It was in Emania that their betrayer and murderer, Connor, King of Ulster, lived; it was there that they themselves were killed, and it was there that Deirdre died. The tale appeared almost a century ago in a book brought out by a Gaelic Society that then existed in Dublin. The Irish text was given, with a translation by Theopholus O’Flanagan. It was thought by some that he had no ancient copy of the tale, and that he might have embellished it, for he did not say from what manuscript he had taken it. The story, as given in the “Book of Leinster,” while agreeing in the main with O’Flanagan’s version, is not nearly of such literary value as his, and is not more than one quarter the length. But all doubts as to the existence of an ancient version of the story given by O’Flanagan have been removed, for an ancient copy of it, supposed to be of the fourteenth century, was found some years ago in the Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh, and has been edited and translated by Mr. Whitley Stokes. It may be seen in Windische’s Irische Texte. It agrees almost exactly with the version given by O’Flanagan. It would be hard to give a clearer proof of the utter neglect with which Celtic literature has heretofore been treated, than by a statement of the fact that there are not probably a hundred persons living, at least of the literary class, who have read this wondrously beautiful tale of the Children of Uisneach. For pathos, dramatic power, and pure poetry it would be hard to get anything in the way of romance superior to it. If such a literary gem existed in the literature of any European language but Irish, if such existed even in Arabic or Persian, it would be known to literary people almost all over the world. But how can people of other nations be blamed for their ignorance of Gaelic literature when the Irish themselves are more indifferent about it than the Germans or the French? A text and translation of the “Fate of the Children of Uisneach” is sorely wanted—not merely as a text for scholars, but for the people at large. When such appears it will make a visit to Emania infinitely more interesting; for, after reading such a pathetic tale, he would indeed be hard-hearted and unsympathetic that would not, if he could find where she was buried, shed a tear over the grave of Deirdre. The very fine poem by the late Doctor Robert Dwyer Joyce, published in Boston, America, in 1877, was the only attempt ever made to popularise the story of the Children of Uisneach and the fate of the unfortunate but true and noble Deirdre.

The country in the vicinity of Emania, while containing no striking objects of scenic interest, is, at the same time, picturesque and beautiful. Southern Ulster, even where it is not mountainous, is usually most varied and interesting in its general features. It is essentially a land of hills and valleys; but the hills are never so high that they cannot be cultivated, and the best land is sometimes found on their very tops. The country round Emania is extremely broken, hill and valley are on every side. It is generally, like most parts of Ulster, well cultivated. There are many antiquarian curiosities in the neighbourhood of this ancient fortress. Some of the most perfect Druid circles in Ireland are in its vicinity. There is a very remarkable one about a mile from it which a thrifty farmer has turned into a haggard. It encloses about quarter of an acre of ground. The stones of which it is composed stand about four feet over the surface, and must average nearly a ton each in weight. But vandalism is strong in the vicinity, for it is only a short time since another splendid Druid circle, nearly as large as the one mentioned, was torn down, and its stones broken to mend roads withal. Thus are many of the relics of ancient Erin disappearing before the march of denationalisation.

Those who live in the vicinity of Emania tell many stories about the finding of treasure-trove close to and in this ancient fortress. According to them, gold ornaments of great value were found by some persons many years ago who suddenly became rich, much to the surprise of their neighbours. Those ornaments were, of course, melted down, and like hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of similar articles found in almost every part of Ireland, never found their way to any museum, and are lost to the country for ever. There can hardly be any doubt that some very valuable articles in gold have been found near Emania.

One of the most interesting instances of the long survival of a place name is to be found adjacent to this celebrated spot. Most Irish persons have heard of the Red Branch Knights. Moore has immortalised them in his exquisite lyric, “Let Erin Remember the Days of Old.” Few believe that such an institution as the Red Branch Knights ever existed. It is generally looked on as a bardic fable; but there is a townland close to Emania which is still called Creeve Roe, in correct orthography, Craobh Ruadh, which means Red Branch. The preservation of this place name for nearly two thousand years cannot be regarded as an accident. It goes far to prove that the Red Branch Knights did exist, and that the townland took its name from them. This extraordinarily long survival of a place name, the historic fame and antiquity of the locality, lend a supreme interest to this ruined stronghold, which, centuries after its glories had vanished, Gaelic bards used still to call “Emania the Golden.”

Ardmagh is so near Emania, only two miles from it, that one place could hardly be described without saying something about the other. Its ancient name was Ardmacha, meaning the height of Macha. This Macha was queen, or at least ruler, of that part of the country in far-back pagan times. It was also from her that Emain Macha, or Emania, was named. Ardmagh was founded by St Patrick in the year 457. A man named Daire, chief of the district, is said, in the “Annals of the Four Masters,” to have given Patrick the site on which the city is built. Patrick appointed twelve men to build the town, and ordered them to erect an archbishop’s city there, and churches for the different religious orders. It seems strange that the saint should have chosen Ardmagh for the site of the chief religious establishment in Ireland. Emania had been ruined and desolated in the previous century, but it is evident that it was the fame of the ancient stronghold of Ulster that induced Patrick to choose its immediate vicinity as a site for his new Christian city, because Emania had been for so many centuries previous the political centre of the province, and, next to Tara, the chief political centre of Ireland. Of the old ecclesiastical buildings of Ardmagh, not a vestige remains. Some of its new ones are, however, magnificent. The new Catholic cathedral is the finest building of its kind in Ireland. It is hardly to be wondered at that none of the ancient buildings of Ardmagh should remain, for of all towns in Ireland, it was burned, plundered, and razed the oftenest. In the course of the two centuries and a half ending in 1080, it was plundered and wholly or partially burned twelve times by the Danes. No other city in Ireland seems to have suffered so much from the Northmen. Turgesius, the Danish king, captured it and lived there for some years. The present city is one of the most picturesque towns of its size in Ireland, but it is not growing much. It once had a good linen trade, but since the introduction of cotton fabrics, its linen trade has entirely ceased.

QUEEN MAB’S PALACE

Rathcroghan, about two miles from Tulsk, in the county Roscommon, is one of the most celebrated places in Irish history, legend, and song. It was there that Queen Mab, spelt Medb in old Irish, and Meave at present, had her palace, and it was there she was buried. That she was a real historic personage, and not a myth or a fairy, there can be no doubt at all, and that she was a very extraordinary woman cannot be doubted either. She was Queen of Connacht, and was cotemporary with Cleopatra; but if the Egyptian queen is mentioned in history she is forgotten in legend, while Mab has lived in legend for more than eighteen centuries. It is remarkable that the myths and legends about her should have been more prevalent during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in England than in Ireland. There are few legends about her in Ireland; she is simply an historic personage there, but in England she became a fairy. There is hardly a popular English writer of the two centuries referred to that has not said something about Queen Mab; and it is very probable that none of them knew that she was a reality in Irish history. Shakespeare, Spenser, Drayton, and other English writers contemporary with them, speak of her as a fairy, and even Shelley considers her a sprite; but she is rarely, if ever, mentioned as such by the Gaelic writers of any epoch. Why legends about Queen Mab, or, as we call her at present, Meave, should be so rare in Ireland is probably owing to the fact that she belongs to what is known as the Cuchulainn cycle of Irish history and legend. That cycle is almost forgotten by the people, and has been for many centuries. It has been eclipsed by the greater popularity of the Finn cycle, which is some centuries more recent. For the one legend existing in the most Gaelic-speaking parts of Ireland and Scotland about Cuchulainn or his cycle there are a score about Finn, Oisin, Caoilte, and others of their contemporaries. It may have been that the introduction of Christianity had much to do in stereotyping the legends of the Finn cycle in the memories of the masses, for Finn is said to have lived so long that he saw St Patrick, and held converse with him. One of the most remarkable literary productions in Irish, the “Dialogue of the Sages,” consists of converse between the Saint and Finn, and others belonging to the same cycle.

There could hardly be a stronger proof of the high civilisation that existed in Ireland in ancient times as compared with that which existed in England than the fact that the remembrance of Irish historic personages continued widely spread in England in spite of so many changes, not only in government, but in race and language. There is no traditional remembrance in Ireland of any English historic personage contemporary with Queen Meave, or of any such that lived for many centuries after her time. That a knowledge of her and Lir, the Lear of Shakespeare, should have existed among the ancient Britons is not to be wondered at, for they were kin to the Irish, and must have spoken the same, or nearly the same, language; but that this remembrance of Irish historic personages should have continued to exist in England under Roman, Saxon, Dane, and Frenchman, is very remarkable. If it was knowledge obtained through books it would be less to be wondered at; it was knowledge transmitted by legend, and like all legendary knowledge, it had a tendency to go astray. The legends that existed in England about Meave and Lir did go astray, for they made a little fairy of the one and a King of Britain of the other. But Meave was not a little fairy, but a very fine woman of flesh and blood; and Lir was not King of Britain, but an Irish pirate whose principal stronghold appears to have been the Isle of Man. It is called after him, for his full name was Mananan Mac Lir. It seems more than probable that both Dunleer and Liverpool are also called after him, for the latter place is written “Lyrpul” in the earliest known document in which the name occurs, and it is Lyrpul still in Welsh. It is probable that Lir had possessions in England as well as in Ireland and the Isle of Man.

Medb or Meave, Queen of Connacht, was daughter to Eochy Fayloch, over-king of Ireland. She lived about half a century before the Christian era. Keating says, in his “History of Ireland,” that she reigned ninety-eight years. This very long reign is doubted by some Irish historians, but it is generally admitted by them that her reign, as well as her life, was remarkably long. She had more husbands than even the woman of Samaria is credited with. It was evidently her extraordinary long life and reign that caused her to be ultimately believed to be something supernatural, and to be regarded as a fairy. She was, however, no fairy, but a bold, bad, and warlike woman. She, even more than Cuchulainn, is the central figure of the greatest prose epic in the Irish language, the Tain Bo Chuailgne, or Cattle Raid of Cooley. By lies and bribes she persuaded the other provincial rulers to join her in a totally unjustifiable war on Ulster, so that she was able to invade that province with a great army of fifty-four thousand men. She carried off a great prey from Ulster, but not without suffering some defeats and losing some of her bravest warriors. It is said that Mr Ernest Windisch is engaged in translating this great epic into German, but it seems not yet finished. Meave, like most of the prominent people of her day, met with a violent death. She had many enemies, especially in Ulster. One of them, a son to the king of that province, killed her by a cast from a sling as she was about taking a cold water bath in Iniscloran, an island in Loch Ree. She must have been considerably over a hundred years old when she was killed, but she appears, even at that great age, to have been the admiration of every one that saw her on account of the great beauty of her face and figure. Perhaps it was her cold water baths that were the chief means of preserving her youth and good looks, for we are told in the “Book of Leinster” that she was under geis, or bonds, not to let any morning pass by without taking a bath. It is no wonder that such a person should have in the long run passed into the realm of fairie, and have been thought something supernatural. It is, however, a wonder that the Four Masters do not mention the name of Meave, although they do mention the name of her father; but there are many similar strange omissions in their annals. Meave is, however, mentioned in the Annals of Clonmacnoise, in which many hard things are said of her.

The fort, as it is generally called, of Rathcroghan, upon which Queen Meave’s palace must have stood, is unlike any other place of its kind known to the writer. Strictly speaking, it is not a fort at all, and it is impossible to conceive how it ever could have been used for purposes of defence, or for any purpose other than to build some sort of habitation on. It is nothing but a raised circular elevation, an English acre in area, in a perfectly level field, without a vestige of the fosse or rampart that usually surrounds the ruined strongholds of Celtic chiefs and kings. Long ago as it is since Rathcroghan was the seat of kings or queens of Connacht, some traces of the surrounding ramparts would almost certainly be yet visible had they ever existed. Queen Meave seems to have depended more on her soldiers to defend her than on ramparts of stone or earth. She seems to have relied on “castles of bones” rather than on castles of stones; for her palace, so far as can be judged from existing remains, seems to have been without defending ramparts of any kind. There are many references in old Gaelic manuscripts to the splendour of Queen Meave’s palace. It is said to have been built of pine and yew, and to have contained beds enough to accommodate a small army. It was probably an immense round wigwam that covered all or nearly all of the raised platform that still remains. That platform is about eight or nine feet above the level of the field on which it stands, and has two entrances into it, one exactly opposite the other. If the vast circular wooden building that stood on it was roofed, as it almost certainly was, the walls would have to be fifty feet or more in height to give it anything of an imposing appearance. It may have been that the entire raised platform was not covered by the wooden structure, but the descriptions of its great size given in old books would lead one to think that it was.

Rathcroghan does not appear to have been a place of residence of any of the rulers of Connacht since the time of the celebrated Queen Meave. If it was, the writer has not been able to find trustworthy evidence of the fact. It may, however, have been used as a place for assemblies in comparatively recent times. Relig na Riogh, or the cemetery of kings, at Rathcroghan, was one of the great burial places of the Pagan Irish Kings. It is a circular enclosure, about half a mile from the platform on which Queen Meave’s palace stood. It bears all the marks of extreme antiquity, and has suffered much from the ravages of time. It covers between two and three acres, and at first sight appears nothing more than a piece of ground of very broken surface, for the mounds that marked the graves of kings and chiefs have become nearly obliterated. But it was here that many of the kings and heroes of ancient Ireland were buried, and it is here that the bones of Queen Meave rest, that is, if we are to believe the most trustworthy records of Irish history. It is thought by some that she was buried under the vast cairn of stones that crowns the summit of Knocknarea, near Sligo, for it is called to this day Moisgan Meabha, literally Meave’s butter-dish; but by extension it probably means Meave’s heap or cairn. There is no historic evidence to prove that she was interred under the cairn on Knocknarea, however it came to be called by its present Irish name; and according to the late Sir Samuel Ferguson, her name, or a name closely resembling it, has been found written in Ogam characters on a stone in Reilig na Riogh.

That there was such a person as Queen Meave there cannot be any doubt whatever. History and legend never yet existed about a fabulous personage, and Meave figures in both. Whatever impossible things may be related about her in legend, history says nothing about her that cannot be easily believed, her great age and length of reign excepted. It must, however, be remembered that the ancient Irish were a very long-lived people. This fact is so apparent in so many places in ancient Gaelic literature that it has to be believed. We have as strong proof as can be afforded by history that in comparatively modern times Henry Jenkins lived to be over a hundred and sixty, and Old Parr to be over a hundred and fifty years old, and why could not Queen Meave have lived to as great or even a greater age? She was an extraordinary woman, and her name sheds a halo of romance round the place where she lived, and where her remains rest in peace after her long and stormy career. It was also in Reilig na Riogh that Dathi, the last pagan Irish Chief King, was buried. His mound is marked by a pillar stone, and O’Donovan, one of the most cautious and least impulsive investigators of Irish history and antiquities, saw no reason to doubt that the pillar stone marks his grave.

It may be said that no proof has been given that the Connacht Queen Medb or Meave was the prototype of the Mab of Shakespeare, Drayton, Spenser, and other English poets. True, no absolute proof has been given, and probably never will; but there is that which may be called negative proof, which in such a case is very strong. The negative proof, if it can be called such, that the Connacht queen was the prototype of the Queen Mab of English poets and English legend, is found in the complete silence of history and of tradition as to how else the legend of Queen Mab originated, for it must have originated somewhere and from some one. We are, then, and in a great measure by the total lack of any other way to account for the origin of the legend of Queen Mab being queen of the fairies, forced to come to the conclusion that the Connacht queen is the only person known to history who furnishes the prototype for her. But there is something more. It has been stated that the old Irish form of the name was Medb. It is well known to Celtic savants that what is now called “aspiration,” or the change in sound, and sometimes the entire suppression of certain consonants in pronunciation, did not take place nearly so often in old Irish as in the modern language; so that the name Medb would in ancient times be pronounced Mab, or something very like it. It is curious that in Drayton’s poem, “The Nymphadia,” Queen Mab, though a fairy, is remarkable for those things for which her Irish prototype was also remarkable—namely, her chariots, her amours, and her beauty.

A very strong proof that Queen Meave was an historic personage and not a myth is to be found in the name of the island in Loch Ree where she was killed. It is usually pronounced and written Iniscloran; but Inis Clothran is how it ought to be spelled, and how it is invariably spelled in the “Annals of the Four Masters” where the name frequently occurs, the island having been the seat of more than one church in early Christian times, and therefore often mentioned in annals. Meave had a sister named Clothru who lived in Iniscloran, and who was Queen of Connacht before Meave. Here is a translation from the “Book of Leinster,” page 124: “It was there that Clothru used to explain the laws of Connacht in Inis Clothran in Loch Ree.” The island was evidently called after Clothru (Clothran in the genitive), sister to Meave. This preservation of a place name connected with the name of an historic personage for two thousand years is most remarkable, and shows that Irish history is more truthful than is generally supposed. It is thought that Meave had Clothru killed, in order that she herself might become Queen of Connacht.

The country around Rathcroghan abounds in antiquities of far-back ages. Sepulchral mounds, ruined raths, tortuous caves, and weather-worn cromlechs are to be found on almost every side. It is a spot where the antiquarian might revel for weeks and find something every day to interest him. It is a beautiful country also, not a plain, in the strict sense of the word, and yet not hills, but what an American would call “rolling,” and a Frenchman “accidenté.” It is the “Magh Aoi” of Queen Meave’s time, and “Machaire Chonnacht,” or plain of Connacht, of later days. It is part of the celebrated Plains of Boyle, and is considered to contain some of the best grass land in Ireland. No fairer spot could be found in Connacht for the dwelling of a potentate who dealt largely in cattle than the green eminence on which Queen Meave had her palace, and both history and legend say that her flocks and herds were well-nigh innumerable. She made her home in the centre of the fairest and richest part of the province she ruled; and long as that home has been desolate, it has not been forgotten in history or in song, for that noble melody which Moore has made immortal—“Avenging and Bright Fall the Swift Sword of Erin”—was first known as “Croghan na Veena,” or “Croghan of the Heroes”; and the incident to which it refers—the murder of the children of Uisneach—occurred when Queen Meave was at the height of her splendour, when Rathcroghan was in its glory, and when it was really the dwelling-place of heroes.

There are many mentions of Rathcroghan in ancient Gaelic writings, and all of them speak of it as one of the most important places in Ireland in Pagan times. Oengus, the Culdee, whose poem has been already referred to, says of it—

“Rathcroghan hath vanished
With Ailill, offspring of victory;
A fair sovranty above Kingdoms
Is in Cluain’s city.”

The Ailill mentioned was one of Queen Meave’s many husbands, and “Cluain’s City” means Clonmacnois.

The nearest railway station to Rathcroghan is Castlerea, from which it is about eight miles distant. Its long distance from a railway and the want of good accommodation for tourists in its vicinity have helped to cause this celebrated place to be so neglected and forgotten.

THE HILL OF UISNEACH

Uisneach is one of the most historic hills in Ireland, yet there are probably not five per cent. of the people of Ireland that have ever heard of it, and not one per cent. of them that has ever seen it. Apart even from its historic interest, it is well worth seeing, for it is not only a beautiful hill, but it affords from its summit one of the most extensive and lovely views in Ireland. The hill of Uisneach is in the Barony of Rathconrath, County Westmeath, and only about four Irish miles from Streamstown Station on the Midland Great Western Railway, so that it is easily reached. There is, unfortunately, no hotel where tourists could be accommodated nearer to it than Moat, which is about eight Irish miles from it; and Mullingar is about the same distance. The village of Ballymore is five miles from the hill, but as there is no hotel there, Moat and Mullingar are the only towns within any moderate distance of it where tourists could get either lodgings or meals. It is not certain if even a car could be hired at Streamstown or near it, consequently those wishing to visit Uisneach should either have a private conveyance or make up their minds to “do it” on foot.

Uisneach is one of the most peculiarly-shaped hills in Ireland. It is only six hundred feet in height—a fair elevation in a part of the country where there are no mountains—but no matter from what side it is approached, it cannot be seen until one is almost at its base. The country immediately around it is so broken and so cut up by many hills and hollows of almost all shapes, that Uisneach, the highest of all the hills near it, can hardly be noticed until one is just at it. A public road runs close to its base, so there is no difficulty in reaching it, and the ascent is by no means steep. It is not until one is on the top of Uisneach that he finds out how high it is, for the view from its summit is extensive and beautiful almost beyond power of description. The country on every side of it consists of some of the richest pasture lands, not only in Ireland, but in the world. No matter in what direction one looks, a vast, undulated expanse of green meets the eye. If the view from Uisneach is seen in autumn, when the too few and far between grain-fields are turning yellow, it is as fair a sight as human eye ever gazed on. The country for scores of miles on every side is so rich, so green, and so varied with hill, dale, wood, and water, that the Biblical phrase that is applied to parts of Palestine, “the garden of the Lord,” might well be applied to the land round this hill. But it is safe to say that no Israelite ever gazed from Gilboa or Carmel on so fair a prospect. The vast extent of the view from this hill seems out of all proportion with its moderate height. On a clear day one can very nearly see from the Irish Channel to Galway Bay. The Wicklow hills seem close by. The mountains, not only of Cavan, but of Leitrim, are distinctly visible. On every side, save the south-west, the prospect is what some would be tempted to call boundless. On the south-west the view is obstructed by the hill of Knock Cosgrey, an eminence slightly higher than Uisneach, and one of the most beautiful hills in Ireland. It is about four miles south-west of Uisneach. Unlike Uisneach, however, it is, seen from a distance, both striking and bold. It has the misfortune to be called by so many different names, or rather, its name is pronounced in so many different ways, that strangers are often sadly puzzled what to call it. It is called Kunna Kostha and Kruck Kostha by the peasantry, and by the gentlefolk generally Knock Ash. But its proper name is Cnoc Cosgraigh, and is so written by the Four Masters, who are, undoubtedly, the highest authority we possess on place names. Seen from the road from Moat to Ballymahon, Knock Cosgrey is one of the most charming sights imaginable. It is nearly a mile from top to base, and forms a green pyramid of almost perfect symmetry. Its surface is entirely under grass; for this part of Ireland has been largely turned into pastures; and sometimes one may drive for six miles and not see a field of grain. “The bold peasantry” of whom Goldsmith speaks in his “Deserted Village” have become so few in these parts that miles may be travelled at mid-day through as fine a country as there is in the world without meeting a human being. Sheep and cattle, and not men and women, seem the prevailing living creatures. Knock Cosgrey is not only higher than Uisneach, but more near the true geographical centre of the island; but it possesses hardly any historic interest from the fact that its summit was too narrow to allow the ancient Irish either to build or assemble on it. Uisneach, with its over a hundred acres of nearly level land on its top, was therefore chosen, for a hundred thousand men could find space on it. It became, for that reason, one of the most historic, and in ancient times one of the most celebrated, hills in Ireland.

There is probably not another hill in Ireland so well adapted both for a place for assemblies and a site for building as Uisneach. Its summit is extensive. There are springs of the purest water on it. Plenty of stones of almost every size abound, and the soil, even in the most elevated parts, is of great fertility. In the troublesome times of yore, Uisneach possessed advantages that were most important in its elevation, and the extensive view it commanded; for they made it impossible for an army to approach it from any side without being seen by the watchers on its top. From the many advantages that this beautiful and extraordinary hill possesses, it seems strange that it was not chosen by the ancient Irish for a place of central government. It would have been even better suited for such a purpose than Tara. It probably would have been the chief seat of ancient Irish sovereignty if it had not been that the mistake made in selecting Tara instead of it, occurred so far back in what may be called prehistoric times, and antiquity had given Tara such a prestige that it continued to be the most important place in Ireland until it was abandoned as a seat of government in the sixth century. But Uisneach was also used as a place of residence by the Irish over-kings. That they sometimes resided there can be proved from ancient Gaelic writings. It was supposed to be the geographical centre of Ireland, and before the formation of the province of Meath by the over-king, Tuathal, in the early part of the second century, the four provinces met at Uisneach Hill. It is curious what a close guess the ancients made to locate the exact centre of the island. They seem, however, to have placed it four or five miles too far to the north-east, for, according to the most recent surveys, the hill of Knock Cosgrey is in the exact geographical centre of Ireland. In far-back ancient times, before the province of Meath had been formed by taking parts of the four original provinces, the hill of Uisneach was in Connacht. This almost exact quaternal division of Ireland into provinces, and their meeting at a point that was supposed to be the exact centre of the island, is a very curious and interesting feature in ancient Irish polity. In other countries, provinces seem to have originated by mere accident, some being big, and some little; but in Ireland they seem to have been laid out by line and rule, for the four provinces that met at Uisneach must have been very nearly of equal area. The celebrated Cat Stone on the hill of Uisneach was known from remote antiquity as Ail na Mireann, or “the rock of the divisions,” because the four provinces met at it. This rock was known by this name among the peasantry of the neighbourhood up to recent times, until Irish became a dead language in this part of the country.

Ail na Mireann, or, as it is now called, the Cat Stone, is the greatest curiosity on Uisneach Hill. It is not on the top of the hill, but on its side. It is, perhaps, the most puzzling rock in Ireland, for it is hard to say whether it was placed in its present position by an iceberg in the glacial age, or whether it was placed there by human agency, and intended for a rude cromlech. Here is what the eminent scholar and antiquarian, John O’Donovan, says about it in his yet unpublished letters when he was on the Government Survey of Ireland in 1837:—“The huge rock on this hill of Uisneach, a part of which was split and formed into a cromlech, is now called the Cat Stone, from a supposed resemblance to a cat sitting and watching a mouse.” If this stone is a cromlech, or Druid’s altar, it is unlike anything of the kind found elsewhere in Ireland or other countries, for the four upright stones which usually support the flat one, are not to be seen here. The weight of this enormous mass of stone can hardly be less than twenty tons, and if it was put in its present position by human agency, it is by far the most extraordinary thing of its kind in Ireland. But a majority of those who see it think that it is merely a boulder of peculiar shape. If it is a boulder it is a very extraordinary one, and if it is a cromlech it is a more extraordinary one still.

It was on Uisneach Hill, or in its immediate vicinity, that the ecclesiastical synod met in the year 1111. This great meeting is mentioned in almost all Irish annals. It was attended by fifty bishops, three hundred priests, and upwards of three thousand students, and by the nobles of the southern half of Ireland, with Muircheartach O’Briain, King of Munster, at their head. We are told that the synod was convened to regulate the manners and mode of living of both clergy and laity. It does not seem to have done much good on account of the then chaotic political state of the country, caused by almost constant wars between the aspirants for chief kingship.

There are many interesting things besides the cromlech to be seen on the vast undulated summit of Uisneach. There is a hollow known as St Patrick’s bed, and there are the remains of the walls of large stone buildings on the most elevated part of the hill. There is also one of the finest raths in Ireland, which must have been a place of great strength, for the embankments are still of immense height, and are overgrown with hawthorn bushes of great size. This rath, unlike the generality of such structures, is not round, but oblong. It encloses a space of nearly an acre in extent.

Apart from antiquarianism, the hill of Uisneach is well worth seeing, for it is as strange in shape as it is beautiful in verdure. It is only a few miles from a railroad; it is easy to ascend, for a carriage might be driven to its summit. The longest summer day might be passed on it, and some new curiosity of antiquity or some fresh beauty of scenery be continually discovered. The surface of the hill is so broken, and is of such great extent, that to explore it thoroughly, and to enjoy all the varied prospects to be seen from it, even a long summer day would hardly be long enough.

MOUNT OF BALLYLOCHLOE.

When treating of hills and of the country in the vicinity of Uisneach, it may be interesting to say something about the most beautiful and perfect artificial hill in Ireland—namely, the Moat of Ballylochloe. It is about nine miles west of Uisneach, and three north-west of Moat. It was evidently erected for a sepulchral mound, but seems to have also been used as a place of defence. A ridge of sand-hills has been cut, and a most perfect and symmetrical moat has been formed. It cannot be less than a hundred and fifty feet in height. When seen from the road approaching it from the east, it is almost Alpine in appearance, and looks like a small mountain. Neither history nor legend throws much light on the origin of this gigantic mound. We are told, however, that in the time of Queen Meave, about the year 50 B.C., there was a terrible battle in a place called Cloch Bruighne, now called Cloch Brian, some two miles from where the moat now stands, in which battle a wealthy farmer called Da Choga was killed, and his house burned. His wife, whose name was Lucha, died of grief, and was buried, it is said, near Loch Lucha, which seems to have been called after her. In Irish, the name of this place is Baile Loch Lucha. From the fact of the name of the wife of the farmer, or bruighe, being contained in the name of the stead, the late Mr W. M. Hennessy, an excellent authority on such matters, thought that the mound was erected over the remains of the woman Lucha. In former times, there was a small lake at the foot of the moat, hence the modern name Ballylochloe.

This beautiful artificial hill is well worth seeing. It is only three miles from the railway station at Moat.

CLONMACNOIS

The ruins of Clonmacnois form by far the most interesting architectural remains on the Shannon. Their situation is unique—on a sandy knoll overlooking the winding river, as it flows in great reaches among marshy meadows of apparently illimitable extent. Thousands of acres of them on both banks of the Shannon are spread before one’s gaze when standing at the base of any of the ruined shrines of this ancient seat of piety and learning. The ecclesiastics of ancient Ireland seem to have been gifted with an extraordinary amount of appreciation for the beautiful and unique in nature. The wilder and the more beautiful a place was, the more it seems to have attracted them. Cashel’s solitary Rock, Glendaloch’s gloomy vale, and this barren sandhill overlooking the most peculiar scenery in all the island, were the places in which they reared their most cherished fanes and most beautiful buildings. The situation of Clonmacnois cannot be said to be beautiful, but it is strange and weird to the last degree—more strange and weird, perhaps, than any other place in Ireland.

The best and most agreeable way to reach Clonmacnois is from Athlone. It is twelve English miles from Athlone by road, and ten by river. By river is not only the cheapest way but the most interesting. Sails can be used on this part of the Shannon almost as well as on Loch Ree, for the banks are so low that every breeze that blows can be fully utilised; and the river is so crooked, that no matter from what quarter the wind comes it can sometimes fill the sail. The Shannon here is no tiny stream like the Liffey, but a wide river, never less than from 150 to 200 yards in breadth, and generally deep enough to float a small ocean steamer. The current is, however, not rapid.

The first thing that strikes the stranger who sees Clonmacnois for the first time is the extraordinary view from it over the largest extent of callow meadows to be seen in any part of Ireland. It must not be thought that these meadows are mere bogs, for some of the finest hay is raised on them. The grass that grows on them must be of a fairly good quality, for they let at from £5 to £6 per Irish acre, the purchaser having to save the hay, and run all the risk attending the making it in land so liable to be flooded. Not infrequently, the taker of meadow on the vast flats that border the Shannon between Loch Ree and Loch Derg, will awaken some fine morning and find all his small cocks of hay afloat, sailing placidly southward, and more likely to find their way to Killaloe than to his haggard. The second thing that will strike the observant stranger in Clonmacnois is the small size of the churches. That it was one of the most important ecclesiastical establishments in ancient Ireland there cannot be any doubt, for it is more frequently mentioned in ancient Irish history and annals than any other place of its kind in the country. Yet the largest church in it, the ruins of which exist, would not, by any stretch of imagination, accommodate more than three or four hundred worshippers. There are the ruins of but three churches existing in Clonmacnois; the largest of them is called Cathedral, the two smaller ones can hardly be called churches. They must have been oratories, and would not combined contain over two hundred persons. When Clonmacnois was in its most prosperous condition—that was in the early part of the ninth century, or about the time when the Danish invasions were heaviest and most harassing—Ireland must have been a very populous country. There are so many proofs of this in ancient Gaelic annals and literature that it may be regarded as a fact. How, then, did it happen that the churches in Clonmacnois were so small? This is a question that cannot be answered fully. It may be that what now remains of its churches is of comparatively recent origin, and may not have been erected until the decadence of the population had commenced at the time of the Danish invasions, which decadence became more and more pronounced down to the latter part of the sixteenth century. Or it may have been that there were large wooden Churches in Clonmacnois in ancient times, not a vestige or trace of which would be found after fire had done its work on them.

ROUND TOWER, CLONMACNOIS.

The two round towers are by far the most interesting and beautiful buildings in Clonmacnois. The larger one wants apparently twenty or thirty feet of the top; whether it was struck by lightning, or knocked off by cannon, no one seems to know. The smaller tower is as perfect as it was when its builder pronounced it finished a thousand years ago. No more beautiful piece of architecture in the way of a tower ever was erected. It seems to be absolute perfection. The most skilled modern artisan in stone could not find an imperfection in it. It is built entirely of cut stones. The roof or dome is made of lozenge-shaped stones, fitted so closely and finished so well that time and weather seem to have passed over it in vain, for it is, as far as can be seen from the ground at its base, as perfect as it ever was. Of all round towers in Ireland, it is the most beautiful and perfect. The larger tower seems to have been built of stones similar to those of the smaller one, but as it wants its top its beauty is almost entirely spoiled. What remains of it seems about as perfect in its architecture as human hands could make it. The smaller tower appears to afford positive proof of Petrie’s theory as to the post-Christian origin of the Irish round towers, for it and the little church or oratory at its base, and out of which it rises, were evidently built at the same time, for the walls of both are actually in some places one. Like some few of the existing round towers (the one near Navan, for instance), the smaller one at Clonmacnois has no opening in the roof by which the sound of bells could be emitted, showing clearly that it could never have been erected solely for a belfry; for no matter how big a bell might be, its sound would not have been heard a hundred yards away, if rung under the windowless stone roof of this most perfect and beautiful of Irish round towers. That round towers were sometimes used as belfries seems very probable; but that their principal use, and the prime object for which they were erected, were to protect the clergy and the treasures of the churches from the marauding Northmen is the theory regarding them that is now most generally accepted.

Clonmacnois is not so rich in ancient crosses as some other places like it. There are only two to be seen there at present. They are not nearly so well carved and ornamented as many that still remain in other Irish cemeteries. There is not, so far as can be seen by the passer-by, a single inscription in the Irish language visible, though some scores of such inscriptions exist in it, every one of which has been faithfully copied and translated by Doctor Petrie in his great work, “Christian Inscriptions in the Irish Language.” The inscribed stones are, very properly, stowed away in a vault under lock and key where they are safe from the mischief of so many who would delight in marring and effacing any thing they could not understand. There are plenty of inscriptions in English to be seen in Clonmacnois, for it is still used as a place of interment. This takes away a great deal of its antique charm and general interest. It seems a sort of profanation to erect a modern tomb with an English inscription on it at the very base of a hoary round tower that was a wonder of art and beauty when London was little else than a large village, and when England itself was hardly civilised, and as politically powerless as Saint Domingo or Corea.

Clonmacnois has suffered as much from vandalism as any other place of its kind in Ireland. It was taken and spoiled by the Danes when at the height of its splendour in the ninth century. But it was not the Danes that committed the worst depredations in this wonderfully unique and ancient place. They were committed by men who used gunpowder, for it was evidently by it that most of the old buildings of Clonmacnois were destroyed. It is generally believed that it was by one of Cromwell’s captains who was stationed with some troops at Athlone when the Royalist cause had been lost that most of the destruction at Clonmacnois was accomplished. The blowing up of the magnificent castle erected here by Hugo de Lacy in the twelfth century, is attributed to Cromwell’s troopers, as is also the demolition of some thirty or forty feet of the larger of the two round towers, known as O’Ruarc’s tower.

There are the remains of only three churches extant in Clonmacnois; but we know from authentic annals and history that there were nearly a dozen churches in it at one time. What became of them, or where they stood, cannot now be known. Many of them were, probably, wooden churches, and, when once destroyed, left no trace. The ruins of the ancient nunnery are distant nearly quarter of a mile from the churchyard, on the grounds of a gentleman named Charlton. It is only about thirty years ago since an attempt was made to clear away the rubbish in which they were buried, and to try if any of the sculptured stones could be recovered. The excavations were made under the supervision of the Protestant Bishop of Limerick. Sculptured stone-work of the highest order of art was dug up from many feet under the surface where the destroyers had buried it. Visitors to Clonmacnois will not have any difficulty in seeing the ruins of the nunnery, for Mr Charlton willingly permits visitors to see them. It is not only curious, but hopeful and pleasant, to find people of the same religious belief altering so much for the better as time rolls by. Whilom Protestant men and a whilom Protestant Government did all they could in the seventeenth century to turn Clonmacnois into a heap of ruins, almost as void and as shapeless as those of Babylon; but Protestant men and a Protestant Government in the nineteenth century have done everything in their power to save it from further decay, and to dig up its sculptured stones from the dust in which ancient Protestant fanaticism and bigotry had buried them.

Clonmacnois was founded by St Kieran, who died in the year 549. There are records of the erection of most of its ancient buildings to be found in Irish annals and history. According to the Chronicon Scottorum, a work of high authority, the Cathedral was built in the year 909. The Cathedral that existed when Turgesius the Dane obtained sway for some years over the greater part of Ireland, and when his wife used to issue her orders from that building, was probably of wood, for no trace of it appears extant. Doctor Petrie says that the larger round tower was erected in the tenth century, and the smaller one in the eleventh or early part of the twelfth. There is good authority to prove that the nunnery was erected and endowed by the too well-remembered Dearvorgil, wife of O’Ruairc, whose liaison with Dermot Mac Murrough, King of Leinster, is popularly believed to have brought about the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland.

One of the great curiosities of Clonmacnois is the powder-blown-up castle built by Hugo de Lacy in the latter part of the twelfth century, the remains of which stand on a hill about two hundred yards from the cemetery. It is generally known as the Prior’s house, but it was evidently built as a place of defence. It was one of the strongest castles ever erected in Ireland. Although comparatively small, building and enclosure not covering more than half an acre, it was a place of immense strength, and before the invention of gunpowder could have defied a host. It is encompassed by a fosse in some places forty feet in depth, that descends sheer from the walls. The walls are of immense thickness and strength, from six to eight feet thick in many places, and so firmly are the stones embedded in grouting that to detach one of them from the powder-riven walls, or from the vast masses of blown-up masonry that lie scattered around, a hammer and chisel would be required. Huge heaps of the ruined walls, some of them tons in weight, have been tumbled into the deep fosse that surrounds the castle, but they are still almost as solid as rocks. If ever the art of building solid walls was brought to perfection, it was by those who reared this now ruined pile. To know the strength of gunpowder and the solidity of ancient masonry, one should see this ruined castle of Clonmacnois.

With all the beauties and diversity of scenery of the Shannon, on the banks of which stands all that remains of Clonmacnois, and with all the places of historic interest laved by its waters, it is a disgrace to Ireland at large that there is not a single passenger steam-boat on it above Limerick. It is nearly a hundred and fifty miles from Carrick-on-Shannon to Killaloe, and in all that vast distance of spreading lake and winding river there is not a passenger steam-boat to be seen! There may be said to be no obstacle to navigation in all that distance for boats drawing from five to six feet of water, and there are only four or five locks to pass through. No other river of equal length affords more variety of scenery than the Shannon. Sometimes the voyager passes by wooded banks, anon through apparently illimitable meadows, and then through great lakes like veritable inland seas,—island-studded or mountain-girded,—change of scene occurring in almost every mile. Let it be hoped that a line of passenger steamers will soon again be seen on the waters of this great and beautiful river,—this “ancient stream,” as its Gaelic name is said to mean,—that has on its banks so many relics of the past-the grass-grown rath, the hoary round tower, the crumbling castle, and above all, the ruined fanes of Clonmacnois.

KNOCK AILLINN

After Tara and Uisneach, Knock Aillinn is the most historic hill in Ireland—that is, if it was really the seat of the celebrated Finn, the son of Cumhail. It is a different hill from the hill of Allen, which is about nine miles north of it, and must not be confounded with it, although, as it will be shown further on, the confusion of the two hills seems to have taken place very long ago indeed. Knock Aillinn is some five or six miles south of Newbridge, in the County Kildare. Apart from its historic interest, it is well worth visiting, for it is situated in a rich and beautiful part of the country, and the view from its summit is one of the fairest and most extensive to be seen in any of the eastern counties. Eastward the view is obstructed by the Wicklow mountains, but on every other side it is very extensive, for Knock Aillinn is 600 feet high. So fine is the view from this hill that O’Donovan, the celebrated Gaelic scholar, was inspired by it to write a poem in Irish in praise of it, when he was employed on the Government Survey in 1837. The poem may be seen in his unpublished letters in the Royal Irish Academy. One verse of it, translated into English, will show that it is a composition of more than ordinary merit:—

“Beautiful the view from the hill of Aillinn,
Over lofty hills and fair plains,
Over mountains wreathed in veils of cloud;—
The view will remain in my memory for ever.”

But beautiful and extensive as the prospect is from Knock Aillinn, and greatly as the lovers of the beautiful may enjoy it, the chief interest possessed by this hill is historic rather than scenic. On its summit is to be seen the most gigantic of all Irish raths. O’Donovan called it “prodigious.” The whole top of the hill is surrounded by a mighty rampart of earth, four hundred yards in diameter, that encloses over twenty acres. After nearly two thousand years those earthen ramparts are still of great height; and when, according to the fashion of the times, they were topped with a strong palisade of timber, Knock Aillinn might be said to be an almost impregnable fortress. To render it still stronger, the hill on which it is placed is steep, and its ascent difficult. It was on this hill that some think the renowned in Celtic song and legend, Finn, the son of Cumhail, had his stronghold; but others, and it must be confessed that they are the most numerous, think that Finn’s dun was on the hill of Allen, some eight or nine miles to the north.

That the vast dun, or enclosure, on Knock Aillinn was an ancient residence of the Kings of Leinster is generally admitted; and that it was erected long previous to the Christian era is also the opinion of those best acquainted with early Irish history and literature. Proofs of this can be obtained from the most reliable and ancient Gaelic writings. There is hardly a vestige of antiquity to be seen on the summit of Knock Aillinn save the vast earthen rampart. When one stands within it, and recalls to mind what it must have been in days long gone by, when a large population dwelt in it, and when armed multitudes issued from it, he will be tempted to exclaim with Byron:—

“Shrine of the mighty! can it be
That this is all remains of thee?”

He will wonder that no vast masses of ancient masonry are to be seen. But stone buildings of the kind that have been in use in these islands for nearly a thousand years were unknown when the vast earth-works on Knock Aillinn were erected. Walls built of dry stone have been used in Ireland as fortresses from the most remote antiquity; but the art of building with mortar was entirely unknown until after the introduction of Christianity.

The hill of Allen is the one on which, it is over and over again stated by the most ancient and trustworthy Gaelic documents extant, Finn, the son of Cumhail, had his palace. We are even told how, partly by force and threats, he obtained Allen from his grandfather, Tadg; that he went to live on it, and that it was his habitation as long as he lived. But here a great difficulty meets us—there is not a vestige of dun or fort on the hill of Allen. O’Donovan says in his unpublished letters, while on the Ordnance Survey of Ireland, that Knock Aillinn was, according to various ancient Irish authorities, one of the royal residences of the Kings of Leinster, and that it received the name of Aillinn from the ail, or stone which was placed in the mound of the rath. On speaking of the hill of Allen, where the celebrated Finn Mac Cool or Cumhail is said to have had his seat, he says, “There are no traces of forts nor any other monuments excepting one small mound called Suidhe Finn, or Finn’s chair, which occupies the highest point of the hill. On every side of this mound there are faint traces of field works, but so indistinct that I could not with any certainty decide whether they are traces of forts or of recent cultivation, for the hill was tilled on the very summit. I travelled all the hill, but could find upon it no monument from which it could be inferred that it was ever a royal seat like Tara, Emania, Maistean, or any of the other places of ancient celebrity whose localities have been identified; and still in all Fingallian or Ossianic poems this hill (the hill of Allen) is referred to as containing the palace of the renowned champion, Finn Mac Cool, who seems to have been a real historical character, who flourished here in the latter end of the third century.”

O’Donovan says also in the same unpublished letters that “The antiquary may draw his own conclusion from the non-existence of a dun on the hill of Allen at this day. It is possible that there were forts on it a thousand years ago, and that the progress of cultivation has effaced them; but it is strange that these alone should disappear, while those of Tara, Emania, Aileach, Naas, Maistean, and Raoirean remain in good preservation.... It is curious to remark that all the monuments mentioned in the Dinnseanchus and the authentic annals still exist, while no trace is to be found of Finn Mac Cool’s palace on the hill of Allowin (Allen).... If he had such a palace as this on Aillinn, near Kilcullen, on his hill of Allowin, it would not disappear, because the labour of levelling it would be so great that no agriculturist would undertake to level it.”

It would seem as if the two hills, Aillinn, or Knock Aillinn as it is now called, and Allen got confounded, and at an early date too. Allowing liberally for exaggeration and discounting tradition, one has to believe in the extent of Finn’s house or palace, however rude and barbaric its arrangements may have been. He was the most powerful man in Ireland, more powerful even than the chief king. The fame of his household was spread abroad, not only over all Ireland, but all Scotland. This we know by the publication of the poems collected in the Highlands by the Dean of Lismore in the sixteenth century, and translated by the late Mr T. M’Lauchlan, and also from a host of other poems. They abound with allusions to Finn and his house and household, as does almost all the folk-lore of the Celtic-Scotch. One thing seems certain, that neither Finn nor his house or palace were myths; his house must have existed, and, like all places of its kind in the days when it existed, it must have been surrounded with an earthen rampart no less high than that to be seen on Knock Aillinn. But no vestige of house or rampart can be traced on the hill of Allen. A still greater difficulty meets one in the size of the summit of the hill. It is not much over half an Irish acre in extent, and where would there be room on such a limited space for the vast household of Finn? His residence was known from far-back times as “Almhuin riogha leathan mór Laighean,” the kingly, great-broad Allen of Leinster; but no dun or habitation situated on the narrow space on the top of the hill of Allen could be “great-broad;” but the existing remains on Knock Aillinn would suit the description almost exactly. We may be sure that if any man in Ireland in those days had a big house, it was Finn. The names Allen and Aillinn are so much alike, and both hills are so comparatively near each other, and both seem to have been abandoned as strongholds at such an early date, that confusion of one with the other could easily have taken place; besides, Finn’s name does appear to be, in some measure at least, associated with Knock Aillinn. Here is a passage from the “Dinnseanchus” at page 162 of the “Book of Leinster.” Treating of Knock Aillinn, these lines occur:—

“Faichthi ruamand ruamnad rinn
Co failgib flatha for Fhind.”

Irish scholars may interpret these lines as they like, but it would seem that the last word is a proper name, and that it relates to Finn.

But whether Finn lived in Knock Aillinn or in Allen, or whether he lived in both places off and on, is a matter of minor importance. The real wonder about him is the way he impressed himself not only on the age in which he lived but on every age since then. No other man in any age or country seems to have so fastened himself in the memories of the people of his own race and lineage. It may be safely said that neither Julius Caesar nor Charlemagne have impressed themselves on popular imagination so much as Finn and those associated with him have. Those who have not studied the Celtic folk-lore of Ireland and Scotland can form but an incomplete idea of the overwhelming immensity of the folk-lore about Finn and his cycle that exists even yet. But with the decay of Gaelic speech it is rapidly fading away. It is hardly too much to say that when Gaelic was the language of the fireside all through Ireland and a large part of Scotland, and that is only a few centuries ago, there was not a parish from Kerry to Caithness in which dozens of different stories about Finn and his contemporaries did not exist; and it is equally safe to say that not the tenth, probably not the twentieth, part of them was ever committed to writing. Finn, Ossian, and Caoilte were the dramatis personæ of the most extensive, if not the choicest, popular, unwritten folk-lore that probably ever existed in any country. But one of the strangest things connected with the cycle of Finn and Ossian is that its folk-lore hardly appears at all in really ancient Gaelic literature. The Gaelic scribes of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries took but little notice of it; it was to the events of the Cuchulainn cycle that they gave almost their entire attention. In the “Book of Leinster,” the greatest repertory of Gaelic literature that exists in one volume, there is only one story that can be called an Ossianic or Finnian one, while nearly half the book is taken up with tracts and stories relating to the cycle of Cuchulainn, which was nearly three centuries earlier than that of Ossian and Finn. But the Cuchulainn cycle, from whatever cause will probably be never known, seems to have entirely failed to take hold of the popular imagination. Folk-lore relating to the Cuchulainn cycle is rare. There are a few in which Cuchulainn is mentioned, and M’Pherson in his Ossian mixes the Ossianic and Cuchulainn cycles together, although they were three centuries apart. Of all the prominent names belonging to the Cuchulainn cycle, Queen Medb or Meave was one of the most prominent, but not a single story exists about her in the oral Gaelic folk-lore of Ireland or Scotland of which the writer has ever heard. She seems to have found her way into the folk-lore of England, but not into that of Ireland or the Gaelic-speaking parts of Scotland. She figures very prominently in Irish history and literature, but in folk-lore she does not figure at all. The reason of this may be that Finn, Ossian, and others of their “set” were supposed to have lived so long that they met St Patrick and were converted to Christianity by him; but there is no foundation for such a belief, for authentic Irish history says that Finn was killed in the year 283 at Ath Brea on the Boyne.

It is not easy to see clearly why Finn so impressed his memory and his cycle on the minds of his countrymen, for he does not appear to have been an altogether amiable personage. There are very many discreditable things told of him in the multitudinous stories of which he is the central figure. In one of them, the “Pursuit of Dermot and Gráine,” he plays the part of a revengeful, unforgiving, bad man; while his great enemy, Dermot O’Duibhne, is a bold, open-hearted hero, the very opposite of his unrelenting pursuer. With all the absurdities and impossibilities of the “Pursuit,” the leading characters in it are sustained with a consistency that would do credit even to Shakespeare. Finn at the end of the story is just what he was at the beginning, unforgiving and bad; and Gráine, who is bad at the beginning is bad also at the end; while Dermot, a hero at the beginning of the story, is still a hero at its close. It may interest some to know that most Irish historians and scholars think that Dermot O’Duibhne was the person from whom the barony of Corcaguiney, in the County Kerry, is called. In correct orthography it would be Corc Ui Dhuibhne, and would be pronounced very nearly as the name of the barony is written at present. If it be true that Corcaguiney got its name from Dermot O’Duibhne, and there seems no reason to doubt that it did, another proof is given of the general correctness of at least the salient points in Irish history. It may also interest some to know that the Campbells of Argyll are popularly believed, even in their own country, to be descended from this same Dermot O’Duibhne. They have been known for centuries as the Clann Diarmid, or children of Dermot, as will be remembered by any one who has read Scott’s “Legend of Montrose.” The real name of the Argyll Campbells seems to be really O’Duibhne. It was so that they generally signed their names up to a comparatively recent date. Bishop Carsewell, who translated John Knox’s Prayer Book into Gaelic in 1567, the first Gaelic book that was ever printed, dedicates it to the Duke of Argyll, whom he calls Gilleasbuig O’Duibhne.[5] Carsewell would hardly have dared to address his patron, and the most powerful nobleman in Scotland, by a false name or a sobriquet. The Campbells seem to have been called O’Duibhne down to the middle of the seventeenth century, for in the national manuscripts of Scotland there is a very fine Gaelic poem on the death of a Campbell, who is styled “O’Duibhne” in the Gaelic.

Translations that have been recently made from Gaelic manuscripts of high authority have thrown considerable light on Finn, and the events of his epoch. We are told in the tract called the “Boramha,” or “Tribute,” to which reference has been already made, that when Bresal, a king of Leinster, in the third century, was given his choice to pay the tribute or fight the rest of Ireland, he asked help from Finn. A person called Molling was sent to ask Finn to help the men of Leinster. Molling told Finn that he should not come with a small army to fight the chief king, who had the national army with him. The number of men that Finn had, was, we are told in the “Boramha,” fifteen hundred chiefs, each having thirty men under him, making the total number of men that Finn brought to help Leinster forty-five thousand, a very large army in those days. They joined the Leinster men, inflicted a crushing defeat on the forces of the chief king, so that the tribute was not paid for many years after. Nine thousand of the “men of Ireland,” as the “Book of Leinster” almost invariably calls the national forces, were slain in the battle.

The militia of which Finn was the Commander-in-Chief, and of which his father and grandfather had also been commanders, are the heroes of hundreds of Ossianic tales and poems. It would appear that they numbered twenty-one thousand men on a peace footing, but could raise their numbers to double that amount in time of need. They became so extortionate and arrogant in the long run, that the chief king, Cairbre, and it would seem all the provincial rulers except the King of Leinster, determined to crush them. So a great battle was fought at Garristown in the County Dublin in the year 290 or 296, and the militia of Finn was totally destroyed. It would seem that neither Knock Aillinn nor the hill of Allen has been since then inhabited.

It may not be out of place to state here that students of Gaelic are often puzzled on seeing the name of Finn spelt Fionn. It seems certain that Finn is the proper orthography. The name is invariably so spelt in all cases in the “Book of Leinster,” one of the most correct of all the great Gaelic books; but the editor of “Silva Gadelica” makes it Fionn in all cases except in the genitive. It is difficult to understand why, when copying from a manuscript of such high authority as the “Book of Leinster,” he did not follow its orthography. In the northern half of Ireland the name is pronounced according to its correct orthography, but in the south of Ireland it is pronounced as if written Fyun.

Those who visit Knock Aillinn and its mighty dun should also visit the hill of Allen. If there is nothing to be seen on it, there is a great deal to be seen from it, for the view is very extensive. If any one wanted to know how vast the bog of Allen is, he should ascend the hill of Allen, from which he will see a very large part of it. If he is in any doubt as to the exact place in which Finn had his dwelling and dun, he will at least be in the locality that has given birth to the most colossal folk-lore that perhaps ever existed,—stories that in the far-back past, before the world was tormented by newspapers and bewildered by politicians, beguiled many a tedious hour and delighted many a sad heart.

“KILDARE’S HOLY FANE”

Those in search of the picturesque alone will not find very much to interest them in Kildare or its immediate vicinity. There may be said to be hardly any remarkable scenic beauties in its neighbourhood. There is the broad expanse of the Curragh not far from the town, one of the finest places for military manœuvres in the British Isles. It is strange why it is called a curragh—more correctly, currach—for the word means a marsh, a place that stirs when trodden on. There is only a very small part of the land to which the name is applied that is a marsh. It is almost all perfectly dry upland. However, it was called Currach Life from very early times, that is the marsh or swamp of the Liffy. It would seem as if the word Life meant originally the country through which the river Liffy flows, and that the river took its name from the country; for when King Tuathal wanted revenge on Leinstermen, for the death of his two daughters, who have been mentioned in the article on Tara, he says—

“Let them be revenged on Leinstermen,
On the warriors in the Life.”

It is thought that the name Liffy comes from the adjective liomhtha, meaning smooth, or polished, for part of the country through which the river flows is very smooth and beautiful.

Hardly a vestige of the ancient buildings of Kildare remain save the round tower. It is over one hundred and thirty feet in height, and therefore one of the highest in Ireland. It seems as perfect as it was the day it was finished. It is sad to say that it is the most completely spoiled—bedevilled would probably be a better word—of all the Irish round towers; for some person or persons whose memories should be held in everlasting abhorrence by every archæologist, have put an incongruous, ridiculous, castellated top on it that makes it look as unsightly and as horrible as a statue of Julius Cæsar would look with a stove-pipe hat on its head. The people of Kildare and its vicinity should at once raise funds and have a proper, antique roof put on their tower, for it is an absolute disgrace to them as it is at present. The top of the tower may have been destroyed by lightning, or, like many other round towers, it may have been left unfinished, and may never have had a top or roof on it. But whatever may have happened to it, its present castellated roof is a disgraceful incongruity.

The cathedral of Kildare is a modern and rather plain building of mediocre interest. It is supposed to be built in, or nearly in, the place where the old church stood that was founded by St Brigit in the sixth century. Kildare seems to owe its origin to St Brigit, for the name means the cell or church of the oak; and as Brigit was contemporary with St Patrick, hers must have been the first Christian establishment founded at Kildare. It is stated in the Trias Thaumaturga of Colgan that when she returned to her own district, a cell was assigned to her in which she afterwards led a wonderful life; that she erected a monastery in Kildare, and that a very great city afterwards sprang up, which became the metropolis of the Lagenians, or Leinster folk. It requires a great stretch of imagination to conceive how Kildare could ever have been a “very great city,” for it is now, and has for many years, been a small, a very small country town, hardly any more than a village. It seems strange that Kildare is not larger and more prosperous, for if not situated in a picturesque part of the island, the country round it is very fair and fertile, and beautiful as any flat country could be. There is, however, a passage in the “Calendar of Oengus,” written in the latter end of the eighth or the beginning of the ninth century, that goes far to prove that what is said in the Trias Thaumaturga about Kildare having been once a large place is true. Speaking of the fall of the strongholds of the Pagans, and the rise of Christian centres, Oengus says—

“Aillinn’s proud burgh
Hath perished with its warlike host:
Great is victorious Brigit:
Fair is her multitudinous city.”

The “multitudinous city” was, of course, Kildare. It is curious that Oengus should mention Aillinn, and not mention Allen, the supposed seat of Finn, for wherever he had his stronghold must have been, in his epoch, the most important place in Ireland, Tara alone excepted.

Kildare is famous and historic solely on account of St Brigit. Of all Irish Saints, she is the most to be loved. Her charity, her love for humanity, was so absolutely divine, that reading her life as narrated in the Leabhar Breac, we are moved to our very heart’s depths. The miracles she is said to have performed are so wondrous, and show such a love for mankind, especially for the poor, that when we read them we long to be children again in order that we might unhesitatingly believe such beautiful fables. It was in Kildare that that wondrous lamp was which is said to have

“Lived through long ages of darkness and storm,”

without having been replenished by human hand; and it was this legend that inspired Moore to compose the noblest national lyric ever written, “Erin, O Erin.” If he never wrote a line of poetry save what is contained in that song, the Irish people would be justified in raising a statue of gold to his memory. It is, beyond anything of the kind known to humanity,

“Perfect music set to noble words”;

yet, heart-sickening to think of, the masses of the Irish people hardly know it at all!

When St Brigit is contrasted with St Patrick, she appears very different from him. The lives of Ireland’s three great Saints are in the Leabhar Breac, an Irish manuscript compiled early in the fourteenth century; but the greater part of it is made up of transcripts from documents that were probably many hundred years old when they were copied into it. The three Saints whose lives appear in it are Patrick, Brigit, and Columba, or Colum Cill, as he is generally called in Ireland. These lives were translated some years ago by Mr Whitley Stokes, the greatest of living Gaelic scholars; but as only a few dozen copies were printed for private circulation, the book is practically as unknown to the general public as if it never had been printed at all. Extracts from it, therefore, cannot fail to be interesting to the readers of this book.

Brigit shines out a star of the first magnitude, totally eclipsing the lesser two lights, Patrick and Columba. Nothing shall be said about Columba at present, but it has to be admitted that Patrick, as he is represented in the Leabhar Breac, makes a poor show when contrasted with glorious St Brigit. Patrick is represented as spending a large part of his time in cursing and killing, but St Brigit spends most of hers in blessing and relieving. If St Patrick converts a great many, he is represented as killing a great many; but St Brigit kills nobody. The narrative of her life in the Leabhar Breac is probably as wonderful a piece of biography as ever was written. There is no effort at style in it, and no attempt at book-making. The narrative is simplicity in the true sense of the word. One of the wonderful things about it is the side light it throws both on the social and political conditions of ancient Ireland; but, curiously enough, no such light is thrown on the state of the country by the lives of St Patrick and St Columba, written in the same book and probably by the same author.

St Brigit seems to have acted on some of the precepts found in the “Ancient Mariner” fourteen hundred years before the poem was written. She seems to have known that—

“He prayeth best
Who loveth best
All things both great and small,”

for we are told that her father, who at present would be called Duffy, “sundered a gammon of bacon into five pieces, and left it with Brigit to be boiled for his guests. A miserable, greedy hound came into the house to Brigit. Brigit, out of pity, gave him the fifth piece. When the hound had eaten that piece, Brigit gave another piece to him. Then Duffy came and said to Brigit, ‘Hast thou boiled the bacon, and do all the portions remain?’ ‘Count them,’ saith Brigit. Duffy counted them and none of them was wanting. The guests declared unto Duffy what Brigit had done. ‘Abundant,’ said Duffy, ‘are the miracles of that maiden.’ Now the guests ate not the food, for they were unworthy thereof, but it was dealt out to the poor and needy of the Lord.”

The following narrative shows St Brigit’s love of animals in a still stronger light:

“Once upon a time a bondsman of Brigit’s family was cutting firewood. It came to pass that he killed a pet fox of the King of Leinster’s. The bondsman was seized by the King. Brigit ordered a wild fox to come out of the wood. So he came, and was playing and sporting for the hosts and for the King at Brigit’s order. But when the fox had finished his feats, he went safe back to the wood, with the hosts of Leinster after him, both foot and horse and hounds.”

This is simply beautiful. St Brigit, while she got the poor bondsman out of trouble, managed to do so without depriving the fox of his liberty.

Here is another extract that makes one wish that the life of St Brigit in the Leabhar Breac, instead of containing only about twenty octavo pages, contained a thousand:—

“Then came Brigit and her mother with her to her father’s house. Thereafter Duffy (her father) and his consort were minded to sell the holy Brigit into bondage, for Duffy liked not his cattle and his wealth to be dealt out to the poor, and that is what Brigit used to do. So Duffy fared in his chariot, and Brigit along with him. Said Duffy to Brigit, ‘Not for honour or reverence to thee art thou carried in a chariot, but to take thee and sell thee, and to grind the quern for Dunlang Mac Enda, King of Leinster.’ When they came to the King’s fortress, Duffy went in to the King, and Brigit remained in her chariot at the fortress door. Duffy had left his sword in the chariot near Brigit. A leper came to Brigit to ask alms. She gave him Duffy’s sword. Said Duffy to the King, ‘Wilt thou buy a bondmaid, namely, my daughter?’ says he. Said Dunlang, ‘Why sellest thou thine own daughter?’ Said Duffy, ‘She stayeth not from selling my wealth and giving it to the poor.’ Said the King, ‘Let the maiden come into the fortress.’ Duffy went for Brigit, and was enraged against her because she had given his sword to the poor man. When Brigit came into the King’s presence, the King said to her, ‘Since it is thy father’s wealth that thou takest, much more if I buy thee, wilt thou take of my wealth and my cattle, and give them to the poor.’ Said Brigit, ‘The Son of the Virgin knoweth if I had thy might with all Leinster and with all thy wealth, I would give them to the Lord of the Elements.’ Said the King to Duffy, ‘Thou art not fit on either hand to bargain for this maiden, for her merit is higher before God than before men.’ And he gave Duffy for her an ivory-hilted sword. So was St Brigit saved from bondage.”

The idea of giving a sword to a poor crippled leper because she had nothing else to give could hardly have entered into the head of any saint but an Irish one.

The next extract from this marvellous biography is, perhaps, the most curious and interesting of all. In another interview that Brigit had with the King of Leinster, “a slave of the slaves of the King came to speak with Brigit, and said to her, ‘If thou wouldst save me from the servitude wherein I am, I would become a Christian, and would serve thee thyself.’ Brigit said, ‘I will ask that of the King.’ So Brigit went into the fortress and asked her two boons of the king, the forfeiture of the sword to Duffy, and his freedom for the slave. Said Brigit to the King, ‘If thou desirest excellent children and a kingdom for thy sons, and heaven for thyself, give me the two boons I ask.’ Said the King to Brigit, ‘The kingdom of heaven, as I see it not, and as no one knows what thing it is, I seek it not; and a kingdom for my sons I seek not, for I shall not myself be extant, and let each one serve his time. But give me length of life in my kingdom, and victory always over the Hui Neill, for there is often war between us; and give me victory in the first battle, so that I may be trustful in the other fights.’ And this was fulfilled in the battle of Lochar which was fought against the Hui Neill.”

By the “Hui Neill” the people of the entire north of Ireland, including Meath, were meant. They represented the national party because the chief kings, for some centuries previous, were of the race of Niall of the Nine Hostages. Mr Stokes says, speaking of the above extract in his preface to the translation, “The conversation between Brigit and Dunlang (King of Leinster) seems to preserve the authentic utterance of an Irish pagan warrior.”

One extract more to show in a still stronger light the angelic kindness and love for humanity, especially for suffering humanity, that glowed in the heart of this wonderful woman:

“Once upon a time the King of Leinster came unto Brigit to listen to preaching and celebration on Easter Day. After the ending of the form of celebration the King fared forth on his way, and Brigit went to refection. Lommān, Brigit’s leper, said he would eat nothing until the warrior weapons, arm gaisgedh, of the King of Leinster were given to him, spear, sword, and shield, that he might move to and fro under them. A messenger was sent after the King. From mid-day to evening was the King going astray, and attained not even a thousand paces, so that the weapons were given by him and bestowed on the leper.”

This instance of going to such trouble to please a poor crippled pauper, for Lommān was evidently such, and of working a miracle so that the King of Leinster should lose his way, and not go so far that he could not be overtaken, is one of the most extraordinary instances of trouble taken to please a pauper that is to be found in all the records of benevolence and charity.

The “Annals of the Four Masters” say that St Brigit was buried in Downpatrick, in the same grave with St Patrick; but the learned editor and translator of their annals says that she and Bishop Conlaeth were buried, one on the right, and one on the left of the altar, in the church of Kildare, and he gives Colgan’s great book, Trias Thaumaturga, as his authority, and no authority could be higher.

GLENDALOCH

There are not many places in Ireland more interesting than this strange and weird glen. It can hardly be called beautiful. It is gloomy and grand; and there is something depressing about it even in the finest day in autumn when the sombre mountains by which it is surrounded on all sides but one are mantled in their most gorgeous crimson drapery of full-blooming heather. It is just such a spot as an anchorite like St Kevin would choose as a place for contemplation and prayer.

Glendaloch—it ought not to be spelled Glendalough—is very nearly in the centre of the romantic county of Wicklow. It is a good central point from which to make excursions to the many beautiful and interesting places in its vicinity, such as Glen Molur, the Glen of Imail, the Meeting of the Waters, and the Mountain of Lugnacuilla, the highest in Leinster. The interior of the County Wicklow may be said to be a vast wilderness of mountains, bogs, and glens. But its mountains have, with one exception, the defect of being round-topped. They lack the boldness of the hills of Connemara and Donegal. The mountain that is the most bold and alpine in the county, and that forms an exception to the general contour of its hills, is the famous one called the “Sugar-loaf,” near Bray. The Dublin grocer, or whoever he was that gave this beautiful hill such an abominable name, should have his memory held in everlasting contempt. Its real name is a grand one, Sleeve Coolan, rectè Sliabh Cualann. But in spite of the generally rounded outlines of the Wicklow Mountains, there are some splendid alpine views to be seen among them; and none finer than from the Glen of Lugalaw, about seven or eight miles from Bray.

GLENDALOCH.

But of all places in Wicklow, Glendaloch is the most famous. It ought to be so, for there is nothing like it in Ireland. There are many glens as wild and as gloomy as it, but they lack the historic interest and the legendary halo that make Glendaloch dear to the archæologist, the poet, and the dreamer. Its history goes back almost to the beginning of Christian times. For five hundred years it was one of the most important ecclesiastical and educational places in Ireland. Its name constantly occurs in Irish annals and history; and its history was for centuries as gloomy as itself, for the Danes plundered it and burned it so often that it seems strange that it was not abandoned many centuries sooner. It was so near their great stronghold, Dublin, that it was harried by them on and off for over two hundred years.

St Kevin’s name is indissolubly associated with Glendaloch, or the Seven Churches, as it is most frequently called, for it is supposed that there were seven churches in it at one time. St Kevin, according to the best authority who ever wrote on Irish history and archæology, the famous John O’Donovan, came of a distinguished family in the County Wicklow. His name, in correct orthography, Coemhgen, means “fair offspring.” He seems to have been predestined to be a Saint, for many miraculous things are told of his infancy and early youth. When he was a baby a white cow is said to have come miraculously to supply him with milk. The story about his having murdered Kathleen, the girl with eyes of “unholy blue,” by throwing her into that lake that the “Skylark never warbles o’er,” is a mere fable. It seems a pity that the story upon which Moore founded his very beautiful lyric, “By that Lake, whose gloomy Shore,” should have hardly any foundation in fact. That a certain girl fell in love with him and caused him a good deal of annoyance is quite true; but he did not kill her or throw her into the lake. He only administered a rather mild castigation, as shall be seen. O’Donovan says that the following extract, taken from the Codex Killkenniensis, which, there are good reasons to believe, has never yet been made public by translation, is the oldest and most trustworthy account of the transaction known to exist; and that the trouble between St Kevin and the girl did not take place in Glendaloch, but in another place in the County Wicklow. O’Donovan’s translation of the story is the one now given:—

“While the most holy Caemhgen (Kevin) was as yet remaining in the house of his parents, the Lord performed many miracles through him.... The parents of Kevin observing so great a grace in him, committed him to the care of the holy seniors, Eoganus, Lochanus, and Enna, in order that he might in their cell be brought up for Christ; and St Kevin was sedulously reading with those saints. When he was grown up in the first flower of his youth, a young girl saw him out in a field along with the brethren, and fell passionately in love with him, for he was exceedingly handsome. And she began to make known her friendship for him in astute words. And she was always laying snares for him in every way she could, by looks, by language, and sometimes by messengers. But the holy youth rejected all these allurements. On a certain day she sought the opportunity of finding him alone, and on a day when the brethren were working in a wood, she passed by them, and seeing St Kevin working by himself in the wood, she approached him, and clasped him in her arms with fondest embrace. But the soldier of Christ arming himself with the sacred sign, and full of the Holy Ghost, made strong resistance against her, and rushed out of her arms in the wood; and finding nettles, took secretly a bunch of them, and struck her with them many times on the face, hands, and feet. And when she was blistered with the nettles, the pleasure of her love became extinct. And she being sorrowful of heart, asked on her bended knees pardon of St Kevin in the name of the Lord. And the Saint praying for her to Christ, she promised him that she would dedicate her virginity to the Lord. The brothers finding them discussing together, wondered very much; but the virgin related to them what had passed; and the brethren hearing such, were confirmed in their love for chastity. And that little girl afterwards became a prudent and holy virgin, and diligently observed the holy admonitions of St Kevin.”

The above translation has not, to the writer’s knowledge, ever been previously published. John O’Donovan, the greatest authority on such matters that ever lived, says in his unpublished letters, while on the Ordnance Survey of Ireland, that the above extract “is the oldest and only authority for the story about St Kevin and the lady, and shows clearly that the scene of it is erroneously placed at Glendaloch by oral tradition and modern writers. It will also be sufficient evidence that this Saint did not murder the lady Kathleen, but inflicted a somewhat mild punishment by flogging her with a bunch of nettles!”

So poor St Kevin’s memory is cleared. It is a pity that Moore did not see the Codex Killkenniensis before he wrote the beautiful lyric that casts such a cloud on Wicklow’s greatest saint. That the name of St Kevin was highly esteemed not only in Wicklow in ancient times, but all through Leinster, there is ample proof in ancient Gaelic literature. A poet named Broccan, writing in the tenth century in praise of his native province of Leinster and the great people it produced, said:

“I never heard in any province,
Between earth and holy heaven,
Of a nun like St Brigit
Or a cleric like Kevin.”[6]

Glendaloch must have been founded in the latter part of the sixth century, for St Kevin died in 617, aged 120 years. There cannot be any doubt that it was he who founded Glendaloch. We are told that he sought the sombre valley for a retreat in which to contemplate and pray, and that before there were any buildings in it he lived for a long time in a hollow tree, and subsisted on wild fruit and water. The cave in the cliff overhanging the lake, known as St Kevin’s Bed, the entrance to which is not only difficult but dangerous, seems also to have given him shelter for a long time before there were any habitations in the glen. It is said that if nouvelles mariées succeed in getting into this dark and dismal cavern, they are sure to be blessed with large families. Why such a belief should be current is not easy to understand, because St Kevin, after whom the cavern is called, not only had no children, but was a decided woman-hater. If he did not drown Kathleen, he at least whipped her with nettles, a thing that no gallant man would think of doing to a girl who loved him. It will, however, be the general opinion of most of those who read this version of the story, that St Kevin “served her right.”

Glendaloch has been ruined and uprooted in a shocking manner. Of all its edifices there are only two that still stand—namely, the round tower and the building known as “Kevin’s Kitchen.” This latter is stone-roofed, and is considered to be one of the oldest buildings of the kind in Ireland. Archæologists are not agreed as to what particular use it was originally intended, but that it was an ecclesiastical edifice of some kind seems to be the opinion of everyone. There are, it is said, the remains of seven churches still to be seen in Glendaloch. It appears to have been a walled city, and Petrie, one of the most painstaking and learned archæologists that ever Ireland produced, claimed to have traced the tracks of the walls in many places. That it contained a large population in the eighth and ninth centuries seems to admit of little doubt. Oengus the Culdee, whose verse in which Glendaloch is mentioned has been given in the article on “Emania the Golden,” calls it “multitudinous Glendaloch,” and “the Rome of the western world.” Allowing for the exaggeration of which ancient Gaelic poets may have been rather too fond, it must be admitted that what they say cannot be entirely ignored; and it is more than probable that immediately before the Danes and other northern nations began their raids on Ireland, Glendaloch may have been, and probably was, a large monastic city, as cities were in those days. The Irish monasteries of the eighth and ninth centuries were probably the wealthiest in the world, if not in lands, at least in gold and silver. Where or how they got, or where or how the ancient Irish got, such quantities of the precious metals is a mystery that may never be solved; but that Ireland had an enormous amount of gold and silver in ancient times there can be no doubt at all. This would be sufficiently proved by the quantity, not of coined money, for they had not any, but of ornaments of almost every kind that have been found in all parts of the country, more, it is said, than have been found in the rest of Europe. There is hardly a barony in Ireland, it might be said hardly a parish, in which stories are not told of people having become suddenly rich by finding, it is naturally supposed, treasure trove in the shape of gold ornaments, very few of which have been preserved, for they were generally melted down. Sir Wm. Wilde mentions, in one of his catalogues of articles in the Royal Irish Academy, a find of £3000 worth of gold ornaments in the County Clare some fifty years ago. It seems a well-ascertained fact that two labourers found over £20,000 worth of gold ornaments when working on a railway in Munster some forty odd years ago. The founder of one of the largest jewellery houses in Ireland told a friend of the writer’s that his first “rise” in business was brought about by buying antique gold ornaments, at sometimes not half their value, from people who brought them to him from the country.

When the marauding Northmen first raided Ireland, they seem not to have had the most remote idea of either conquering the country or making permanent settlements in it. They may not have despised Irish beef and mutton, but what they wanted above all was gold and silver. When Christianity was firmly established in Ireland, the monasteries became the great depositories of the wealth of the country, and the clergy may be said to have become its bankers. The monasteries, therefore, became, to a certain extent, what banks are now, and it was to the monasteries the Danes gave their first attention. It can hardly be proved from Irish history that the Danes ever tried to conquer Ireland but once, and that was at the battle of Clontarf. Even under Turgesius, when they succeeded in establishing themselves almost everywhere there was salt water or fresh water to float their ships, they played the part of raiders and not of conquerors, and never formed a permanent settlement out of sight of their galleys. In England and in France they acted quite differently. They conquered and kept all England and a considerable part of France. They went to England and France to establish themselves, but they went to Ireland to plunder. The question to be solved is, Why did the Danes act so differently in Ireland from the way they acted in England and in other countries? There seems to be no way to answer this question except by saying that there was so much more of the precious metals in Ireland, that to get them, and not to conquer the country or form permanent settlements in it, was their prime object. If history was absolutely silent about the doings of the Northmen in Ireland, we would, from a surer guide than history, know that plunder and not settlement was what they had in view. That guide is place names. There are more Scandinavian place names to be found in some parishes in the north-east of England than there are in all Ireland. There are hardly a dozen Scandinavian place names in Ireland, and they are all on the sea coast but one. That one is Leixlip, and it is only a few miles from the sea, on a river which the galleys of the Northmen could easily ascend. The only time at which a serious attempt seems to have been made by the Northmen to become possessed of Ireland was shortly before the battle of Clontarf, and that attempt seems to have owed its origin to that horrible but beautiful woman, Gormfhlaith, sister to the king of Leinster, and whose last of many husbands was Brian Boramha. That attempt utterly failed, and no other was ever made. If the Northmen cannot be said to have seriously contemplated the conquest of Ireland prior to the time immediately before the battle of Clontarf, it does not seem to have been from lack of men in the country, for Irish annals and history speak of their vast numbers in such a way as hardly leaves a doubt as to the awfulness of the scourge they were to the country at large. So great were their numbers at one time during the ninth century that we are told that it seemed as if the sea vomited them forth, and that there was hardly a harbour on the Irish coasts in which there was not a Danish or a Norwegian fleet. It has to be admitted that the Irish fought them with the most astonishing persistency and valour. In spite of the way the country was split into petty kingdoms, with chief kings, who were generally such only in name, the reception the Northmen got in Ireland was very different from that which they got in England. The Saxons often got rid of them by paying them to go away, but the Irish got rid of them only by the sword. Those who want to know what Ireland suffered from the raids of the Northmen should read the “Wars of the Gael and the Gaill.” The book is generally believed to have been written by M’Liag, who was living when the battle of Clontarf was fought, and who was chief poet, or secretary, to Brian Boramha.

Although the Northmen were allies of Leinster for a long time, they plundered Glendaloch in the years 833, 886, and 982. It was so near Dublin and so near the sea that their alliance with Leinster did not prevent them from raiding it. It was one of the rich ecclesiastical establishments in Ireland, and one of those most exposed to the incursions of the Northmen. Its round tower was, therefore, in all probability, one of the first that was erected. It is now generally believed by those most competent to form an opinion that the round towers of Ireland were erected as places of security against the Northmen, and that they were sometimes used as belfries. Their Irish name, cloigtheach, means a bell house and nothing else; but it is quite clear that, although they sometimes served as belfries, the primary object of their erection was to secure a place of safety for the treasures of the church or monastery, close to which they were invariably erected. Of the hundred and eight round towers which are known to have been erected in Ireland, and of which remains exist, every one of them is known to have been erected close to where a church or monastery stood. More than half of them are in ruins; of some only a few feet of the walls remain; and of some others the foundations only remain. It may seem hard for some, in these days of far-reaching projectiles to imagine how those slender towers, so chaste and beautiful in their construction, could serve as places of defence or security against the Danes. They could not have served as such if the Danes had come as conquerors to form permanent settlements, but as they were only raiders the towers were generally perfect defences against them. A dozen men shut into a round tower, the door of which was generally from ten to fourteen feet from the ground, could laugh at an army of Danes who had neither battering rams nor artillery of any kind. There was only one way by which a round tower could be taken or destroyed by men like the plundering hosts of the Vikings, who did not, and could not, take ponderous implements like battering rams with them on their raids, and that was by undermining it—digging its foundations so that it would fall. But this would have been a very tedious business, for the foundations of many of the round towers are six and even ten feet below the surface. A few dozen resolute men in a round tower might defy an army of Danes, provided the besieged had enough of food and drink in their stronghold. It must, however, be admitted that the Northmen did sometimes succeed in taking and plundering round towers, but by what means we do not know.

Those who maintain that the round towers are pre-Christian structures, and that there is nothing said in Irish annals about their erection, have very little warrant for such an assertion. If they read Lord Dunraven’s work on ancient Irish architecture, they will find copies of more than one allusion to their erection from the most authentic Irish annals known to exist. Here is one taken from the Chronicon Scottorum, a work of the highest authority and authenticity, compiled about the year 1124. “The great Cloigtheach (or belfry) of Clonmacnois was finished by Gillachrist Ua Maeleoin and by Turloch O’Connor.” This entry refers to the year 1120.

While speaking of the uses of round towers, the wealth of Irish monasteries, and of Ireland in general in ancient times, it may not be out of place to say that that very wealth proved a curse to the country, for if Ireland had not been so rich in precious metals, the Northmen would probably never have invaded and raided it; or if they did invade it, they would have done so with a view to subjugating it and forming permanent settlements in it, as they did in England and France,—things that might have been, and that probably would have been, of benefit to the country. If Ireland had been conquered by the Northmen they would certainly have destroyed the provincial kingdoms, and have brought the whole island under the sway of one ruler; and whether that ruler was Irish or Norse, it would have been of immense benefit to the country at large. Ancient Irish polity was very good theoretically, but practically it was a frightful failure. The Scandinavian invasions only added to the political confusion of Ireland. They were of benefit to England and France, for they brought an infusion of fresh blood into those countries. But to Ireland they brought destruction and ruin, with only a slight infusion of fresh blood. They made the political confusion of the country more confounded. They robbed it of an immense quantity of its wealth, but worse than that, they destroyed a large part of its literature. The monasteries were not only the repositories of wealth but of books. It was impossible that monasteries could be plundered and burnt without damage being done to the books they contained. There is positive proof in Irish annals that the Northmen were in the habit of drowning the books they found in the religious houses. Books were in those days, as is well known, made of vellum, or prepared leather, a material hard to burn; they were consequently cast into the nearest lake or river, from which very few of them were probably ever recovered. If it had not been for Scandinavian burnings and plunderings, mediæval Gaelic literature would, even now, be so immense that it would command the respect of the world at large. Those who say that the bulk of mediæval Gaelic writings has come down to us—and there are those that have the unspeakable hardihood to say so—must be classed as very prejudiced, or very ignorant of Irish history.

The last entry in the Four Masters relating to Glendaloch occurs under the year 1163. It appears to have been abandoned shortly after that date; but why it was abandoned as an ecclesiastical establishment when Danish raids and plunderings had ceased does not seem to be clearly known.

Glendaloch has been thus lengthenedly treated on because it is the most interesting ecclesiastical ruin in the province of Leinster, Clonmacnois only excepted. Its strange and gloomy, yet romantic situation, its antiquity, its sad history of burnings and plunderings, the utter ruin that has overtaken most of its monuments, the halo of legend and romance that is around it, give it a charm even to the non-imaginative and the rude. For the archæologist, the poet, the romancer, or the dreamer, it has attractions and charms greater, perhaps, than they could find on any other spot of Irish soil.

“LORDLY AILEACH”

Next to Emania and Ardmagh, Aileach is the most historic spot in the province of Ulster. It lies four miles west of the city of Derry, on a round, heath-clad hill, some eight hundred feet above the level of the sea. It is one of the most ancient cyclopean fortresses in Ireland, or, perhaps, in the world. There is no scenic beauty in the immediate vicinity of Aileach, but there is a view from the hill-top on which it is situated that for wildness and sublimity can hardly be equalled anywhere in the British Isles,—a view which will amply repay any one who sees it on a clear day. On the north the hills of Inishowen obstruct the view, but west and south-west it is sublime. The eye ranges over a wilderness of fantastic-shaped mountains, some shooting up sharp as arrows, others round and ridgy, separated by sinuous sea-lochs and glittering tarns,—a land of awful ruggedness and desolation,—of rock-bound shores cleft into myriad bays and fiords by the thundering almost ever restless northern sea that beats against them. If no hoary ruin crowned the hill on which the “Lordly Aileach” of Gaelic poets stands, the view from its summit would be worth a journey of a hundred miles to see, for most of the wildness and grandeur of “Dark Donegall” are spread before the eye. On the north-east and north-west the waters of Loch Foyle and Loch Swilly spread themselves almost beneath the feet of the gazer from Aileach. It stands on a hill that commands a view of both Loch Foyle and Loch Swilly; and the site of this ancient fortress was evidently chosen on account of the view it commands of those two sea-lochs, for no fleet could enter them for any distance without being seen by the watchers on the walls of Aileach.

The first thing that should be mentioned when speaking of Aileach is the noble work that has been lately accomplished regarding it. An article appeared about it some twenty years ago in the Irish Times of Dublin, calling attention to its antiquity, the historic and legendary renown of that ancient place; and a Mr Barnard of Londonderry became interested in Aileach and determined to make an effort to have the demolished fortress restored as far as was possible. He made a pilgrimage among the farmers living in the locality, and got promises of help in the way of men to work for so many days at the restoration of the fortress. The farmers kept their word, gave him the help of the men they had promised, and in a comparatively short time the walls of the ruined fortress, under the surveillance of Mr Barnard, once again crowned the hill of Greenan, after having been in ruins for well-nigh eight hundred years. Mr Barnard, and the farmers that gave him assistance in the good work, deserve the thanks of every one who is a patriot, or has any reverence for the ancient monuments of his country, or any respect for the hallowed past.

The early history of Aileach is “lost in the twylight of fable.” It is a pre-historic building, almost as much so as a Pyramid of Egypt. It was used as a stronghold down to the beginning of the twelfth century; but when it was built, or by whom, cannot be said to be known from authentic history, for the many poems that exist about its origin in ancient Gaelic are legendary rather than historic. There may be, and there probably is, a great deal of truth in them, but they cannot be accepted as history.

Aileach is a circular, dry-stone fortress with walls nine feet thick. It was levelled down to the ground when Mr Barnard undertook its restoration. The history of its destruction is so strange, so unique, and so Irish, that it must be given. Let the Four Masters tell it. They say, under the year 1101, that “A great army was led by O’Brian, King of Munster, with the men of Munster, Ossory, Meath and Connacht, across Assaroe into Innishowen.... He demolished Grianan Aileach in revenge of Kinncora, which had been razed and demolished by Muircheartach O’Lochlainn some time before. O’Brian commanded his army to carry with them from Aileach to Limerick a stone of the demolished building for every sack of provisions they had. In commemoration of which was said (by some unknown poet)—

“‘I never heard of the billeting of grit stones,
Though I heard of the billeting of companies,
Until the stones of Aileach were billeted
On the horses of the King of the West.’”

This is the only attempt at anything like humour in all the dreary annals of the Four Masters. Such quiet sarcasm would be a credit to Mark Twain. But if the poet had said “King of the South” instead of “King of the West,” although it might not have answered his Gaelic rhyme or assonance quite so well, it would have been more correct, for although Munster is west of Aileach, it is more south than west. It can never be known how high the walls of Aileach had been before they were pulled down by O’Brien, because we don’t know how many cavalry he had, or how many stones he carried to Limerick. Never before was an army loaded with such impedimenta; but that the story of the stones of Aileach, or at least, stones similar to them, having been brought to Limerick or its immediate vicinity, there cannot be much doubt, for they were found there.

The fortress of Aileach is nearly a hundred feet in diameter in the inside. It is not known if it was ever roofed, but it is probable that it was. There were two lines of earthen ramparts round it, but they have nearly disappeared. John O’Donovan thought that the entire hill of Grianan, on which the fortress stands, was once enclosed by a vast rampart of earth, and that cultivation has destroyed all but the faintest traces of it. It seems probable that Aileach was intended more for a stronghold than for a permanent dwelling-place. It may have been inhabited only when a siege or an invasion was expected. One of its names, or rather the first part of one of its names, “Grianan,” would indicate that it was intended only as a summer residence, like the Dunsinane = Dún soinine, fine weather fortress, of Macbeth. Those who could live in winter on top of the wind-swept hill on which Aileach stands without getting coughs or colds would require constitutions of iron and lungs of brass.

O’Donovan says that if any reliance can be placed on Irish chronology, the antiquity of Aileach must be very great, no less than upwards of a thousand years before the Christian era. He says, also, that the poet, part of whose poem on Aileach is given below, in making the Tuata de Danaan King, Eochy, generally known in Irish history and legend as the Dagda, contemporaneous with the Assyrian King, Darcylus, exactly agrees with the chronology of O’Flaherty and Usher, who say that he reigned 1053 years before the Christian era.

There is a poem in the “Book of Lecan” on Aileach by the poet to whom O’Donovan alludes, that in language and tournure bears the marks of extreme antiquity. Even O’Donovan, great a Celtic scholar as he was, had apparently extreme difficulty in translating it. It has never been published. The first dozen or so lines are given here:—

“Aileach Fridreann, arena of mighty kings. A dun through which ran roads under heroes through five ramparts. Hill on which slept the Dagda. Red its flowers. Many its houses. Just its spoils. Few its stones. A lofty castle is Aileach. Fort of the great man. A sheltering dun over the lime [white] schools. A delightful spot is Aileach. Green its bushes. The sod where the Dagda found the mound wherein rested Hugh.”

But it is in more recent times that the history and records of Aileach become supremely interesting. It was from there that Muircheartach Mac Neill, styled the Hector of the west of Europe by old annalists, started on his celebrated “Circuit of Ireland” in the year 942. He was heir apparent to the chief kingship of Ireland, and wanted to show the provincial rulers that he was fit to rule them. So he determined to start on his circuit in the depth of winter, when it appears the ancient Irish seldom went on forays, and either make or persuade the provincial rulers to acknowledge his right to the throne when the then reigning chief king, Donacha, died. The way he is said to have chosen men for the expedition is very curious and very Irish. He caused a tent to be erected, keeping the cause of its erection unknown, and made his men to go into it at night. A fierce dog attacked every one that entered; and opposite to where the dog was, an armed man also attacked those that entered; both man and dog simultaneously attacking the intruder. If he who entered the tent flinched neither from dog nor man, but showed fight to both, he was chosen; but whoever showed the least sign of cowardice was rejected. Out of his whole army we are told that Muircheartach could only get a thousand men, and with that small army, protected by strong leather cloaks, he started on his Circuit of Ireland to force, intimidate, or coax the provincial kings to acknowledge that he was their master, and that he was to be their next suzerain.

Our principal source of information about the Circuit comes from a poem of undoubted authority and antiquity, written by one called Cormacan Eigeas, who accompanied Muircheartach on the expedition. It is one of the most remarkable poems of its age, not only in Gaelic, but in any language. It was translated more than forty years ago, and may be seen in the “Transactions” of the Royal Irish Academy; but it is not probable that even forty persons have ever read it, so little general interest has heretofore been taken in Gaelic literature or Irish history. For these reasons it cannot be uninteresting to give some extracts from it. It commences:

“O Muircheartach, son of the valiant Niall,
Thou hast taken the hostages of Inis Fail,
Thou hast brought them all into Aileach,
Into the stone-built palace of steeds!
“Thou didst go forth from us with a thousand heroes
Of the race of Eoghan of red weapons,
To make the great Circuit of Ireland,
O Muircheartach of the yellow hair!

“The day thou didst set out from us eastwards
Into the fair province of Connor,[7]
Many were the tears down beauteous cheeks
Among the fair-haired women of Aileach.”

Muircheartach carried off the King of Ulster; and, as the old chroniclers tell us, keeping his left hand to the sea, he fared to Dublin, then the greatest stronghold the Danes had, not only in Ireland but in the west of Europe. He did not have to fight the Danes of Dublin, although he had often fought them before, for their king, probably thinking that “discretion was the better part of valour,” surrendered himself a prisoner. And here one of these inconsequential incidents is related, which no one but an ancient Irish poet would dream of mentioning. Muircheartach seems to have had no objection to make love to a Danish maiden, often as he had fought Danish men. Cormacan, the poet, tells us that they

“Were a night at fair Ath-cliath [Dublin];
It was not a pleasure to the foreigners:
There was a damsel in the strong fortress
Whose soul the son of Niall was;
She came forth until she was outside the walls,
Although the night was constantly bad.”

Muircheartach then proceeded south-west from Dublin to Aillinn, and carried away the King of Leinster. He then made for Cashel, where the King of Munster lived. But Callachan, that was his name, showed fight, and Muircheartach’s men threw off their leather cloaks and prepared to stand by him. However, seeing that things were beginning to look serious, the King of Munster yielded and was carried away prisoner with a golden fetter on him. The leader of the Circuit then turned northwards into Connacht, and carried away the king of that province. So he had the four provincial kings in his power, and also the Danish King of Dublin. But he did them neither hurt nor harm, for he seems to have been in a good humour all the time he was “on circuit”; and we are told by his poet laureate that on their halts the soldiers amused themselves in many ways, especially by music and dancing, and he says—

“Music we had on the plain and in our tents,
Listening to its strains, we danced awhile;
There, methinks, a heavy noise was made
By the shaking of our hard cloaks.”

The next three verses are magnificent. They are full of dramatic power and naturalness. When the triumphant army, but triumphant without having shed a drop of blood, approach Aileach, a messenger is sent forward to announce its arrival:—

“From the green of Lochan-na-neach
A page is despatched to Aileach
To tell Duvdaire[8] of the black hair
To send women to cut rushes.
“‘Rise up, O Duvdaire (said the page),
There is a company coming to thy house;
Attend every man of them
As a monarch should be attended.’
“‘Tell me (she said) what company comes hither
To the lordly Aileach Rigreann,
Tell me, O fair page,
That I may attend them?’
“‘The Kings of Erin in fetters (he replies),
With Muircheartach, son of the warlike Niall.’”

The kingly prisoners were all brought to Aileach, where they were feasted for five months; and the following list of their bill of fare will show that they lived well. Let the same poet tell it:—

“Ten score hogs—no small work,
Ten score cows, two hundred oxen,
Were slaughtered at festive Aileach
For Muircheartach of the great fetters.
“Three score vats of curds,
Which banished the hungry look of the army,
With a sufficiency of cheering mead,
Were given by magnanimous Muircheartach.”

When the five kings were feasted—and it is to be hoped fattened—for five months, Muircheartach brought them to the chief king or emperor, Donacha, and gave them up to him. The following extraordinary dialogue, taken from the same poem, occurs between them. Muircheartach says:

“‘There are the noble kings for thee.’
Said Muircheartach, the son of Niall;
‘For thou, O Donacha, it is certain to me,
Art the best man of the men of Erin.’
“Donacha.
“‘Thou art a better man thyself, O King,
With thee no one can vie;
It is thou who didst take captive the noble kings,
O Muircheartach, son of the great Niall.’
“Muircheartach.
“‘Thou art better thyself, O Donacha the black haired,
Than any man in our land;
Whoever is in strong Tara
It is he that is monarch of Erin.’
“Donacha.
“‘Receive my blessing, nobly,
O son of Niall Glundubh, bright, pure;
May Tara be possessed by thee,
O Prince of the bright Loch Foyle![9]

“‘May thy race possess Moy Breagh,[10]
May they possess the white-sided Tara,
May the hostages of the Gael be in thy house,
O good son, O Muircheartach!’”

It is sad to know that this extraordinary poem, with its uniqueness, its dramatic power, and its raciness of the soil and of the time, notwithstanding the fact that it was translated and published in the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy over forty years ago, is to-day hardly any more known than it was when it lay unheeded and unknown in the archaic Gaelic of the tenth century. It might, for all the notice that has been taken of it, as well not have been translated at all. No other people on earth would have treated such an archaic literary gem with such coldness and contempt. It would seem as if the Irish people were losing not only their soul but their brains. If such a poem were written in Finnish or in Ojibaway it could not have been more ignored than it has been by a people who call themselves intellectual.

In this poem the same anachronism may be noticed that led Petrie so much astray about the Lia Fail having been in Tara in the tenth century. Muircheartach addresses Donacha as if he were living in Tara, although Tara had been abandoned four hundred years before, and was as waste and as desolate in the time of Donacha as it is to-day; the chief kings of his epoch and for centuries before it, lived usually in Westmeath or in Donegal.

That Muircheartach Mac Neill, though a sort of Rory O’More of the tenth century, was a great man can hardly be doubted. He seems to have contemplated the entire overthrow of the pentarchy and the union of all the provinces under one sole king, namely, himself. He could hardly have been ignorant of what had occurred in England in the century previous—how Alfred had broken up the Saxon heptarchy and made himself practically sole king in England. If Muircheartach had succeeded in destroying the wretched system of provincial nationality, and had made the country a political unit, the subsequent history of Ireland would probably be very different from what it has been. But Muircheartach was killed by his old enemies the Danes, the year after he made his famous circuit. They also killed his father, Niall Glundubh, at the battle of Killmoshogue, near Dublin, in the year 917. Here is what the Four Masters say about him under the year 941[11]: “Muircheartach of the Leather Cloaks, Lord of Aileach, the Hector of the west of Europe in his time, was slain at Ardee (in Louth) by Blacaire, the son of Godfrey, Lord of the Foreigners, on the 26th of March. In lamentation of him it was said—

“‘Vengeance and destruction
Have descended on the race of Conn for ever;
As Muircheartach does not live, alas!
The country of the Gael will always be an orphan.’”

“ROYAL AND SAINTLY CASHEL”

The situation of three of the most historic and remarkable ecclesiastical establishments in Ireland, namely, Clonmacnois, Glendaloch, and Cashel, is very peculiar. The first is on a barren sandhill surrounded by the most strange and unique scenery in Ireland, consisting of almost illimitable meadows interspersed with bogs. The second is in one of the gloomiest and weirdest glens in the island; but Cashel is on a towering rock amid some of the richest land, not only in Ireland but in the world, and overlooking as goodly a country as human eye perhaps ever gazed on. Ancient Irish monks and churchmen must have been peculiarly gifted with an appreciation of the strange, unique, and beautiful in nature, or they would not have fixed their retreats in such peculiar places. If ancient Irish kings loved to place their strongholds on hills such as Tara, Aileach, Knock Aillinn, and Uisneach, ancient Irish ecclesiastics seemed not to have cared whether their churches were on hills or in hollows, provided they were somewhere that was strange, weird, or beautiful.

The situation of Cashel is not only beautiful but superb. There is no other place of its kind in Ireland situated like it. Its situation is as peculiar as that of Glendaloch or Clonmacnois. It is, perhaps, the most imposing pile of ecclesiastical ruins in Europe. Mont St Michael in France can hardly compare with Cashel in commanding beauty of situation. One overlooks the chilly sea, but the other overlooks as warm, as fair, and as fertile a country as there is in the world.

BUILDINGS ON THE ROCK OF CASHEL.

Cashel has inspired many poets; but, unfortunately, none of the great English masters of song has made it a theme; and it is strange that our own Moore, who has celebrated Glendaloch, the Vale of Avoca, and other famous places, never composed a lyric on Cashel. No other place in Ireland could have given him a grander theme to write poems of the kind in which he delighted, and in the composition of which he was such an acknowledged master. It is indeed strange that so few of those who may be called our minor poets have written about Cashel, and so seldom taken it as their theme. There exists, however, a short poem on Cashel of the class usually known as sonnets, and it is probable that neither Moore, nor any of the other great masters of song, could have written anything superior to it. It is by the late Sir Aubry de Vere. It first appeared in the Dublin Penny Journal some sixty years ago; but it has so long been partially forgotten that it can hardly be out of place to reproduce it here:

“Royal and saintly Cashel! I could gaze
Upon the wreck of thy departed powers,
Not in the dewy light of matin hours,
Nor the meridian pomp of summer’s blaze;
But at the close of dim autumnal days
When the sun’s parting glance thro’ slanting showers
Sheds o’er thy rock-throned pediments and towers
Such awful gleams as brighten on Decay’s
Prophetic cheek;—at such a time methinks
There breathes from thy lone courts and voiceless aisles
A melancholy moral, such as sinks
On the worn traveller’s heart amid the piles
Of vast Persepolis on her mountain stand,
Or Thebes half buried in the desert’s sand.”

It is strange that Cashel has not inspired more poets; but it is stranger still that the once soulful people of Ireland would have allowed it to be defaced by any modern building erected on the rock on which stands its hallowed and ruined piles. Some gentleman named Scully has erected a brand new round tower almost in the very centre of the hoary monuments that are so sanctified by antiquity. The new tower is not shown on the annexed plate, because of the horrible picture it would make. It is strange that those living near Cashel did not prevent, if they could have done so, the marring of one of the most striking, beautiful and soul-inspiring ruins not only in Ireland but in Europe. It may be that Mr Scully thought that by erecting a new monument of antique type there would not be any incongruity manifested by it, and that by having his name written on it in the Irish language and in Irish characters he would atone for the error he committed. If he thought so, he made a great mistake, for anything new, whether a round tower, a cross, or a brick-built grocery, would destroy all the antique charm of such noble ruins as those on the rock of Cashel. It may be willingly granted that it is a pity there are any ruins at all in the world, and that buildings cannot last new for ever. It should be remembered, however, that nothing can last always; and that when buildings become ruined by time, and, above all, when they have become historic like those on the rock of Cashel, and when they serve to show either the piety or the civilisation of those who have passed away, it becomes absolute barbarism to mar them and mock them by erecting anything new in their immediate vicinity. A modern church on the Hill of Tara is bad enough, but a new building on the Rock of Cashel is little else than a profanation.

Cashel was a seat of the kings of Munster from a time so far back in the dim past, that one almost shudders to think how long ago it is. Long before a Christian edifice crowned the Rock of Cashel, the barbaric dry stone fortress of some Munster pagan king certainly covered it; for very little work would have to be bestowed on it to render it an almost impregnable fortress in ancient times. Some have derived the word Cashel from cios, rent, and ail, a rock, making it to mean “rent rock”; for it is certain that when the kings of Munster lived in Cashel, it was the place where they received most of their tributes or rents; but the best modern Gaelic scholars, including Dr P. W. Joyce, author of that most useful and learned book, “Irish Names of Places,” maintain that the word Caiseal means simply a circular building of dry stones, for the name occurs in scores of places throughout Ireland; and such a building was no doubt on this rock in pre-Christian times.

Cashel became a seat of Christian cult at a very early period, and there are good reasons to think that St Patrick founded a church there. The Rock of Cashel has for very many centuries been known as Carraig Phadraig, or Patrick’s Rock. The first Christian Irishman whose writings have come down to us was Dubhthach, or, as the name would probably now be Anglicised, Duffy, Mac U Lugair. In his poem in praise of the prowess of Leinstermen, he says, that they “unyoked their horses on the ramparts of clerical Cashel.” As this Duffy was a disciple of St Patrick’s, and one of the first converts made by him in Ireland, we are forced to think that one of the first Christian churches ever erected in Ireland was the one erected in Cashel, as it appears to have been in existence when Duffy wrote his poem, which could hardly have been later than the middle of the sixth century. But no vestige of the church of St Patrick’s time remains. It was probably a wooden building, and may have disappeared as far back as thirteen centuries ago. The oldest building on the Rock of Cashel is the round tower, not Mr Scully’s incongruous edifice, but the original one, built probably in the ninth century. It is ninety feet high, and in a fairly good state of preservation. The cathedral is thought to have been built in 1169 by O’Brien, King of Munster, but there does not appear to be much of the building he erected to be seen now, for the ruined cathedral which exists cannot, from the style of its architecture, be older than the fourteenth century. We know from authentic history that one of the Fitzgeralds burned the cathedral in 1495, because he wanted to burn Archbishop Creagh, who, he thought, was in it; but it does not seem to be fully known whether the building was entirely or only partially destroyed by Fitzgerald. Divine service is said to have been celebrated in it so late as 1752, but it must have been in a semi-ruined condition even then.

INTERIOR OF CORMAC’S CHAPEL.