THE DONEGAL HIGHLANDS
The Bay of Donegal, and indeed the whole Donegal district, is mellowed
and tempered by the everflowing Gulf Stream, which, so the scientists
say, were it diverted by any terrestrial disturbance, would give to the
entire British Isles the temperature and climate of Labrador. As this
event is hardly likely to take place, and certainly cannot be foretold,
the interest in the subject must rank with that which one takes in the
announcement of the statisticians, for instance, that an express-train
travelling at sixty miles an hour would take millions of years to reach
Saturn, were it once headed in that direction and had the elevating and
sustaining qualities of an air-ship.
Certainly, the mean temperature of the whole south and west coast of
Ireland is marvellously mild, and that of Donegal is exceptionally so.
The cliffs of Slieve League, which form a jagged, many-coloured
precipice, rise at a sharp angle from the northern shore of Donegal Bay
to the summit of the storm and wave-riven mountain, a rock wall 1,972
feet high. It is a grand and noble headland, as a glance at the map will
show, and is one of the most lofty elevations seen from Bundoran and the
southern shores of the bay; moreover it is accounted unique in all the
world, by reason of its marvellous colouring.
Bundoran is a bustling, thriving place, but of the tourist order _pur
sang_, with golf-links, electric lights, and up-to-date hotels, and, for
that reason, if for no other, is a place for the genuine lover of the
road to avoid.
Donegal itself is an improvement. It is a small but attractively placed
town at the head of its own bay, and, in spite of its being a coast
town, it is more allied with agricultural interests than with trade by
sea.
The guide-books tell one little of Donegal, and so much the better. One
enjoys finding out things for oneself, and so one has practically a
virgin field at Donegal unless he will delve deep into frowsy historical
works, such as the "Annals" of the "Four Masters" of the old Abbey of
Donegal. The retreat where they patched and pieced together this ancient
record is no more, but it stood, "proud, grand, and rich" upon the site
still marked by some ruinous heaps of stones.
Donegal has the usual accompaniment of a castle, but, in this case, it
is a sixteenth-century descendant of a former stronghold. It is a fine
Jacobean building, built up out of the remnants of its parent, and, with
its tall gabled towers and turrets, is in every way a satisfactory
example of a mediæval baronial residence, though differing in many
essentials from those common throughout Ireland.
Killybegs, between Donegal and Slieve League, on the north shore of the
bay, is one of those picturesque coast villages on a landlocked tiny
bay, of which so many examples exist in the British Islands. It is no
more attractive, nor any less so, than others, but it has this
distinction--a lengthy sojourn there will demonstrate beyond all doubt
that one
[Illustration: DONEGAL CASTLE.]
can live far away from a great city and yet never miss its whilom
attractions.
With many other places similarly situated, a run "up to town" is
inevitable and necessary; here, one is apparently as completely isolated
from the distractions of the great world outside as if he were marooned
on a desert isle, with the advantage, however, of being able to get away
at once by means of what, to all appearances, is a toy railway running
to Donegal.
Carrick is another village a little further on and similarly
isolated,--more so, if anything, in that the diminutive engine and its
toy carriages stop, in its not rapid course, at Killybegs, and one
journeys onward by "car."
To the southward are the heights of Slieve League, Malin Beg and Teelin
Head, and, if one will brave the waves to the extent of rounding these
headlands by boat, he will then experience something of the feeling
which inspired the following lines, which, if rather pretentious, are in
no way fulsome:
"Once seen in morning sunshine, the view of the southern face of Slieve
League, rising steeply from the sea, can never be forgotten; the
impressiveness and matchless colouring of the rock defy description; its
beauty must be seen to be believed. Its glorious colours are grouped in
masses on the mountain's face: stains of metal, green, amber, gold,
yellow, white, red, and every variety of shade are observed,
particularly when seen under a bright sun, contrasting in a wonderful
manner with the dark blue waters beneath."
Some one has compared these variegated cliffs to the effects to be seen,
elsewhere, only in the Yellowstone Park and the canyons of Arizona or
Colorado. Those who know Bierstadt or Moran's paintings of these wonders
of nature, or, better yet, the originals themselves, will appreciate the
comparison.
The festival of St. Adamnan, eighth in descent from the great King Nial
and from Conal, the ancestor of St. Columbkille, is kept with great
solemnity in many churches in Ireland, of which he is titular patron,
and in the whole diocese of Raphoe, in the county of Donegal, of which
he was a native. The abbatial church of Raphoe was changed into a
cathedral soon after, when St. Eunan was consecrated the first bishop.
He originally entered the monastery founded by St. Columba, and became
its fifth abbot. In 701 he was appointed ambassador to King Alfred of
the Northern Saxons, to demand reparation for the injuries committed
upon Irish subjects in Neath. It was St. Adamnan who first prevailed
upon the Church authorities in Ireland to celebrate Easter at the true
and appointed time.
When he died, he left among his effects a treatise on the right time of
keeping Easter, which disposed his people sometime after to forsake
their erroneous computation. He wrote, too, the life of St. Columbkille,
and also certain canons, and a curious description of the Holy Land as
that country stood in his time. This book furnished the Venerable Bede
with his principal memorials.
In this work on the Holy Land, St. Adamnan mentions the tombs of St.
Simeon and of St. Joseph at Jerusalem, and many relics of the passion of
Christ, as well as the impression of the feet of the Saviour on Mount
Olivet, covered with a church of a round figure, with a hole open on the
top, over the impression of the footsteps. He also mentions grasshoppers
in the deserts of the Jordan, which the common people eat, boiled with
oil; and a portion of the Cross in the Rotunda Church in Constantinople,
which was exposed on a golden altar on the three last days of Holy Week,
when the emperor, court, army, clergy, and others went to the church at
different hours, to kiss that sacred wood.
Two landmarks, known to all travellers to the Clyde from America, by way
of the north of Ireland, are The Bloody Foreland and Tory Island.
The guide-books tell but little concerning this wild land of promontory
and cliff, and with some reason, too, for there is little or no
population there, except the fisherfolk and a rather primitive race of
agriculturists.
Donegal is assuredly a land of intermittent beauty, and the
hill-encircled loughs and the verdant glens of Donegal Bay give way here
to a stern, relentless gray stone formation, with here and there patches
of green and purple which indicate nothing so much as the lonesomeness
which is inevitable under such conditions. But there is an
impressiveness in it all which is inexplicable, since the scenery,
[Illustration: LAKE OF SHADOWS, DONEGAL.]
though by no means tame, is not of the grandeur of many other parts.
It is doubtful if Tory Island--which is but a mere name, even to the few
who know it at all--will ever be inundated by any large flow of travel.
If it was, there would doubtless be little accommodation provided for
them, for the simple reason that it does not exist, though the island is
possessed of a population of some hundreds of men and women and
children, with schools and a church--in fact two, which are ever a point
of contention and argument among their respective constituencies. It was
not long since that the cleric in charge of one of these houses of God
nearly starved, because he would not desert his post, and "the powers
that be" on the mainland had evidently abandoned him to his fate, or had
forgotten him altogether.
Between the Tory Island and Malin Head, that other beacon-light for
seafarers, is the great inlet or fiord of Lough Swilly, meaning in
Celtic "Lake of Shadows," which, though quite as beautiful as Lough
Foyle, its neighbour on the east, is, for some unexplained reason, quite
neglected. Of Lough Foyle, at the head of whose ample waters sits that
city familiarly called Derry,--built by certain citizens of London in
the reign of James I.,--Sir Walter Scott has said:
"Nothing can be more favourable than this specimen of Ireland--a
beautiful variety of cultivated slopes, intermixed with banks of wood;
rocks skirted with a distant ridge of healthy hills, watered by various
brooks; the glens or banks being in general planted or covered with
copse."
This is not a particularly vivid statement, to be sure, but it is true
and temperate, and far more likely to fit in with the views of the
casual observer than the rather florid word-paintings of other parts of
Ireland which have been offered by rhapsodists of all shades of
opinion.