ANTRIM AND DOWN
Journeying from the Giant's Causeway to Belfast and Dublin, through the
north-eastern counties of Antrim and Down, one comes upon a region
little known to the casual traveller, who is usually smitten at once
with the charms of Killarney and the South, and who neglects this more
conveniently and comfortably traversed region.
Truth to tell, the large centres of population of Dublin and Belfast,
and sundry visitors from the "Midlands" of England, have appropriated it
as their own playground, and, "in the season," are found here in large
numbers.
This need be no detraction from the charms of the region, which, if not
historically and picturesquely possessed of the same qualities as the
middle and south of Ireland, at least has the advantage of being an
unworn road to the majority of travellers.
Drogheda, on the estuary of the river Boyne, is the first happy
hunting-ground for the student of history and architecture, after he
leaves the immediate environs of Dublin itself.
Drogheda is at once ancient and modern. Its shops and factories, its
shipping and its tramways, are evidences of that modernity which is ever
obtrusive in an old-world shrine of history.
Drogheda, according to one authority, was formerly called Tredagh, and
originally Imbbar Colpa. "It is so very ancient that it is supposed to
have been founded by Heremon, one of the sons of Milesius, who, having
arrived from Spain with Heber and his other brothers at Imbbar Sceine
(Bantry Bay), was subsequently separated from Heber by a storm, and,
while Heber regained the Kerry coast, Heremon, after innumerable
hardships, put into Drogheda, where he effected a landing, but with the
loss of his brothers and Colpa, the swordsman, who perished in the bay,
and from which circumstance the town derived its name." Thus writes
Anthony Marmion, in his "History of the Maritime Ports of Ireland."
"There can be no doubt," he continues, "that an eastern colony of
Mithraic, or sun-worshippers, had been early established in the
neighbourhood of Drogheda." Coming, however, to less remote and fabulous
happenings, Drogheda, whose Irish name was Droiceheadatha, the Bridge of
the Ford, was taken by Turgesius the Dane in 911, and made a stronghold
for raids into the surrounding country. Its importance was also
recognized by the Anglo-Normans, who built a bridge across the Boyne at
this point. The most celebrated military event in the town's history was
its siege and capture by Cromwell in 1649.
The walls and gates, so unusual in Ireland, were formerly a line of
defence a mile and a half or more in circumference, and, from the very
substantial remains of the St. Laurence Gate and the West or Butler
Gate, it may be inferred that they were a wonderfully effective defence,
sharing with the walls of Derry the glory of being the most elaborate
works of their kind in Ireland.
The most curious architectural embellishment of Drogheda is the famous
Magdalen steeple--all that remains of the Dominican Abbey founded in
1224 by the Archbishop of Armagh, whose remains lie buried in the ruins.
Here, in 1395, Richard II. of England held court, and within the
building four Irish princes did homage to the king, and were knighted by
him. Cromwell's cannon razed the building until only the grim, gaunt
tower or steeple was left. A sepulchral cairn of stone, known as the
Mill Mount, appears to have been the ancient citadel of Drogheda. A
mythical hero of the prechristian era, "Ghoban the Smith," is supposed
to have been buried here.
North of the Boyne estuary is Dundalk Bay, in itself a beautifully
disposed body of water which, if not possessed of the ruggedness of the
fiords of Western Ireland, is in every way an attractive setting for
Dundalk itself, which is mostly a town of one long vertebrate street
along which short spines radiate for a brief distance and lose
themselves in the background of hills or in the strand of the sea.
Edward Bruce, the brother of the Scottish Robert, stormed Dundalk after
Bannockburn, and lived here, after taking the town, for two years. He
died in the engagement fought near Dundalk with the English army, in
1318.
In 1649 Monk held the town for the king against Cromwell.
At the head of Carlingford Lough is Newry, pleasantly situated in a
valley overlooked by the Carlingford Mountains. It is one of the most
ancient towns in the island, being famed even in Irish bardic
literature. It was also the seat of a monastery, where St. Patrick
himself, it is said, planted a yew-tree, referred to in no complimentary
strain in Swift's satiric couplet:
"High Church, low steeple,
Dirty streets, and proud people."
Newry took to itself the admonition, cleaned itself up in later years,
and has become in all respects a flourishing modern town.
A Cistercian abbey was founded here in 1175, according to the
"Monasticum Hibernica," but no remains exist to-day to suggest its
former importance.
Rostrevor is the chief tourist centre of Carlingford Lough. It is
confidently claimed by many to be the most popular resort in all
Ireland, which it evidently is.
Moreover, it is a marvellously pretty place of the stage-scenery order,
but its attractions are somewhat exaggerated. Its popularity is
accounted for by its accessibility to Dublin and Belfast, whose
work-worn habitants flee here in large numbers, in season and out.
Rostrevor, as might be expected, has its popular legend also. It runs as
follows:
"The Bell of St. Bronach, now to be seen on the altar of the Catholic
Chapel, has a strangely romantic history. There is a ruined Church of
Kilbroney on the hillside, not far from the town. For hundreds of years,
the legend of a fairy bell had been current about Kilbroney. It was said
that, whenever misfortune threatened the town, the note of a strange,
silvery, unearthly sounding bell echoed through the forests. Many heard
the bell, but no one succeeded in solving the mystery, or indeed, ever
suspected that there was any solution save a supernatural one. In the
end of the eighteenth century, however, an ancient tree was blown down,
and, in its hollow heart, was found a bronze church-bell of immense
size and of great antiquarian value. It was this bell, hidden in the
heart of the tree many centuries before, that had sounded its note of
death and terror, whenever a storm of unusual force rocked the great
tree in whose depths it lay concealed. No doubt it had been hidden in
the tree for safety, during some raid of pagan tribes, and by accident,
or through the death of the pious ecclesiastic who concealed it, was
never removed."
Carlingford itself, and the celebrated beauty of the Lough, will ever
appeal to all lovers of nature and romantic associations.
The great attraction is Carlingford Castle, one of King John's Irish
fortresses, erected in 1210 by De Courcy at the king's bidding. Some
ruined castles are interesting, some rather the reverse. Carlingford
Castle belongs to the former class. The courtyard, with its walls eleven
feet in thickness, and galleries fitted with recesses for archers at
each loop-hole; the curious little secret chamber, which one may reach
by climbing up a wall, and through a mass of tangled ivy; the spiral
staircase winding up to an airy battlemented height; all these are as
interesting as they are picturesque. Underground, there is a range of
small, gloomy dungeons, hewn out of the solid rock, where many a gallant
life must have been worn away in bitter agony and despair, seven
centuries ago, in those times when chivalry and romance were
inextricably mixed with brutality. Just above the dungeon-cells runs the
ruined stone terrace, looking out to sea, where (tradition says) the
lords and ladies who accompanied King John to Ireland used to walk up
and down of a summer evening, in the cool of the sunset wind. This of
course is most probable, and it is perhaps a not unusual proceeding,
still it is pleasant to recall. The lute must often have sounded across
the waters of the lough in those golden evening hours, the careless
laugh rung out, the silken cloak swung, and the gauzy veil fluttered
from the high "sugar-loaf" head-dress, within sound of clanking chains,
and cries from half-maddened, famishing, and tortured wretches below.
One need go no deeper into history than any account of King John, to
understand what kind of treatment his prisoners were likely to receive.
Greenore, at the mouth of Carlingford Lough, is the key to the
passenger traffic between England and Belfast, Londonderry, Enniskillen,
and other places in the north and northwest of Ireland. It is a
remarkable fact that the strategic importance of Carlingford Lough
should be thus recognized in a peaceful fashion at the end of the
nineteenth century; for one recalls that the ruined castles at
Carlingford and Greencastle were built by the Anglo-Normans, at the
close of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth centuries, to
protect their lines of communication when invading, in a far different
and more tragic fashion, the hills and dales of Ulster. The frowning
ruins of Carlingford Castle still seem to guard the western shore of the
lough, while the fortress of Greencastle, on the eastern shore, commands
a glorious view from its lofty battlements.
Greenore supposedly presents many attractions for the tourist, but they
are mainly of the kind set forth in the tourist programmes of the
shipping companies and the railways, and, in fact, they are but of the
conventional variety, though it is only fair to say they are here
perused under very attractive and charming conditions. But the various
journeyings of the collaborators to this volume were not for the sake of
sea-bathing, golf, or tennis; hence Greenore is now dismissed--and
gladly.
The railway runs the length of Carlingford Lough, along the base of
Carlingford Mountain, which rises to nearly two thousand feet, to Newry
at the head of the Lough, where, on a rock which projects into the
river, stands Narrow Water Castle, built in 1663 on the site of a
thirteenth-century edifice erected by Hugh de Lacy.
Ardglass, between Carlingford and Belfast Loughs, is seldom heard of in
literature or the news items of the daily press; but it is a quaint
little town of half a thousand inhabitants situated on the seacoast,
with Dundrum Bay and the Mourne Mountains of County Down for a
background.
Once it was the chief port of Ulster (its name, _Ard-glas_, means the
green height), and was so important a town that it was guarded by seven
castles, but one of which, Jordan's Castle, is to-day in any state of
preservation.
The county town of Down is Downpatrick. It is ancient and historic, and
has a prospect,
[Illustration: _Grave of St. Patrick, Downpatrick_]
on the river Quoile, which shows off its imposing cathedral in a most
pleasing manner.
The native Kings of Ulster had their residence here before the coming of
Christianity. The town was known anciently to Ptolemy, who called it
_Dunum_.
The religious foundation of the place dates from 432 to 440, when St.
Patrick established the see and the Abbey of Saul of the Canons Regular,
who was superceded in 1183, a few years after the town was taken by John
de Courcy, by the Benedictines.
The cathedral of to-day is a rehabilitation of an ancient ecclesiastical
building, though to all appearances it is a comparatively modern work
and is often credited as such.
Locally, great importance is naturally attached to the supposed fact
that Downpatrick is the burial-place of St. Patrick, and a rough, unhewn
boulder marks the spot in the churchyard where his bones rest--or do not
rest, for there is great and constant doubt as to whether this is really
so or not. However, there are, it is to be presumed, many who would like
to believe they had visited such a hallowed spot, and perhaps for this
reason the want has been supplied.
Moreover, in the old church which stood on the site of the present
cathedral, which Harris, the antiquarian, described in 1744, there was
an inscription in monkish Latin which, translated, reads:
"Three saints do rest upon this holy hill,
St. Patrick, Bridget, and Columbkille."
This would seem to justify in a measure the claim, though the rhyme is
pretty bad.
Jeremy Taylor was for a time Bishop of Down, as was also Thomas Percy,
celebrated for his famous edition of the "Reliques of Ancient Poetry."
There are many historical and ecclesiastical remains in the immediate
neighbourhood, including the Cistercian Abbey of Inch, founded in 1187
by John de Courcy, and the celebrated Wells of Struell, supposedly of
great virtue for the lame, the halt, and the blind. To-day their
efficacy seems somewhat dimmed, as one does not hear of any remarkable
cures which have recently taken place.
About the only convenient way to reach Armagh,--Ireland's most ancient
and famous seat of learning,--when making the coast tour of the north of
Ireland, is from Belfast.
Armagh, about which so much has been written by all manner of
pen-wielders, and about which so much is yet destined to be written, is
one of the most attractive towns in Ireland, albeit it is not on the
seacoast or on an important waterway.
Newcastle, in the minds of many, is merely the home of "The best
golf-links in Ireland." This is perhaps a sign of the advanced age in
which we live, but Newcastle, forty miles north of Dublin, can lay claim
to more than that.
Newcastle, as a tourist point and "a beauty-spot," really exists by
means of, and on account of, Slieve Donard, the highest mountain in
Ulster, which hangs its 2,796 feet right over the little seacoast town,
and provides non-golfing visitors with a continual field for pleasant
excursions. The beautiful estate of Donard Lodge lying on the slope of
the mountain is, too, a great attraction, as also are Castlewellan, the
seat of the Earl of Annesley, and the Earl of Roden's domain of
Tollymore Park; and as these three estates enclose or command most of
the beautiful mountain and forest scenery for which Newcastle is noted,
they really form the irresistible attractions of the place. The whole
range of the beautiful blue Mourne Mountains can be seen from
Castlewellan, which lies on the side of Slieve-na-Slat.
Not far from Newcastle is Rostrevor, a pretty ittle village with a
church-spire nestling among the trees and overhanging the picturesque
coast-line of Carlingford Lough.
Much morbid interest is usually awakened by the recollection of certain
events which took place in the neighourhood. At Bloody Bridge was a
terrible massacre in 1641; Mourne Park and Mourne Abbey are generally
famous spots; the village of Killowen, from which the late Lord Russell
of Killowen chose his title, contains the house where Pat Murphy, the
Irish giant, was born, and the ruined chapel where the celebrated
Yelverton marriage took place in 1861.
Many will recall the details of this famous _cause célèbre_. Pretty Miss
Longworth, a Roman Catholic girl of high family, met and was loved by
the Protestant Major Yelverton, whom she nursed in the Crimea. A secret
marriage was arranged after both had returned to Ireland, and a hurried
journey was made from Waterford to Rostrevor. They rowed down the lough
to the little chapel next morning, and were married by the parish
priest. In after years came the desertion of the bride and an action for
maintenance, which was decided by an Irish jury in the lady's favour,
but subsequently reversed by the House of Lords. Probably no
mixed-marriage case ever excited so much interest in the three kingdoms,
and even yet the chapel and the village are inextricably associated with
this sad story of love and betrayal.