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 aesthetic 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 archaeologist 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 Feilere 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.