This is another of the great lakes of Ireland. It is over twenty miles
long and between two and three miles in average breadth. It is really
curious that a small island like Ireland should have so many immense lakes
in it. There is, probably, no other country in the world of the same
size--there is certainly no island of the same size--on which so much
fresh water is to be found. It would seem as if nature intended Ireland
for a continent, and not for an island, by giving it lakes so entirely
disproportioned to its size.
Loch Derg, anciently called Deirgdheirc, and at present pronounced Dharrig
by the peasantry, would be the most beautiful of all the great lakes of
Ireland if its islands were as numerous as those of Loch Erne, or even of
Loch Ree. It has the defect that almost all lakes have whose shores are
mountainous or hilly. Want of islands is the great drawback to the
picturesqueness of most of the Scotch lakes and those of the north of
England. A few islands do not add much to the beauty of a lake. There
must be plenty of them to produce full effect. The few islands in Loch
Lomond, because they are so few, hardly add to its beauty. The islands in
Loch Derg are very few, and the most picturesque of them are so near the
shore that they seem part of it to the voyager on the lake. There is one
very large island, Illaunmore--the great island, as its name
signifies--but it does not add very much to the scenic attractions. The
charms of Loch Derg are its semi-mountainous shores. It would be incorrect
to call the bold hills on either side of the lake mountains, for very few
of them reach an altitude of more than a thousand feet; but they are most
graceful in their outlines, and are, for the most part, covered with
luxuriant grass up to their very summits. The lake is by no means
straight; its shores are tortuous and full of indentations, so that there
is a good deal of change of scene when sailing on it. But if the tourist
or traveller who wishes to sail on Loch Derg is not what is usually called
a "good sailor," he should consult the barometer before he goes on to this
great lake, for sometimes, when the south-west wind sweeps up its twenty
or twenty-five miles of water, a sea almost worthy of the Channel will
sometimes rise in a very short time. Many a sea-sick passenger used to be
seen in the good times long ago on Loch Derg, when large side-wheel
passenger boats used to run regularly between Athlone and Killaloe. Those
boats were large enough to carry over a hundred passengers without being
in the least crowded, and the cabins were large enough to accommodate
fifty people at dinner. A trip from Athlone to Killaloe on a fast boat
would, on a fine summer day, be one of the most enjoyable things in the
way of an excursion by water that can be imagined. It is over thirty years
since the writer experienced the pleasure of it, and the remembrance of
its enjoyableness haunts him still. The shores of Loch Derg are much
wilder than the shores of Loch Erne or Loch Ree. Very few houses, and
nothing that could be called a town, can be seen through the whole
twenty-five miles of the lake. The hills that bound it both on the Munster
and on the Connacht sides are almost altogether grass land, and very
little cultivation is therefore to be seen. But the bold, winding shores
and the green hills form a landscape of a very striking kind, and there
are many who maintain that the scenery of Loch Derg is finer than that of
Loch Ree. Both lakes are magnificent sheets of water, and environed with a
fair and goodly country; and were they anywhere else but in Ireland,
their waters would be the highway for dozens of steamers, while at present
they are almost deserted, and may be said to be
"As lone and silent
As the great waters of some desert land."
Loch Derg is full of interest for the antiquarian, especially its lower
part. One of the most ancient and important ecclesiastical establishments
of ancient Ireland, Iniscealtra, the island of the churches, is on its
western shore, close to the land, separated from it only by about a
quarter of a mile of water. Iniscealtra was one of the most important
places of its kind in the south of Ireland. It was founded by St Cainin
certainly not later than the end of the sixth or beginning of the seventh
century, for he died in 653. John O'Donovan in his unpublished letters
says that he is represented in ancient Irish literature as "A very holy
man, a despiser of the world, and an inexorable chastiser of the flesh. He
is said to have been author of commentaries on the Psalms. He was buried
in Iniscealtra." There is a fine round tower in Iniscealtra which is
traditionally supposed to have been built by St Senanus. It is eighty feet
in height, and in fairly good preservation, but it wants the top. The
ruins of St Cainin's Church show it to have been a small building. There
are the ruins of two other churches on the island, one called St Mary's
and the other St Michael's. The establishments on Iniscealtra are of very
great antiquity. It is first mentioned in the Annals of the Four Masters
under the year 548, recording the death of St Colam in the island. The
oldest church in it was dedicated to St Cainin, who was evidently the
founder of the place, and the first who sought it as a retreat. He is said
to have lived for a long time in a solitary cell, until the fame for
holiness he acquired brought an immense number of disciples, for whom he
erected a noble monastery in the island, which afterwards became famous.
The ruins of St Cainin's Church prove that it must have been a very
beautiful building. It was thought by Petrie and other antiquarians that
it and the very beautiful one of Killaloe were erected during the short
time in the tenth and eleventh centuries when Brian Boramha and Malachy
the Second, by their victories over the Danes, gave the country some rest
from the plunderings of those marauders.
At the extreme lower end of Loch Derg is the small but ancient town of
Killaloe. Its real name is Cill Dalua, it was called after an ecclesiastic
of the name of Dalua, sometimes written Malua, who lived in the sixth
century. He placed his disciple, Flannan, over the church. He was made
Bishop of Killaloe in the seventh century. The church is known generally
as St Flannan's. The Earl of Dunraven, speaking of the beauty of the ruins
of this church and the buildings attached to it, says, "These ancient
buildings are on a wooded hill which slopes in a gentle incline down to
the brink of the Shannon. The cathedral and small stone-roofed church
stand side by side, and the walls of the latter are thickly covered with
ivy. Nothing can be more impressive than the aspect of this venerable and
simple building, surrounded by majestic trees, and hidden in deep shadows
of thick foliage. A solemn mystery seems to envelop its ancient walls, and
the silence is only broken by the sound of the river that rolls its great
volume of water along the base of the hill on which it stands."
But the most historic and probably the most interesting thing about
Killaloe is the site of King Brian's palace of Kincora, a place so famed
in history and song. Perhaps it will be better to let such a famous man on
Irish history and archaeology as O'Donovan tell about Kincora. He says in
his unpublished letters while on the Ordnance Survey: "On the summit of
the hill opposite the bridge of Killaloe stood Brian Boramha's palace of
Kincora, but not a trace of it is now visible. It must have extended from
the verge of the hill over the Shannon, to where the present Roman
Catholic chapel stands. I fear that it will be impracticable to show its
site on the Ordnance map, as no field works are visible. Of the history of
the palace of Kincora little or nothing is known, but from the few
references to it we occasionally find, we may safely infer that it was
first erected by Brian, _Imperator Scottorum_, and that it was not more
than two centuries inhabited by his successors. Kincora was demolished in
1088 by Donnell MacLachlin, king of Aileach (Ulster), and we are told that
he took 160 hostages consisting of Danes and Irish." Kincora must have
been rebuilt after it was demolished by MacLachlin, for we are told in the
Annals of the Four Masters that in 1107 Kincora and Cashel were burned by
lightning, and sixty vats of metheglin and beer were destroyed; but it
must have been again rebuilt, for the same annals say that in 1118 Turloch
O'Connor (King of Connacht), at the head of a great army of Connachtmen,
burned Kincora and hurled it, both stones and timber, into the Shannon.
Kincora was, like all dwelling-places in those times, built almost
entirely of wood; and it is hardly to be wondered at that after having
been burned so often by man and by the elements, no vestige of it should
remain. It has been completely wiped out.
A description of Kincora would hardly be complete without giving MacLiag's
Lament for it, translated by Clarence Mongan. MacLiag was chief poet and
secretary to Brian Boramha. The poem is little known even in Ireland; to
the English reader it will be absolutely new. The writer gives two prime
reasons for reproducing it; one, because it is such a very fine poem; and
the other, because it has heretofore never been correctly given.