Gay sunlights o’er the hillocks creep And join for golden weather, - A scythe-sweep, and a scythe-sweep, We mow the dale together. In mountainy parts of Donegal where small pockets of corn ripen among stone and heather one may see even the sickle at work, for Donegal is...
Inistioge (“Teoc’s or Tighe’s Island”) is a most pleasant example of the little Irish village with church, cross, spirit-grocery, petrol-pump grouped round a quiet shadowy square. Time stands still, and the children under the lime-trees wait happily for the bus that has forgotten to come....
Louth, the smallest of the Irish counties, lying between the Boyne Estuary and Carlingford Lough, bulks largely in Irish history, for it was always a border country and debatable land. It guarded the Gap of the North, the pass that runs from the plains of...
Island Of Saints And Scholars The coming of Christianity to Ireland in early 5th century was unlike its arrival any other country. Throughout much of the Roman Empire the religion was spread by and edict, imposed upon a conquered people by the occupying Roman administration. But...
Fortresses In Ireland At almost every turn in the Irish countryside there are remnants of ancient forts, some now reduced to mounds overgrown with grass, others the crumbling fragments of once-massive strongholds. The story they tell is of a harsh and often dangerous existence endured over...
In a quiet pine glade on Shantemon Hill, five great boulders stand in a row on the emerald grass. Named after the legendary Irish giant-slayer Finn MacCool, or MacCumhaill, the stones are thought to have been erected during the Bronze Age (between 1750 and 500BC),...