I came last into Munster by motor car, driving from Kilkenny to Clonmel over the southern shoulder of Slievenamon (Sliabh na m-Ban, the Witches' Mountains), and a finer journey could not be taken. We struck out through rich pasture and tillage, keeping this shadowy dome which rose from the plain as our objective, till the pass began to define itself. But it was when we had crossed or were crossing the pass that the real beauty began. Slievenamon was on our right, well wooded; facing us, as we ran south, were the Comeraghs, and a low foot ridge thrown out from them, between which and us ran the Suir. The valley is wider than that of the Blackwater, with less of what may be called fancy wooding; but it can fairly hold its own; and the quay at Clonmel by the shining, swirling river is as pretty as heart could desire. From Clonmel to Lismore a road carries you over the top of Knockmealdown (that is, Maeldune's Hill), and those of my companions who took that drive crowed over me for the rest of the journey; describing in glowing phrases all the glories I had missed, the wonderful panorama from the top, then the gradual descent down a long wild wooded glen into the tranquil and cultivated beauty of Lismore. Yet if I had a motor car at Clonmel and only one day's excursion to make, it is not south I would go. I would go north into the heart of Tipperary, through the Golden Vale which lies overshadowed and half-circled by the Galtee range, until I came to the thing best worth seeing in all Ireland, Cashel of the Kings. Nothing is, I repeat, better worth seeing, nothing less often seen by the tourist; for it lies off the track. The Rock of Cashel is a lone steep hillock, sharply scarped, and rising out of the plain which stretches from Slievenamon to Slieve Phelim, and comprises in fact the rich land drained by the Suir. Such a spot was inevitably seized on for a stronghold, and from its earliest days Milesian rule centred here. To Cashel it was that St. Patrick came to convert the king of Munster, for Cashel was to the southern half of Ireland what Tara was to the northern. It was the heart of Munster, whence principalities radiated out. Thomond, North Munster, ran west from it into Clare, across the Shannon; _Ormond_, _Oir Mumhan_, East Munster, lay away from it towards Kilkenny and Eastern Tipperary; Desmond, _Deas Mumhan_, the great kingdom of South Munster, comprising Cork and Kerry, came to its walls, for theoretically the High Kingship of southern Ireland alternated between Thomond and Desmond. And away south-east, through the gap between Slievenamon and the Comeragh Mountains, you can see into Waterford, which in Irish was called the Deisi, falling into Desmond as a separate lordship.