If I had to see Munster by motor car, my disposition would be to start from Waterford, follow the valley of the Suir up to Clonmel, then strike north to Cashel and see it. All the monuments can be seen in a few hours, and no ruin or building that I ever visited has so intelligent a custodian. From Cashel I would go to Holycross, that exquisite remnant of monastic splendour, rich in historic memories, and thence push out across Tipperary to the north-west, steering for the gap between Keeper Mountain and the Silver Mines. This would bring me out of the Golden Vale, which is in truth the valley of the Suir, and into the basin of a still greater and more famous river, at its most famous point. For from this gap the route would descend to the Shannon, at the narrow gorge below Lough Derg where all its vast volume of water is contracted to the ford and pass at Killaloe. Here, if you will, is beauty: long peaceful levels above the weir where lake passes imperceptibly into broad river; below it huge swirling rapids, interspersed with wide, smooth, yet swift running salmon pools, all down the twelve miles of river to the head of the tideway at Limerick. And here, too, are historic memories more glorious than can be matched elsewhere in Ireland. It was here at the outflow of the lake, where is an unsuspected ford, that Sarsfield crossed (led by the rapparee, Galloping Hogan), on the raid when he stole out of Limerick along the Clare shore and so to this ford, on his way to lie in wait on the slopes of Keeper for William's expected battering train. On your road from Cashel you will have passed near Ballyneety, where he and his troopers surprised the sleeping convoy and blew the heavy guns into scattered shreds--a splendid foray, splendidly preluding Limerick's heroic and successful resistance to the great Dutchman. But here at Killaloe, and specially at this ford above it, where great earthworks mark the ancient fort of _Beul Boroimhe_, are memories more honoured than hang about even Sarsfield's name. Here it was that in the tenth century Brian Boru, Brian of the Tribute, built up with his Dalcassians of Clare the power that learnt how to resist the Danes, whose plundering forays threatened to blot out civilization altogether from northern Europe. The first defeat of moment inflicted on them was at Sollohed in the Golden Vale, near Limerick Junction, where the forces of Thomond were led by Brian's brother, King Mahon. But it was Brian who as a mere youth refused to join Mahon in submission (by any pact, however veiled) to the invaders: it was Brian who had fought them in desperate guerrilla warfare through the hills of Clare, and along the banks of the Shannon, till he was brought down to fifteen men, and Mahon asked him in the council chamber, "Where hast thou left thy followers?" And Brian answered, as the Irish poem tells: