The Letters of "Norah" on Her Tour Through IrelandNorah
History
The Letters of "Norah" on Her Tour Through Ireland
Norah
Ireland -- Description and travel
The scenery from our elevated position is glorious. At our feet Sligo,
all her buildings, churches and convents white in the sunshine, around
her the fairest of green fields; the blue waters of Lough Gill sparkling
and glancing from among trees of every variety that in spring put on a
mantle of leaves. On every side but the gate of the west through which
we see a misty glance of the far Atlantic, Sligo has mountains standing
sentry around her. One, Knock-na-rea, is seen from a great distance, a
long mountain with a little mountain on her breast. The bells were
chiming musically, the sound floating up to where we stood. Below us, on
the other side of the old earthwork, a little apart from one another,
stood two great buildings, that are so necessary here, the poor-house
and the lunatic asylum. These magnificent and extensive buildings must
have cost an immense sum. The asylum has been enlarged recently, as the
freshly-cut stone and white mortar of one wing testified.
As I looked, a band struck up familiar airs. We saw them standing in a
field beside the asylum. I was told that the band was composed of
patients. This made the music more thrilling. When they struck up "Auld
Lang Syne," or "There Is no Luck About the House," there was a wail in
it to my ears, after home, happiness and reason. We got down from our
high position and came home by another way, passing through some of the
poorer streets of Sligo, which are kept scrupulously clean. Even here
women and girls were gathering sticks to cook the handful of meal. The
poor are very poor on the bare hills of Leitrim, or in this green valley
of Sligo.
XXIX.
ON LOUGH GILL--TWO MEN--STAMPEDE FROM SLIGO--THE ANCIENT AND THE
MODERN.
I was a little disappointed that I was getting no information on any
side of the question of the day, and my letters which were to be sent to
Sligo not coming to hand, I was advised to go down the beautiful Lough
Gill to Drumahaire to see the ruins of Brefni Castle, the place from
which the fair wife of the O'Ruarke, Prince of Brefni, fled with
McMurrough, which was the cause of the Saxon first gripping green Erin.
I thought I might as well, and set out to walk to the boat landing, a
good _billie_ out of Sligo, along the street, past small tenement
houses inhabited by laborers, who do not always obtain work, past the
big gloomy gaol, past the dead wall and the high bank on the top of
which goats are browsing, down to the landing beside the closely-locked
iron gate, and the little lodge sitting among the trees behind it,
belonging to the property of a Captain Wood Martin. Had the felicity,
while yet some way off, of seeing the shabby little boat cast off the
rope and puff herself and paddle herself slowly off down the lake.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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