Ulster (Northern Ireland and Ireland) -- Description and travel
Mr. Williams's picture shows Errigal where it rises by Gweedore over
Dunlewy Lake--one of the grandest among Ireland's mountains. But the
most striking view of it is east of Gweedore, where the little river
flows out by Gortahork; and here is a thing of much interest, the
Cloghaneely College, where folk go to study Ulster Irish amongst those
who have it for their native speech. Still farther east is Falcarragh,
and the view which Mr. Williams has given adds less than due emphasis
to the astonishing castellated outline of Tory where it rises out of a
tremendous depth of water. I never landed there, though I often talked
with the Tory fishers, including one who had made his fortune at the
goldfields and come back to the place of his birth among the rocks
and the fish heads. There is one sheltered spot, one growing bush,
and one only, on Tory. There, of course, Irish is the language, and
they maintain the practice of verse, chiefly for purposes of satire;
quarrels are revenged in rhyme. I talked to a red-bearded mountainy
man near Gortahork about this, but he said it was a peevish thing to
do; he would rather have a skelp at a man. In truth there is an old
feud between Tory and the shore, and fierce battles have been waged.
I do not know why so few people stop at Falcarragh: there is a good
little hotel, the views are beautiful, there are three little rivers,
all holding salmon, and, at the point where the longest of them flows
out across the long range of sand beach west of Horn Head, there is
a view of Tory and of Horn Head that passes all I know. Running water
across sand, clean sand dunes and grey bent, pure illimitable sea and
high cliffs, sunsmitten or in shadow--there is landscape reduced to
the simplest terms of a broad elemental beauty.
Also at Falcarragh there must be the makings of a links equal to any
in Ireland. The line of dunes runs for several miles along the sea,
ending in one of the strangest natural features I know, the huge
mountain of clean sand which centuries of westerly gales have piled up
against the rocky mass of Horn Head. That famous head is in truth an
island, the counterpart of Tory on its seaward face, yet in the gap
between it and Dunfanaghy such a deposit of sand has accumulated that
only a small causeway has been needed to give access from the mainland
to the tiny farms and the one demesne.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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