Ulster (Northern Ireland and Ireland) -- Description and travel
language) than the fifteenth century, which told the tragedy of that
slaying. There is a touch in that ballad fine as any I know, when the
dying lad says to his vanquisher:
"Cuchulain, beloved father,
How is it you did not know me
When I flung my spear so sluggishly
Against your bristling blade?"
That was the only sign he could give. Knowing himself, knowing his
antagonist, yet sworn not to reveal the secret, he could only make
a cast so half-hearted that surely Cuchulain might pause to wonder
whether it was indeed an enemy who threw the spear.
These legends linking the coasts together suggest the charm of that
eastern shore; not the magic of infinite distance, not the Atlantic's
illimitable blue, but a continual tempting of the eye with that
shore beyond the sea, sometimes not visible at all, often faint, an
exquisite mirage, yet sometimes so vivid and distinct that you can
discern even the whitewashed cabins on the farther side.
The mountains of the glens have no marvel of beauty. Slemish, lying
back from the rest, is best marked, with its flat top, which is
indeed evidently the crater of some volcano, forced up in the wild
convulsion that has left its other traces in the basalt of Fair Head
and the Causeway. Marked, too, it is in history; for on its slopes
Patrick in captivity herded his master Dichu's swine. Yet this was on
the landward of the hills, in the valley of the Braid, which drains
west into Lough Neagh, and stands outside the grouping of the glens.
Tibullia, another peak easily discerned, is distinguished by having
on its summit a formation of flints where man of the Stone Age had a
regular factory; chipped and flaked implements, marred in the making,
can be found there (by the knowing) in basketfuls.
But the true distinction of these hills is that they have found their
poet. Samuel Ferguson first in his ballad of "Willy Gilliland" (which
has its climax by the walls of Carrickfergus) celebrated the stretch
of green "from Slemish foot to Collon top". But it is a later singer,
the poetess, "Moira O'Neill", who in her _Songs of the Glens of
Antrim_, has made all their names resound: from "Slemish and Trostan,
dark with heather", to "ould Lurgethan" where it "rises green by the
sea". And not the hills only but the glens--Glenann, for which the
emigrant "does be thinking long"; "lone Glen Dun and the wild glen
flowers", with the little town at the outflow of its river, Cushendun,
_Cois-an-duin_, Dun-foot. Her volume should be in the hands of every
traveller in the glens, unless its verses are already written in his
memory.
[Illustration: CARRICKFERGUS CASTLE, BELFAST LOUGH]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account