Donegal

“ Donegal itself is an improvement. It is a small but attractively placed town at the head of its own bay, and, in spite of its being a coast town, it is more allied with agricultural interests than with trade by sea.
The guide-books tell one little of Donegal, and so much the better. One enjoys finding{196} out things for oneself, and so one has practically a virgin field at Donegal unless he will delve deep into frowsy historical works, such as the “Annals” of the “Four Masters” of the old Abbey of Donegal. ”

“ Moving thus, day by day, taking practically any road that presented itself, they had wandered easily through rugged, beautiful Donegal down into Connaught. They had camped on the slopes of rough mountains, slept peacefully in deep valleys that wound round and round like a corkscrew, traversed for weeks in Connemara by the clamorous sea where they lived sumptuously on fish, and then they struck to the inland plains again, and away by curving paths to the County Kerry. ”

“ We are now among the wild, unkempt kerns and peasants of County Donegal, in their villages and rude moorland huts of turf and boulders, dotted among the lonely valleys far away amid the bare, desolate, wind-swept uplands and bleak, gaunt, long-backed ridges, shrouded for half the year in rolling grey mists from off the ocean, that range along the coasts of North-Western Ireland. ”

“ The Marquess of Conyngham, whom I met at Strabane, said:—"The people of Donegal are pleasant, kind, and civil. Taking them all round, they are much more energetic than the Southerners, and we were making fair progress until these Home Rule Bills were brought in. The country was being opened up, and things were beginning to improve, when the bill came and blighted everything. Now the people are growing idle and discontented. They are all right when left alone. Everybody likes the Donegal peasants, and they deserve to be liked. ”

“ The fiddlers in Donegal are “all sorts,” as they say—farmers, blacksmiths, fisher boys, who play for the love of the thing, and strollers (usually blind men) who wander about from house to house and from fair to fair playing for money. ”

“ Interminable red bog. A cluster of hovels on the tableland; one set this way, another that, huddling together for company sake, it seems, in this abomination of desolation. A drift of young children play about on a green cleared space between the holdings. (In Donegal one sees young children everywhere.) They run off like wild-cats at our approach, screaming loudly and chattering in Irish as they run. A rick of turf, thatched with winter-stales ”

“ It is beyond question that Donegal differs from Connaught, and that both differ from Munster; and when we find that, in spite of a coexistence of at least two thousand years in the same island, and the possession of a common language, different districts have a different folk-lore, is it extravagant to surmise that these different bodies are due to varying racial deposits? ”

“ WOMEN AND HARES It’s curious in Donegal sometimes, when going along the road, or crossing a footpath through the fields, to see a shawled woman, a perch or so off, dropping over the edge of a hill, and then when you get up to the edge there is no sign of her at all. ”

“ This town of Dungloe sprawls along the shore of the sea. It is reputed the most ill-favoured town in Donegal, and it certainly is not a dream of beauty. But it blooms all over with evidences of the prosperity of that interesting type of Irish civilisation, the “Gombeen man,” of whom I had heard so much at Gweedore. ”

“ There is surely no country in the world where hearts so thinly covered beat so warmly as in the Emerald Isle. Wherever one travels,—over the bare mountains of Donegal and the rocks and cliffs of the northern coast, or among the blue lakes and green fields of the South,—he will always find a merry greeting and a hearty Irish welcome. ”

“ Mackenzie's Rock, which dries in four feet, guards the other entrance, and no Atlantic surge could pass into Loch Tuadh or the Sound of Iona, without changing its direction twice and almost at right angles. But Donegal receives the impetus of the tremendous billows which break against the steep cliffs of Mizen Head, or rush up the narrow gorges with which the exposed coast of the Northern Hebrides is so deeply scored. Staffa is singularly sheltered. ”

“ The agent would take care that no interests should grow up on the estate, which his chief could not control or knock down. It is not likely that Lord Donegal would have suffered the landscape to be spoiled, the atmosphere of the deer park and gardens to be darkened and tainted by the smoke of factory chimneys, which could add nothing to his rental, while crowding around him the race which his great progenitor did so much to extirpate. ”

“ KILLYBEGS, a seaport and market town of county Donegal, Ireland, in the south parliamentary division, on the north coast on Donegal Bay, the terminus of the Donegal railway. Pop. (1901) , 607. It derives some importance from its fine landlocked harbour, which, affording accommodation to large vessels, is used as a naval station, and is the centre of an important fishery. There is a large pier for the fishing vessels. The manufacture of carpets occupies a part of the population, employing both male and female labour—the productions being known as Donegal carpets. ”

“ I lived in old Donegal since the day that I was born there, and I had a lover, as brave and true a lad as ever trod the world. But sorrow came. One night at Farcalladen Rise there was a crack of arms and a clatter of fleeing hoofs, and he that I loved came to me and said a quick word of partin', and with a kiss—it's burnin' on my lips yet—askin' pardon, father, for speech of this to you—and he was gone, an outlaw, to Australia. For a time word came from him. Then I was taken ill and couldn't answer his letters, and a cousin of my own, who had tried to win my love, did a wicked thing. ”

“ I despair of ever bringing our friend Southwell to a proper sense of his duty as a correspondent. I wrote him a long letter, and have not yet received a line in answer, but suppose his Donegal expedition, and his intention of assuming the garb of sobriety which you say he is resolved upon, has obliterated all epistolary thought. Where is he gone to, in so remote a part of Ireland as Donegal?
I still remain very comfortable and snug, and pleased with my situation. I begin to like the people of the country rather more than I did. ”

“ Donegal shook his head solemnly. "The man was mad. All thim royal families but our one is," he said.
"In the meanwhile I'd like to know a little more about where we're going and what we're going to do, now I'm one of you," said Niven. "You see, I couldn't ask the skipper too many questions."
"'Tis his condescending modesty," said Donegal. "'One of you,' says he! Sure, 'tis ten years it would take to make a man of ye, an' it takes ten more to make a man into a sealer. Stickine, will ye enlighten the son av the ducal earl?" ”

“ There might have been ship-building on the Foyle, to the great benefit of Derry and her people, but for the absentee landlords, the London companies. Donegal might have had a coal mine opened, but the landlord would neither open it himself nor let anyone else do it, and yet the great want of Donegal is employment for her people.
I did not think for a moment that the landlords of Ireland were, as a rule, naturally worse than other men, but they have too much power, and when "self the wavering balance shakes, it's rarely right adjusted." ”

“ First, I would transport the reader in imagination to a lonely valley in the far west of the county of Donegal. The morning light is sparkling in diamonds from the dewdrops that cluster on the bent and heather, and is throwing a rainbow sheen [Pg 59] across each web of gossamer that hangs across our path as we climb the long rough slope in front. Around are bare bleak moorlands, too high and infertile for cultivation, from the sides and hollows of which the peasants dig their fuel. The signs of human occupation grow fewer and fainter as we ascend. ”

“ Passing on, the Donegal engaged another French ship till her colours in turn came down. Then she ran on board one more Frenchman, the Jupiter, a ship that had already been hotly engaged. The Jupiter surrendered to the Donegal after next to no defence. Such was the Donegal’s work that day, in [220] a battle that is really unique in the completeness of its results, but which, owing to its having taken place within three months of Trafalgar, the world paid little heed to at the time, and we have since quite forgotten—lost sight of in the dazzling lustre of the greater event near home. ”

“ While horses were changed we saw a very dirty town called Strabane; and had to visit the old house of the O’Donnels in Donegal during a quarter of an hour’s pause that the coach made there—and with an umbrella overhead. The pursuit of the picturesque under umbrellas let us leave to more venturesome souls: the fine weather of the finest season known for many long years in Ireland was over, and I thought with a great deal of yearning of Pat the waiter, at the Shelbourne Hotel, Stephen’s Green, Dublin, and the gas-lamps, and the covered cars, and the good dinners to which they take you. ”

“ If the country was still undisturbed, they might enjoy a ride through wild Donegal; if otherwise, it was safer, having accomplished the purpose of the trip, to sail back to the West. The miserable village at the head of the bay showed a few dwellers when they landed on the beach, but little could be learned from them, save directions to a distant cotter who owned an ass and a cart, and always kept information and mountain dew for travelers and the gentry. ”

“ But though we have therefore evidence that a fort or dun existed here from a very remote time, it would appear certain, from a passage in the Annals of the Four Masters, that a castle, properly so called, was not erected at Donegal by the O’Donnells till the year 1474. In this passage, which records the death of Hugh Roe, the son of Niall Garve O’Donnell, at the year 1505, it is distinctly stated that he was the first that erected a castle at Donegal, that it might serve as a fortress for his descendants ”

“ Among the swift shuttles of Irish speech the ponderous questions and pronouncements of an English fisherman drove their way. The talk was, we gathered, of sport and game laws and their administration.
“Is it hares?” cried the Dublin tourist, perorating after a flight or two into the subject of poachers; “what d’ye think would happen a hare in Donegal?”
His handsome brown eye swept his audience, even, through the spokes of a bicycle, gathering in our sympathies. It left no doubts as to the tragedy that awaited the hare. ”

“ From the top of Ganiamore a good view is obtained of the coast from Horn Head round to Inishowen peninsula, and from its hills a fine sweep inland to Errigal Mountain. At Downing's Bay there is one of the finest views in Donegal, looking up and down Sheephaven, the woods of Ards and the tower of Doe Castle backed up in the distance by the ponderous mass of Muckish. Within a short distance of the hotel are three caves which can be entered, one from the brow of the hill and the others at low water. ”

“ SPACE In towns the furthest we see is the other side of the street; but here there is no limit to one’s prospect—Perseus is as visible as Boötes—and one’s thought grows as space increases.
RABBITS AND CATS Donegal is over-run with rabbits; and sometimes on your journeys you will see a common house-cat—miles from anywhere—stalking them up the side of a mountain, creeping stealthily through the heather and pouncing on them with the savagery of a wild thing. ”

“ Coleraine is where you join the train to get to Derry, and the rail skirts the shore of Lough Foyle—easternmost of the great succession of sea loughs [Pg 29] which make the distinctive beauty of Donegal. Inishowen, its western shore, is included in that county by English geography, though this peninsula never formed part of Tyrconnell. Its lordship was always disputed between O'Neill and O'Donnell, and the best evidence of its separateness is given by the ecclesiastical boundary, which here, as always, follows the old tribal demarcation. ”

“ Already numerous presbyterians of Ulster, men of Scottish and English descent, had been driven by the destruction of the woollen trade and the disabilities imposed by the test act to emigrate to America, and many of Donegal's evicted tenantry followed their example. Ireland lost men who should have defended British interests, and America gained some of her best soldiers in the revolutionary war. The feud between the protestants and catholics of Ulster arising out of Donegal's evictions bore bitter fruit in later troubles. ”

“ Donegal has some of the highest and finest mountains in Ireland, and the extent of mountainous country is larger than in any other part of Ireland. No maritime mountain and cliff combined can approach Slieve League, in Donegal, and if the coast cliffs of Mayo have a continuous grandeur that excels any similar stretch in Donegal, there are many higher and finer cliffs on the Donegal coast, in endless succession and variety from Inishowen Head, on Lough Swilly, to the south-west coast. ”

“ Killybegs, between Donegal and Slieve League, on the north shore of the bay, is one of those picturesque coast villages on a landlocked tiny bay, of which so many examples exist in the British Islands. It is no more attractive, nor any less so, than others, but it has this distinction—a lengthy sojourn there will demonstrate beyond all doubt that one{197}
DONEGAL CASTLE.
{198}
{199}
can live far away from a great city and yet never miss its whilom attractions.
With many other places similarly situated, a run “up to town” is inevitable and necessary ”