Today’s Itinerary – Mon 28th – Westport – Sligo- Drumcliffe- Mullaghmore- Lake isle of Innisfree boat trip – Westport

SLIGO

Mountain Benbulbin, Sligo

Sligo (Irish: Sligeach, meaning “abounding in shells” — /ˈslaɪɡoʊ/ sly-goh; Irish pronunciation: [ˈɕlʲɪɟəx]) is the county town of County Sligo, Ireland. With a population of 20,000 in 2014, it is the second-largest urban centre in the province of Connacht, after Galway, and the 22nd overall in Ireland.Sligo was formerly a major commercial port on the west coast of Ireland, and is now a major economic, educational, administrative and cultural centre of Ireland’s Border Region, a region of over 500,000 people which comprises the counties of Sligo, Cavan, Donegal, Leitrim, Louth and Monaghan.^[3]

The town is also an important tourist destination, owing mainly to the renowned natural beauty of the surrounding countryside and its literary and cultural associations.The town is unusual in that it is the only major Irish town to have been under continuous Gaelic control throughout the Medieval period. It was the administrative centre of the O’Conor Sligo (O’Conchobar Sligigh) over-kingdom of Iochtar Connacht (Lower Connacht). Also called Clan Aindrias, they were a branch of the O’Conchobar dynasty of Kings of Connacht. The other territories subject to here were Tireragh (Tir Fhiacrach), Leyney (Lúighne), Tirerill (Tir Olliol) and Corran.  Sligo was burned, sacked or besieged approximately 49 times during the medieval period, according to the annals of Ireland.

DRUMCLIFF

Drumcliffe is best known as the location of a monastery founded by St Columba, or Colmcille(meaning ‘dove of the church) in or about 575AD.  It was built close to Culdreimhne (Cooldrumman), just north of Drumcliffe on the slopes of Benbulben, where the ‘Battle of the Books’ was fought.

Remorseful for his actions, Columba left Ireland in 563 AD seeking to convert more souls than were loss in the battle.  In addition to Drumcliffe, he is attributed with the founding of monastic sites at Derry, Durrow, and Kells, but is probably mostly remembered for founding a monastery on the Scottish island of Iona.  There are no longer any traces of the monastery, which existed until the Fifteen century or so, except for the Tenth century high cross, remnants of other crosses and the remains of a round tower.This battle between the forces of Connaught and Ulster, in which approximatley 3,000 were slain, was the final outcome of a controversy that arose when Columba secretly copied a Psalter belonging to Abbot Finian of Moville.  This led to the High King’s famous judgement ’to every cow her calf to every book its copy’.

MULLAGHMORE

Mullaghmore (Irish: An Mullach Mór, meaning “the great summit”)^[2] is a village on the Mullaghmore peninsula in County Sligo, Ireland. It is a noted holiday destination, characterised by ocean views and a skyline dominated by the monolithic shape of Ben Bulben mountain. It is in the barony of Carbury and parish of Ahamlish. From the 17th to the 19th century it was part of the large estate belonging to the Temple family in north Sligo. The land, some 12,000 acres, was granted to Sir John Temple, 1st Viscount Palmerston and Master of the Rolls in Dublin. The 3rd Viscount, Henry John Temple, better known as Lord Palmerston, began the building of the castle of Classiebawn a baronial style house standing on the peninsula. He also built the stone walled harbour in the village which was designed by the marine engineer Alexander Nimmo. It was built between 1822 and 1841.The Temples were mostly absentee landlords, with the estate being run initially by middlemen, and later by land agents, such as Stewart and Kincaid^[3] a Dublin firm with offices in Sligo.^[4] These agents, in their attempts to make the estates profitable, oversaw the “assisted emigration” that took place on the Palmerston and adjacent Gore Booth (Lissadell) estate in the area that began before the famine and continued until at least the 1860s.

Thus, in May 1862 a Sligo newspaper reported: “In accordance with a custom of some years standing, about sixty persons have been selected for emigration from the Parish of Ahamlish … whose passages and outfit has been provided by his Lordship. They consist of twenty-four young girls, and twenty young men … [and] families who were wholly unable to support themselves … who had asked the favour of being sent out ….. The emigrants took their passages … this day, for Liverpool, en route for America.”^[5]

Classiebawn was a favoured holiday retreat of Admiral of the Fleet The 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, the last Viceroy of India, who had inherited Classiebawn Castle.It was off the Mullaghmore coast in August 1979 that Lord Mountbatten, along with The Dowager Baroness Brabourne, The Hon. Nicholas Knatchbull and County Fermanagh teenager Paul Maxwell, were killed by a bomb planted by the Provisional IRA.

Isle of Innishfree Boat Trip On Lough Gill

Irish poet William Butler Yeats love of Sligo is well documented and much of his poetry is inspired by the locality.

In the poem titled “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” Yeats talked about one of the Islands on Lough Gill here in County Sligo. The Island is not accessable but may be viewed from land or by boat. The lake Isle of Innisfree boat trip is available from Parke’s Castle.

“I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.”

When Yeats was a child, his father had read to him from Walden, by Henry David Thoreau, and Yeats described his inspiration for the poem by saying that while he was a teenager, he wished to imitate Thoreau by living on Innisfree, an uninhabited island in Lough Gill.^[3] He suggests that when he was living in London, he would walk down Fleet Street and long for the seclusion of a pastoral setting such as the isle. The sound of water coming from a fountain in a shop window reminded Yeats of the lake that he had previously seen, and it is this inspiration that Yeats credits for the creation of the poem.^[4]

In his youth, Yeats would visit the land at Lough Gill at night, often accompanied by his cousin Henry Middleton. On one occasion, they went out onto the lake at night on a yacht to observe birds and to listen to stories by the crew. The trips that Yeats took from the streets of Sligo to the remote areas around the lake set up for him the contrasting images of the city and nature that appear in the poem’s text.^[3]