Page:Irish essays; literary and historical.pdf/12

 ranges, exhibiting every variety of shape and colouring, but open to the west, and therefore to the prevailing winds which carry in the unbroken billows of the Atlantic to the very rocks beneath your feet. Poor D’Arcy M‘Gee, influenced by the grandeur of its surroundings, and doubtless even still more by the associations of the past, has described Kilbarron Castle in a sonnet of much grace and beauty. The opening lines describe the scene:—

The "home of a hundred annalists" is fast falling into the sea; but the grey ruin is still lit up with the radiance of an old romantic story that tells how the O’Clerys came to Kilbarron, and how they grew and flourished there. These O’Clerys originally belonged to the southern Hy Fiachrach, or the Hy Fiachrach Aidhne, whose ancient kingdom was conterminous with the present diocese of Kilmacduagh. But they were driven out by the Burkes in the thirteenth century, and were forced to migrate northwards to their ancient kinsmen on the banks of the river Moy, who were known as the northern Hy Fiachrach. Yet even there they were not allowed to remain in peace, for the Burkes and Barretts followed them, and once more the O’Clerys were compelled to seek new quarters. Tirconnell was still the inviolate home of Irish freedom, and its grand mountains could be seen any day from Tirawley, rising up in strength and pride beyond the bay to the north-east. Then it was that a certain Cormac O’Clery, disgusted with his oppressors by the river Moy, put his books in his wallet, and, taking his staff in his hand, set out for the inviolate home of freedom in the North. Round by Sligo he walked, lodging probably at Columcille’s abbey of Drumcliff then, keeping between the mountains and the sea, he crossed the fords of the Erne, and came into Tirhugh, the demesne lands of the chieftains of Royal Donegal. Now, the young man, being hungry and footsore, betook himself for rest and shelter to the hospice of the great abbey Assaroe, which the children of St. Bernard had founded long before in a pleasant valley on the banks of a small stream that falls into the river Erne a little