Page:Irish essays; literary and historical.pdf/15

 1607, when, as you know, the old proprietors were all expropriated in Donegal, as well as in five other counties of the north; and the ample domains of the O’Clerys of Kilbarron became the spoil of the stranger, and that ancient sanctuary of Celtic learning was left a desolate and dismantled ruin. Now, this brings us down to the time of the Four Masters; and we must pass from Kilbarron to Donegal Abbey. It is not a long way—as the bird flies, about seven miles—over the sand-hills, and down by the sea, that farsounding sea, where the broken billows roar in a fashion that old Homer never heard, past the old abbey of Drumhome, where we have good grounds for believing that two Irish scholars, whose names are known throughout all Europe, spent their youth; that is, Adamnan, the biographer of St. Columba, and the blessed Marianus Scotus, the Commentator. Presently the bay narrows and becomes like a broad river, flowing between fertile and well-wooded banks, especially on the northern shore; and then you suddenly come upon the old abbey, standing close to the water’s edge at the very head of the bay. Little now remains of the building—the eastern gable, with a once beautiful window, from which the mullions have been torn down a portion of the stone-roofed store-rooms, and one or two of the cloister arches, with their broken columns — that is all that now remains of the celebrated Franciscan Abbey of Donegal. Still, it is a ruin that no Irishman should pass heedless by; not so much for what he will see, as for what he must feel when standing on that holy ground, so dear to every cultivated and thoughtful mind.

It was founded in the year 1474 by the first Hugh Roe O’Donnell and his pious wife, for Franciscans of the Strict Observance. Under the fostering care of the O’Donnells, whose principal castle of Donegal was close at hand, the abbey in a short time grew into a great and flourishing