recounting all the glorious actions of his life. “His anger flashed out through his tears as he wildly chanted the noble lines,” say the chronicles.
“My heart shall burst within my breast,
Unless I avenge this great king.
They shall forfeit life for this foul deed,
Or I must perish by a violent death.”
Of the passionate attachment of the Irish for music, little need be said, as this is one of the national characteristics which has been at all times most strongly marked, and is still most widely appreciated, the harp being universally held as a national emblem of Ireland. Even in the prechristian period that we are here reviewing, music was an institution and a power in Erin.
Few spots in Ireland are richer in historical and archæological interest than Killaloe. There is a fine specimen of sixth-century architecture in the well-preserved cell of St. Lua, with its steep roof of stone and cunningly devised arches. It is a venerable building, and nestles under the shadow of the present Protestant cathedral, built by O’Brien, King of Thomond, in the twelfth century. On a small island in the river Shannon are the ruins of an ancient friary, and at a little distance the remains of a small chapel. These are said to mark the position of a ford used by pilgrims who came to visit Killaloe before the bridge, which is itself ancient, was built.
Lough Derg is reputedly one of the prettiest pieces of water in Ireland. Its shores are well wooded, and the background all around is made up of swelling upland, dotted here and there with the white houses of the peasantry, while in the far distance are the heather-clad hills of the Counties Clare, Galway, and Tipperary.
In Lough Derg, on Station Island, is the reputed entrance to St. Patrick’s Purgatory. A wide-spread superstition accounts for its popularity, but whether as a purely “tourist point” or as a place of pilgrimage for penitents, it were better not to attempt to judge.