From Ballina one reaches Sligo in five and a half hours by means of that still prevalent institution, the genuine Irish “low-backed car.”
Somewhere in the county of Sligo is the “Valley of the Black Pig,” which is possessed of a legend which recounts how, for generations, the Irish peasantry have comforted themselves in adversity by the memory of a great battle fought here in this valley.
W. B. Yeats tells how, a few years ago, in the barony of Lisadell in Sligo, a peasant would fall to the ground in a trance as it were, and rave out a description of the bloody battle which once took place.
This shows, at least, that tradition and legend alike die hard in the minds of the people, and when Mr. Yeats tells us that men have told him that they have seen the girths instantaneously rot and fall from horses; and that few, if any, who enter the Black Valley ever come out alive, we realize fully how close we are, even in these times, to the age of superstition in Ireland.
Mr. Yeats furthermore eulogized the incident in verse.
“The dew drops slowly; the dreams gather; unknown spears
Suddenly hurtle before my dream-awakened eyes;
And then the clash of fallen horsemen, and the cries
Of unknown perishing armies beat about my ears.
We, who are labouring by the cromlech on the shore,
The gray cairn on the hill, when day sinks drowned in dew,
Being weary of the world’s empires, bow down to you,
Master of the still stars, and of the flaming door.”
Sligo itself, with its ten thousand souls and its important and matter-of-fact seafaring trades, is a centre for journeying afoot or awheel amid many charming scenes of lough and lake and sea and shore.
Southward is Carrick on Shannon, the gateway to the Shannon’s lakes and rivers; northward is the Bay of Donegal, backed by its famous rugged “Highlands;” and, eastward, is Lough Erne, which, with its upper and lower lakes and the river Erne trickling minutely southward, is quite the rival of the long-drawn-out Shannon, or would be if the tide of popular fancy ever turned that way. Enniskillen is the metropolis of Lough Erne. Locally it is known as the Island City by reason of its being apparently surrounded by the all-enfolding waters of the upper and lower lakes. Its fame lies principally in its entrancing situation, and the memory of its various regiments of Enniskillen Dragoons who have fought and won gloriously in many of England’s “little wars,” and big ones, too, for that matter. The colours borne by the two Enniskillen regiments at Waterloo are still preserved in the parish church.
Until the days of James I., Enniskillen was no more than a stronghold of the Maguires, but it then gained much prominence through the eventful part it played in the domestic struggles and troubles of the latter half of the seventeenth century. Of the old castle, which has braved so many fights, only a small portion remains, and is incorporated in the modern military barracks, which, in one way, indicate the importance of Enniskillen.