All the story of Cuchulain's hero-feats can be read in Lady Gregory's admirable version, Cuchulain of Muirthemne; but Cuchulain's fort you can see for yourself. It stands close to the town of Dundalk, visible from the railway, a flat-topped mount, surrounded by a trench some thirty feet deep, with a steep outer rampart surrounding this in its turn. The whole is now tree-covered. Mr. Tempest, an antiquary of Dundalk, whose exertions have saved this monument from the spade and plough, thinks that he has identified, a couple of miles south of Dundalk, the place where Cuchulain died. Cloghafarmore, the "Big Man's Stone", at Ratheddy is one of the "standing stones" found through Ireland, as through other Celtic countries, and tradition identifies it with the pillar to which Cuchulain made his way from his last fight. For ninety days, he and his charioteer Laeg, and his pair of horses, Black Sanglain and the Grey of Macha, had harassed and held back the host of Ireland, destroying champion after champion, singly or by groups, in fights at each ford, and raining missiles upon the main body with marvellous sling-throwing; but at last, encompassed and at bay, he had got his death-wound with his own charmed spear, which passed through the bodies of nine men in its last flight from his hand. When, flung back at him by Lugaidh, last survivor of the sons whose father Cuchulain had slain, it had ripped his body open, the wounded warrior, holding his bowels together with one hand, staggered to this pillar stone, and bound himself to it by his scarf, so that even in death and defeat he might still stand upright. So he stood propped, while the Grey of Macha, loosed from its harness, defended him with teeth and hoof, letting none approach, till men saw that on the hero's shoulder a raven had lighted. "It is not on that pillar birds were used to settle", said one of his foemen. Then the grey horse knew that life had ebbed away, and she left the body to its despoilers. But the man who struck off Cuchulain's head, and took it with him, had his own head struck off by a comrade of the Red Branch before he reached the plains of Liffey.
Such is the fierce temper of that old hero-cycle; but if its heroes are not to be outdone in fierceness neither are they in generosity. How much is legend, sheer invention, none can say: the great earthworks at Armagh, Cuchulain's fort at Dundealgan, and a hundred other things testify to a truth behind the tale. And it is fairly well established that the race which had its centre at Armagh was not the race which governed from Tara: the Red Branch was Pictish, Tara was Milesian. How distinct the racial types show where they have survived tolerably pure is hardly realized, save by some such chance as befell me, when, at an exhibition in Limerick, I was summoned to look at a strange foreign folk from the north. They were girls from an Irish-speaking district in Donegal—not far from Rosapenna—pretty girls, too, but among the big, buxom, oval-faced, soft-bodied Southerners their short profiles, their high cheek bones, and hard, bright colour showed as strange as if they had been from another quarter of the world.
All the subsequent stages in Irish history meet you about the shores of Carlingford—Carline-fiord; its name tells of Danish settlements. The old castle in Carlingford town was erected by de Courcy at King John's bidding; the monastery was Norman built too, by Richard de Burgo, Earl of Ulster, but the Norman rule in Ulster was closely limited to a few strongholds on the coast. The Narrow Water Castle, which Mr. Williams has drawn against its background of the steep richly wooded slopes which make the chief beauty of this beautiful lough, is on the site of a thirteenth-century fortress, but that was destroyed in the Great War of 1641, and this building dates from Charles II's reign. At Warrenpoint a tall obelisk records the name of Ross of Bladensburg, one of the many brilliant officers whom Ireland gave to Wellington's armies—with how many thousands of the unnamed peasants to fill the ranks that they led! All those wooded hills behind Rostrevor, the little watering-place that nestles snug among them, looking south to the sun and the hills of Cooley, speak of comfortable days and territorial dominion. Behind those same wooded hills lies the southernmost point of industrial Ulster, Newry town, with its whirring looms.
These are some of the stepping-stones to guide one through Irish history; yet how many more might be added! Where the road and rail strike north from Dundalk, as they rise to that pass which is the famous Gap, you reach Faughart, scene of the battle where Edward Bruce ended his disastrous adventure of conquest in Ireland. And on the plain below, William and Schomberg had their camp and mustered their army before it set out to march upon the Boyne.
Memories of war—Pict and Connachtman contending for Cuchulain's head; the Dane plundering and trading; the Norman building his strongholds; the Scot heading Ireland's endeavour to shake off the Norman yoke; that other convulsion in 1641, and then new castles built; the Dutchman landing, and his triumphant march; and from the subdued Ireland, thousands, tens of thousands, of soldiers, gentle and simple, issuing forth to uphold the English name. Yes, but other memories are there too. Some maintain that here Patrick landed on his mission. But at all events at Faughart, in the fifth century, Brigid was born, the "Mary of the Gael", "mother of all the saints of Ireland". Her work was done in Leinster, but surely her birthplace here on the threshold of Ulster should not be overlooked.
["THE BLACK NORTH"]
I shall assume that from Dundalk and its neighbouring beauty, that narrow lough winding among the hills, you go straight to Belfast, with the glorious range of Mourne Mountains on your right hand to make the journey attractive. At "Portadown upon the Bann", where the Pope has a bad name, you are not far from the focus of the industrial north—at all events of the great linen industry. From the train you will see fields white as snow with bleaching webs; and it is said that one cause of this trade's localization is a special suitability of climate, like that which makes Lancashire head of the world for cotton-spinning. Belgium can beat Ireland in producing flax—can get 50 per cent more for the same weight of finished fibre—but in the spinning and weaving Ulster is unapproachable. Unhappily, as in all textile trades, the individual withers and the machine grows more and more: hand-loom damask weavers, who can still make a product marvellous for craftsmanship, find their occupation gone—the machine runs them too close.