Open [7.9 MB]

MUNSTER 53
from Mweelrea again might distinguish the peak of
Errigal far north in Donegal. At all events I knew
an old gentleman who told me that he had seen the
whole length of Ireland in one field of vision, and
he took either Mweelrea or Croagh Patrick as his
midland centre and Errigal or Brandon (or the Reeks)
as his two extremes.
This Dingle Peninsula is explored by very few,
unexplored by me, alas! I could see from the road
the dark outline of Cahirconree, a wonderful stone
fort, built two thousand feet up on the side of the
Sliabh Mish mountains: and away out to the west
the Blasket Islands were in sight, hardly more ac-
cessible than the Skelligs, but inhabited by a race
of Irish-speaking fisher folk, among whom a Norse
student of the Celtic languages settled himself the
other day and was overjoyed to find a stone inscription
in Runic characters, containing the mind of some
Scandinavian forebear of his own, set down in the
Norse that was spoken a thousand years ago and
had waited ten centuries for him to decipher it.
Under Brandon, on the extreme west of the penin-
sula, lies Smerwick Bay, where in Elizabeth's reign
a small detachment of Spaniards
lished themselves;
landed and estab-
their earthworks at Fort del Oro
(so called because Frobisher was wrecked there
with a cargo of pyrites which he took to be gold)