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LEINSTER 49
little lake of Lough Bray at the sources of the Glen-
cree River. So, keeping high among the hills till you
have passed Killakee and begin the descent into
Rathfarnham, you will complete almost the whole
of your journey amid the haunts of shepherd folk
such as those among whom Synge lived, and from
whom first he got his vivid vision of Irish peasant
life—a vision coloured no doubt by long residence in
far-off Aran, and told in words that keep an echo
of the Gaelic tongue, yet always, as most of our
visions must be, in its essence the vision of that
particular countryside where he was born and bred.
The very antithesis of Wicklow, with its mountains,
its small plunging rivers, and its breed of little light-
footed sheep, is the plain country of Meath, watered
by the deep stream of the Boyne, and grazed over by
the finest and biggest cattle. No other place in
Ireland is so rich in monuments of all the ages; nor
is there anything in Ireland better worth seeing than
the valley of the Boyne itself, from Navan to the
sea.
If I had time and a motor car, I should begin by
driving to Trim, and stopping just short of it at Lara-
(C361)
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