From The Story of Belfast by Mary Lowry (circa 1913)
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CROWN MOUNT is a celebrated rath which lies one mile north-east of Newry. It stands 112 feet high, a large platform on the summit of a hill, and it is 600 feet in circumference.
The story of Crown Mount is an interesting one. It was erected as a place for single combat between two princes who each claimed a royal territory.
I shall try and tell the romantic old tale. King Aengus—corrupted into MacGinness—had a son who was far beyond the bounds of Ulster. Prince Diarmid was famous for his beauty and ability, but still more for his noble deeds. He was a great sportsman and often passed far beyond his father's territory to hunt the savage wolf, wild boar and red deer, in the forests of Feudh Mor, "the Fews" and by the shores of Camlough, the "Crooked River." One day, when he was returning alone from the chase, he rode down the western hill into a village called Newry. On the banks of the Clanrye river, where there was a green dell surrounded by forest trees—on the identical spot where the barracks stand now—he saw a fair maiden milking her goats. He watched the most beautiful girl in Ireland, then, leaping from his horse, he begged for a drink.
Though she was clad in humble garments, she had an air of elegance and high descent. Everyone loved Mary O'Hanlon, and so did he, and as he led her to her cottage home, he begged her to accept his suit and become his queen in Iveagh. She refused, saying she was quite unfit for such a position. When the old woman she lived with heard who he was, she told him the secret of Mary's life. She was the child of the Prince of Ulster, and when her parents died, she was entrusted to the care of her mother's brother and his wife. The nurse overheard a wicked plot for her death that the inheritance might fall to their own son. The nurse carried off the child and her jewels, and had kept her in that humble retreat. When she produced the jewels, Diarmid recognised them at once, and discovered that the lovely Mary was his own cousin. He challenged the usurper to single combat, which was fought at the Crown Mount Rath. Prince Diarmid of course won, and he lived long and happily ever after, and so ends the history of Crown Mount.
« Chapter XXXVI. (Narrowwater) | Contents | Chapter XXXVIII. (Castle Roche) »
From a sad, comfortless childhood Giles Truelove developed into a reclusive and uncommunicative man whose sole passion was books. For so long they were the only meaning to his existence. But when fate eventually intervened to have the outside world intrude upon his life, he began to discover emotions that he never knew he had.
A touching story for the genuine booklover, written by an Irish bookseller under the pseudonym of Ralph St John Featherstonehaugh.
Annals of the Famine in Ireland
Annals of the Famine in Ireland, by Asenath Nicholson, still has the power to shock and sadden even though the events described are ever-receding further into the past. When you read, for example, of the poor widowed mother who was caught trying to salvage a few potatoes from her landlord's field, and what the magistrate discovered in the pot in her cabin, you cannot help but be appalled and distressed.
The ebook is available for download in .mobi (Kindle), .epub (iBooks, etc.) and .pdf formats. For further information on the book and author see details ».
Ireland's Welcome to the Stranger
This book, the prequel to Annals of the Famine in Ireland cannot be recommended highly enough to those interested in Irish social history. The author, Mrs Asenath Nicholson, travelled from her native America to assess the condition of the poor in Ireland during the mid 1840s. Refusing the luxury of hotels and first class travel, she stayed at a variety of lodging-houses, and even in the crude cabins of the very poorest. Not to be missed!
The ebook is available for download in .mobi (Kindle), .epub (iBooks, etc.) and .pdf formats. For further information on the book and author see details ».
Henry Ford Jones' book, first published in 1915 by Princeton University, is a classic in its field. It covers the history of the Scotch-Irish from the first settlement in Ulster to the American Revolutionary period and the foundation of the country.
The ebook is available for download in .mobi (Kindle), .epub (iBooks, etc.) and .pdf formats. For further information on the book and author see details ».
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