Читать книгу Ireland - The Rock whence I was Hewn - Brian Oswald Patrick Donn-Byrne - Страница 4
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When an Irishman looks at his country from a distance, as from America or Australia, the exact size of the country is apt to disappoint him. The longest line of land which can be drawn is three hundred miles: from Fair Head, in the north-east, to Mizen Head, in the south-west. Taking the country as a rough lozenge, the short diagonal from north-west to south-east is about two hundred miles.
The terrain itself may be roughly divided into three parts: a mountainous region in the north, an equally mountainous region in the south, and a great central plain.
The mountains in the north of Ireland are a geological continuation of those of Scotland, and those of the south a like continuation of the Welsh mountains. The Irish Central Plain is opposite what in England is called by soldiers the Chester Gap. and so, naturally, the Irish Central Plain is England’s logical and only military outlet to the north-west. It was and is as natural for the possessors of England to invade Ireland as it is for a human being to turn from left to right.
TARA ONCE THE SEAT OF IRISH KINGS
The rich and fertile province of Meath was the possession of whatever tribe in Ireland could take and hold it. In earliest days Dublin and its Liffey was not the principal site of the Irish kings, but Tara, in Meath, and the Boyne, with its holms of lush meadow grass, its infinity of salmon. In the south-west Limerick was hardly less important. Limerick was protected on the west by the Atlantic and on the east by the wide and the dangerous Shannon. The Shannon is considered the real military frontier of Ireland in the west. The greatest of English soldiers, the Lord Protector Cromwell, did not dare to invade Connacht (Connaught).
The Torc Waterfall rushing down from “Wild Boar” Mountain into the Middle Lake (Killarney). Here the stags come to drink at sundown.
