The Sunny Side of Ireland, page 89 by John O'Mahony
<< Return to Title Details & Download90
th-west coast, where
"The mountains kiss high heaven, And the waves clasp one another,"
one look round reveals the amphitheatre of hills. Westward, whither we are going, the hills above Glenbeigh point our road to where the Atlantic meets the shore. To the eastward, where the morn, in russet mantle clad, walks o'er the dew, the line of far-piercing spears, Mangerton, Torc, Glena, Toomies, and the Reeks extend. At Killorglin (twenty-four miles rail), with a wide-spanning viaduct, we cross the Laune, wending its way from the Lakes to Dingle Bay. Here the ruins of an old Knights Templar Castle remain to remind us of the historic past. For five-and-twenty miles from this place onward, the route runs over the southern shore-line of Dingle Bay. Some five miles from Killorglin, in a secluded nest of old trees beneath the mountains, lies ~Caragh Lake~.
"Long, long ago, beyond the space Of twice ten hundred years; In Erin old there lived a race Taller than Roman spears."
[Illustration: Fishing in Caragh River]
[Illustration: Photo, Lawrence, Dublin. Caragh River and Lake.]
[Illustration: Photo, Lawrence, Dublin. Southern Hotel, Caragh Lake.]
And in their romances and love-songs, Caragh was tenderly mentioned, for was it not here that Dermot sheltered Grania in the bowers of the quicken-trees? All who have read the fine old Finnian romance, "The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Grainne," which tells the iliad of their flight across ancient Erin, will remember that here on the shores of Kerry he met his enemies and discomfited them. In the mists westward from the lake is the hill-summit, Seefin, where the disconsolate son of MacCool sat. For long this little paradise has remained forgotten by scenery-seeking men, but now that it is re-discovered, it will enthral all comers. The lake, sheltered under the cloak of the hills, is six miles long, and all around its coasts are things of beauty, green velvet mosses, dark broom and heather-clad hills, with rowan trees inters