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BALLYSHANNON |
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The lively town of BALLYSHANNON , four miles north of Bundoran at
the mouth of the River Erne, was the site of a major battle in 1591 when
Hugh Roe O'Donnell drove off the besieging English army, but nowadays
its hilly streets become most animated during the Traditional Music
Festival on the first weekend in August. This is one of the most popular
traditional music events in Ireland with performances by major names,
such as Donegal's own Altan, along with a multitude of unknown talents.
You'll need to book accommodation well in advance, though impromptu
space can often be found on someone's floor.
The town stands a few hundred yards upstream from a ford, at the point
where the river's fresh waters begins to mingle with the ocean. Most of
the interest lies up the steep northern slope and is easily combined in
a single, straightforward stroll. The main arteries here form a
wishbone, and near the top of the left-hand branch, signposted to the
left, is St Anne's Church and graveyard, built on the site of the
ancient palace of Mullaghanshee. A simple marble slab, inscribed with
the word "poet", lies to the left of the church, indicating the burial
place of William Allingham (1824-89). Allingham was born in Ballyshannon
and began work in a bank (the Allied Irish Bank has a bust of the poet
and preserves the words scratched by him on a windowpane). His first
volume, Poems (1850), contains his best-known work The Fairies ("Up the
airy mountain, down the rushy glen, we dare not go a'hunting for fear of
little men&"). Unsurprisingly, such verse attracted him to the
pre-Raphaelites: another work, Day and Night Songs , was illustrated by
Rosetti and Millais, before Allingham moved on to the more serious
poetic subject of his homeland. His posthumous Diary , which was edited
by his wife, the illustrator Helen Paterson, recounts his friendships
with literary contemporaries, most notably Tennyson. Allingham was also
a fiddler and balladeer of some skill and contributed to Petrie's
collections of "Ancient Irish Music".
From the graveyard there's a marvellous view over the town. Down at the
quay, you can see the backs of the tall, old warehouses lined along the
river bank, their basement walls dripping with seaweed, and also the
ancient isle of Inis Saimer just out in the river. There's only a wooden
summerhouse on the island now, but it claims to have sheltered the first
colonists of Ireland, around 3500 BC, offering safety from the ferocious
beasts that would have roamed the forests on the mainland. A recently
excavated ancient Greek coin has provided evidence of the site's
antiquity. The water here teems with fish, and you'll find anglers still
trying to bag them well into the night.
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