CHAPTER VI.

Picture of Ulster-Tables of the Escheated PropertyTaking seizin.

THERE are many derivations given by different writers of the name of Ulster. Some assert that it comes from Uladh, which signifies "great wealth," thus indicating that fatal fertility which attracted the cupidity of the neighbouring British races. Others attribute it to Ollamh, a celebrated monarch, who, several centuries before our era, reigned over the Kingdom of Ulster. The name of Uladh was applied in later times solely to Dalaradia (which the Irish pronounce Dal-aree) comprising the following districts-Iveagh, Magennis's country; Kinelarty, Mac Artan's country; The Ardes, the country of the Savadges ;* Clanaodhbuigh, Upper and Lower; the principality of Mac Neill Boye, "a bloodie rebbele." This name obtained the classic form of Ulidia, and the general designation of the Northern Kingdom was dignified into Ultonia.

Ancient Ulster, "that land good and flourishing, with many excellent commodities, plentiful in all kinds of provision, the soil rich and fer

An English colony, which has kept its place in the Lower Ardes from the time of John De Courcy, Earl of Ulster, 1172.

tile, the air sweet and temperate, the havens very safe and commodious "*. -that illustrious seat of piety and the centre of enlightenment-comprised the territories of Oirgiall, or Uriell, now Louth, Monaghan, and Armagh, with some parts of Tyrowen and Fermanagh; Dal-Rieda, the northern part of Antrim; Tir Eogain and Tirconnaill, now Tyrowen, Derry, and Donegal ; and Fermanagh.†

The aspect of the country is bold and picturesque. Filled with fertile and extensive plains and exquisite "glynnes," it possesses still nobler features in the majestic mountains of Down, where Slieve Donnard raises his lofty head three thousand feet above the sea. Through Antrim, Tyrowen, Coleraine, Tyrconnell, and Fermanagh, the eye rests every where upon these great children of Nature,-in Cavan the lofty Cuilcagh, the cradle of the Shannon, from which it pours its wealth of waters through eleven counties, towers in pride above the ancient territories of the O'Reillys. But of a still more exquisite beauty are those small, conical hills, covered with the teeming evidences of fertility, with their green uplands and finely cultivated slopes, skirted with overhanging woods, that have as yet escaped the axe. The folly of superstition, which imposed on the credulity of such writers as the priest Cambrensis, has

Sir John Temple's History of the Rebellion, p. 6, 7th ed.

†There is a very valuable note of Mr. O'Donovan on Charter of Newry.-Dublin Penny Journal, vol. i., p. 102.

this subject, in a paper of his, treating of the

**

peopled these vales and glynnes and romantic hills with fountains of wonder-working power;' but the only marvels to be witnessed there, are the miracles of beauty which Nature's kindly hand is ever working.

Scattered over the face of Ulster are Lakes or Loughs, some possessing the magnitude of inland seas, and others much smaller, but deep and well stored with fish-" so that they are not only delightful, especially such as are situated in some dale or valley, or environed round about by pleasant little hills (as it falleth out in the most of them), but also commodious and profitable, affording good opportunity of building houses and castles on their borders, which was done in many places by the English and the Scotch, who had made several fair plantations, and would have done more if it had not been' hindered by that horrible rebellion of the bloody Irish; in the beginning of which many of them were destroyed by these barbarians." These diminutive lakes were dotted with islands, which are both "commodious and pleasant." In the isles of the larger lakes, such as Lough Erne and the Lake of Feval, we are told by Boate, were often

See Boate's Natural Philosophy of Ireland, chap. vii., section iii., on the fabulous fountains of Giraldus Cambrensis. It appears that Barry (who was a Welsh-man, and therefore, with the affectation of many mid. dling scholars, called himself Cambrensis) says that there was one Ulster fountain in which the fortunate man who dipped himself would never become grey. Barry had enormous powers of belief, and attributed the same qualification to others.

+Natural Philosophy of Ireland," chap. 9, sec. 1.

times to be found the dwellings of the Planters. Such of the islands as were not inhabited were without woodland, but being in general covered with sweet grass they were turned into pasture for all kinds of cattle.

Boate gives a pleasing picture of the studious and contemplative life of those who dwelt in the sweet sylvan solitudes of the lakes, where they passed their time in much contentment, finding there not only privacy and quiet with opportunity for study and contemplation, "but besides great delightfulness in the place, with a variety of very sweet pastimes in fowling, fishing, planting, and gardening." Certainly it was not without true Scotch foresight that these apostles of civility adopted the Ulster mission. In one of the large isles of Lough Erne, Sir Henry Spottiswood, had a fine seat, surrounded, after the most approved Planter-fashion with frowning battlements and bawns, that would have won approving smiles from Pynnar; orchards bending under the white weight of their blossoms; gardens rich in every child of Flora; and a picturesque village with its church and steeple (and doubtless an incumbent with his due proportion and his glebe lands) which comfortable establishment, "whether it is in being yet or destroyed by the barbarian and bloody rebels I am not informed."* Possibly the barbarian bloody rebels may have cast some looks

* Boate, chap. 9, p. 43. This Boate can never look at a scene in nature, let it be the most charming or sublime, without examining its conveniences for a Plantation. His taste in landscape is the taste of a Scotch Planter, it is quite brigandesque.

upon their old pleasure grounds in the loughs, greatly to the disconcerting of Sir Henry. The dreams of Spenser were disturbed after some such fashion in the palace of Desmond, on the banks of the Mulla.

Lough Erne is filled with islands, the most remarkable of which, though not for natural beauty, is Devenish. It contains the ruins of an ancient Priory of the date of 1449, which, however, could not have for any great length of time escaped the marauding barbarism of the day; for Sir John Davies, in his letter to Salisbury (1606) says that the Lord Deputy, during his Northern circuit, held his sessions in the Isle of Devenish, in the ruins of an old abbey there.* But though Lough Erne has more picturesque beauty, Lough Neagh is a lake of greater size and greater importance. It waters five of the counties, three of them being escheated lands, Tyrowen, Armagh, and Derry. The waters of this great inland sea are swelled by six river tributaries and numberless brooks. It was said to possess healing and petrifying powers, and Stuart mentions that a lough near Armagh, which had been drained by Mr. Maxwell at Eanachbuidhe (afterwards called Rosebrook,) possessed the latter quality

Sir John Davies's "Letter to Lord Salisbury," p. 242. Harris repeats some dull fables, about the origin of this lake. Harris's Down, p. 157. He says that the ancient historians of Ireland assert, that at the time of the arrival of Partholanus, which with wonderful accuracy they have decided upon as having occurred in the 1969th year of the world, there were but three lakes and ten rivers of any consequence in Ulster.

K