"A mere rock"

"A mere rock"

Lough Derg--Pilgrimage--Magazine--Narrative

An account of Lough Derg from a late-nineteenth-century pilgrim.

Matthew Russell, 1834-1912

'Lough Derg: By a Recent Pilgrim', The Irish Monthly: A Magazine of General Literature Sixth Yearly Volume, p.23

M.H. Gill & Son, Dublin

1878

Sponsored and digitised by Google, Princeton University Library

Public domain

Article

English

Magazine Article

DD_0434

54.626894, -7.924317

https://archive.org/details/irishmonthlyvol01unkngoog/page/n5

"There is no grandeur in the surrounding scenery ; everywhere is the same wilderness of heather, the same dreary moorland hills — no variety in their outline, no steep cliff or bold escarpment to vary the scene, not even a single patch of green to relieve the eye, except in one comer where there is a small, paralysed plantation of stunted Scotch firs. Not a living thing was to be seen — neither man nor beast nor game on the mountains, nor bird on the lake. I was, however, told afterwards that hares and moor-fowl do contrive to live there, and a certain kind of small, mountain sheep with long horns and black faces, a leg of whose mutton a hungry man might easily dispose of at a single meal. So much for fauna. There was no flora except moss and heather. In fact, nature here clothes herself in sackcloth and ashes ; the very aspect of the place induces solemn thought, and makes it meetest shrine for penance. It seemed to me, too, that the bare, whitewashed houses on the 'Station Island' were utterly out of tone with nature's wild surroundings. Seeing no person to apply to, and unwilling to return with my task unaccomplished, I resolved to try and reach the island myself in a boat which I found on the shore. I had nearly succeeded, when the freshening breeze compelled me to desist, and I was very glad to find rest and shelter under the lea of a kind of insular promontory, connected with the shore by a narrow ford, where, fortunately, I was discovered by the owners of the boat, who rowed me up to the island in the teeth of a very stiff wind."

Article