1936 On the Continent

with its jolly pigs and hens and plants, and all the common currency of the countryside upon it. The country people in Ireland love their new money and so will you—the designs are one of the touches of real genius in New Ireland.
    But enough of generalities. I must give you some idea whereabouts to find your own particular interests.
Belfast Makes Fine Linen
    If you go to the north of Ireland you must see the great linen industry of Belfast for its interest, and drive around the famous Antrim coast road, and explore the glens of Antrim. For sheer grandeur go to Fingal’s Cave and the Giants’ Causeway. The music (Fingal’s Cave, Overture of Mendelssohn) can give you more idea than any words of the swelling organ notes of the sea below the great rocks. Music seems caught into the souls of the Londonderry people, and for the one well-known air that carries the name, there are a dozen songs to be learnt from workers in the fields and on the sea.
    Loch Neagh boasts one of the earliest stories of a lake locked sea monster, as in the eleventh century one was “caught in this lake, so large, that it could neither be dragged out, nor conveyed whole, and therefore was carried through the province cut in pieces.” Anglers please note.
    Donegal tweed is known all over the world and is as fine and strong as the land it comes from.
    The tourist offices for the North of Ireland will do all they can to help you plan a tour of Ulster, and the frontier can be crossed at several convenient places.
    For the Free State, Dublin is the national port, and some time is well spent in exploring the city.
Visit Trinity College First
    Trinity College library has some of the greatest treasures in Europe, including the incomparable Book of Kells. This is turned a page a day and the colours are as fresh and bright as when it left the hand of the artist. A description that fits this MS., and written in the fifth century, describes miraculous origin to the work, the artist being daily instructed in his craft by a visitant angel. The angel furnished the designs, St. Brigit prayed, and the scribe copied. For the unlettered Irish peasantry, seeing the colours on a bird’s wing, the delicate interlacing of fern fronds, and the sweep and ordered plaiting of the frail seaweeds, knew them to be the handicraft of God, so
reasoned that
so such fine and beautiful work must also be dependent upon divine instruction. (As indeed it is.)
    There are many other treasures, such as harps and cups of gold and jewelled bells, valuable in themselves, and even more valuable in giving the visitor a clue to follow on his later exploration. Trinity College library is a great treasure house.
Around Dublin
    Outside Dublin, for those not wishing to stay actually in the city, I can recommend Howth, or Skerries.
    There is a good golf course at Howth and a small island worth a visit. Skerries has an excellent bathing beach and a very good hotel. There is capital rough fishing at Rush, and the old church at Lusk is well worth a visit, if only for the complacent epitaph in the churchyard and the splendid view from the tower.
    Tara Hill is of more interest to antiquarians. South of Dublin the playground extends to Glendalough, a well-known holiday resort in the Wicklow hills. St. Keiwin presides (with St. Patrick) over Glendalough: one of his kindly acts was to produce apples from a willow tree for a sick schoolboy. St. Keiwin is represented throughout Ireland with a blackbird, because one day when he wasat prayer with his hands raised to Heaven, a blackbird nested in the palm and the saint, in gentleness, let her brood there.
    Leaving Dublin and turning inland one crosses the great central plains of Ireland.
    For fishermen the entire length of the Shannon awaits them, down to the great salmon weir at the mouth—the headquarters of the new Shannon Scheme.
The Centre of Ireland
    Some people consider the centre of Ireland dull. It has not the grandeur of the north, nor the wild lure of the west, but the green farmlands and deep green lanes, the wide lakes, and small sleepy townships have a charm of their own, and for campers and caravanners I would not wish more comfortable ground. The quantity of cream, butter, eggs, and home-made bread and bacon and sausages that one consumes in that district is something astonishing, and there is plenty of good lake bathing.
The Grey Stone Crosses of Clonmachnois
    Certainly Clonmachnois should be visited, for its beautiful Celtic crosses,