MEMORIES OF THE TWIN TOWNS (:BY DR. SARSFIELD KERRIGAN). "Ballemafey for drinkin tay, Stranorl,ar for drinkin' b:nandy, Killygordon is a nice rwee town, and Castlefin's a dandy.'' · MY lecture stiarts 1with this strange jingle of doggerel, and my ,excuse is that those that don't know it .or haven't heard of i~, don't belong to either of the two towns. It doesn't make se.nse, _if yiou like, any more than a child's nursery rhyme, but it was a people's simple, crude 1v.1ay of distinguishing their home tiowns long before Civic Weeks 1were 1he1ar'.d of. There is a bit :of history in it too. For br-andy, which we know better in Ireland as its cousin, whiskey, literally, the water of life, ~eing a ·fermented drink, iis 1as old as 1ci vilisa tio!l ; while tea in this part of the country is not more than over a 1hundred years in common use. And though their names first appear in written record as far back as 1548, in a sort of portmanteau word, Strathbofey, Stranorlar is, a,s I shall show, by far the older town. The , fact that there are two different villages separated by a bridge ~as often struck strangers. To an Englishman, who once made this co)mment, my old friend George Magee told me that my father, an intelligent man whose name is yet well remembered here, answered 1with a slight shrug, "Sir, the Finn is the Rhine." It was, if you like, an exaggeration ; moSit epigrams are not too ex!act, but there 1was a 11ot of truth in it. Villages and towns bear a definit~ relrationship 1with the ·country )surrounding them, and it was almost in~vit:able that Stranorlar, being on the fringe of the rich vallE.y of the Finn, would be chosen as a frontier p:ost in the Plantation and be 1gr1anted to Henry Clare in 1610 ; a few years later it passed to 1Peter Benson with 1,500 acres .of the best land around ; on the usual condition that he would build a fortified bawn of stone and lirme, settle it with 21. families, all BriHsh, who \Would take the Oath of Supremacy, and form a rgarrison to defend it from the natives. · Thus Stranorlar started as a village of 10 houses with no~ an Irish familiy. in it. Ballybofey, at that time, did not exist; as such ; in 1arny case the Hinterlands stretching back to Barnes clid not attract 1the planter. Stranorlar was a garrison town. when Luncly's nrmy from Dcrriy. trying to effeC't 1a junction with 1.he Enniskillen forec·s in AprH, 1G8fl, was heat.en b:ick at Clndyf.ord. and met the Western 'Villiamite forces under Lord Kingston ut 809
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