from a high cliff into the sea and swam to safety from the pursuing gauger::;. There 1\vere stO'rie~ uf the resi::>t•ance of ~'ather MacFaddea on behalf of the people threatened with eviction in stony Gweedore, and of the sullen men, as hard as their own rocks, circling around the police in the deep hollow at Derrybeg church. There was a1bove all the story of the shooting of Lord Leitrim in Cratloe wood; of the tailor who escaped· from prisonin a coffin, they said-and re...apPeared •afterwards as a bushranger in Australia; of my father's father straightening up from digging in his garden to listen to the news of my Lord'·s murder to:d to him over foe garden wall by a ragged barefooted ,boy. He was the first man in that village to hear the n~ws. Later on Donegal came out of the shadows, ceased to be something out of any olo mythology or a story told by the fire. There were, fi~st of all, those ohldhood excursions to Bundoran, and two hours on a crow~d excu!"sior.. tr;ain could give concrete reality to .a sprite from an Arabian tale. And then on Bundoran's long street or on the strand or on the cliff-walks there was the fact--confusing to a young mind-that one kept encountering faces from one's own Ulster town, familiar faces even if they were more than usually laughing and happy, more than normally bronzed by the advertised \bracing breezes. The confusing and puzzling thing was that si!llce Bundora.n was in Donegal, and Donegal was part of one's own private mythology then how could people !from the familiar :prosaic town find their way there. The knowledge that other people were allowed into Don€gal was one of the first painful processes of growing up. But better still than the crowded trains to Bundoran were motor journeys to Crees]ough and Carrigart : the finality of the big bridge between Lifford and Strabane, the thatched roof of Rossgier Inn, the first blue view of the Swilly and Letterkenny on the slope beyond, the cathedral and the " steep ·streets of Letterk~nny itself, the slow hill climb and then once over the ridge th~ mountainy countryt Ba:-nes Gap, and names that were musical then and are ·still music in my ears, or in any ears sensitive to the music that men out into the names of loved and lovely places: Kilmacrenan, Dunfanaghy, Doe Castle, and Creeslcug:h, where the exile song (well-sung for American ears by James MacGettigan from Carrig.art) remembered the 1nen reaping the corn on the small fields about the circle of srnan, bright lakes. ·Bevond that country the grent bulk of Horn I-lend lay out over the se~. Tihe roar of the sea through the arich of Ma.cSwine's Gun hnd 1been part of my father's legends. And heyond Horn Head was the land that a few years was to reveal to me a·s the most wonderful part of Donegal with all due respect to such separate worlds as Doochary, Glengesh, Inishowen, Gweebara, and that spot in the central mountainR where· the castle hangs over the lake like an image fr:)m a Gothic dream. For beyond Horn Head w~re Falcarragh, 337.
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