"The dew drops slowly; the dreams gather; unknown spears Suddenly hurtle before my dream-awakened eyes; And then the clash of fallen horsemen, and the cries Of unknown perishing armies beat about my ears. We, who are labouring by the cromlech on the shore, The gray cairn on the hill, when day sinks drowned in dew, Being weary of the world's empires, bow down to you, Master of the still stars, and of the flaming door."
Sligo itself, with its ten thousand souls and its important and matter-of-fact seafaring trades, is a centre for journeying afoot or awheel amid many charming scenes of lough and lake and sea and shore.
Southward is Carrick on Shannon, the gateway to the Shannon's lakes and rivers; northward is the Bay of Donegal, backed by its famous rugged "Highlands;" and, eastward, is Lough Erne, which, with its upper and lower lakes and the river Erne trickling minutely southward, is quite the rival of the long-drawn-out Shannon, or would be if the tide of popular fancy ever turned that way. Enniskillen is the metropolis of Lough Erne. Locally it is known as the Island City by reason of its being apparently surrounded by the all-enfolding waters of the upper and lower lakes. Its fame lies principally in its entrancing situation, and the memory of its various regiments of Enniskillen Dragoons who have fought and won gloriously in many of England's "little wars," and big ones, too, for that matter. The colours borne by the two Enniskillen regiments at Waterloo are still preserved in the parish church.
Until the days of James I., Enniskillen was no more than a stronghold of the Maguires, but it then gained much prominence through the eventful part it played in the domestic struggles and troubles of the latter half of the seventeenth century. Of the old castle, which has braved so many fights, only a small portion remains, and is incorporated in the modern military barracks, which, in one way, indicate the importance of Enniskillen.
"The Falls of Erne," at Ballyshannon, where the river joins its estuary with its rapid, tumbling torrent falling over a thirty-foot wall of rock, indicate in no unmistakable manner the volume of water which flows from source to sea. At Ballyshannon, which has more than a local renown among disciples of Izaak Walton, is the famous "salmon leap" which, at certain seasons, provides a display of the wonderful acrobatic ability of this gamy fish. But a short three miles from Ballyshannon is Belleek, with its famous china factories which produce a peculiarly lustrous egg-shell ware much admired for its simplicity and crudeness of form, but very transparent and light. Here, too, are another series of rapids,