For You to Know

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 249, 17 July 1937, Page 9 (Supplement)

For You to Know

A Column of General Knowledge On Top of Ulster. p'OR people who like climbing, there is a wonderful place in County Ulster. Ireland. This is the Motirne Range, which covers an area of twenty miles by twelve and encloses thirty or more peaks, nearly half of which have a height of over two thousand feet. Slieve Domini, which is 2796 ft. high and the monarch of the peaks, is more wearying than difficult to climb; but several of the others, especially Slieve Bernagh, require a good deal of careful climbing, and people going up have to wear ropes to prevent them from falling down the steep sides. There is a thrill in the very names of the cliffs on Slieve Vanna: the Eagle Rocks, the leaning face of Beu Crum, the castles of Bignion, and the steep sides of Lamagan the uuclimbaiilc. There its only one road that runs di rectlv through the range. Starting at Kilkeel, it rises 1400 feet in eight miles to the lonely stretches of the Deer’s Meadow. It crosses the 1300 feet contour near the source of the- River.Bqtm. within half a mile of which the river flows under two bridge’. hi all the length of this road through the mountains there is nut tr single house. It is a lonely region, with little blue mountain lochs, deep long valleys, and high blue peaks, ringed with clouds. Ths Tailteann Games. "WHEN the Irish are good they are ’’ very, very good”—but when it comes to games and open-air organisations they are r.ot merely good; they are superb. They have had long experience of this sort of organising. In the year 632 8.C., five hundred years before the Olympic games were founded in Greece, Ireland instituted an all-sports festival at Teltown, Co. Meath. This event was repeated with scarcely it break for more than 1800 years, only ceasing with the arrival of the Anglo-Normans at the end of the twelfth century. During the fortnight of festival, on the plain or’ Teltown, which gave a name to the ancient Games, quarrels, were suspended and there was sanctuary for everyone throughout the country. It was an Irish “Truce of God” long before the Christian era had begun. For the next Games, to be held from July IS to August 1 of this year, a great gathering is expected of Irish people from Great Britain and overseas. Moreover, since 1937 has beer, one of the greatest visiting years ever in Great Britain, in connection with the Coronations events, many thousands of these visitors will cross the Irish Sea to be present at the revival of the world's most ancient games