“ROARING MEG”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25134, 27 January 1943, Page 2

“ROARING MEG”

ORIGIN OF THE NAME In our correspondence' columns a number of letters have recently appeared in which the writers have given various reasons why~a certain mountain torrent, whose turbulent waters are discharged into the Kawaurau River some miles above Cromwell, was given the name “Roaring Meg,” and who was responsible for so naming it. Mr R. T. Stewart, who is a student of the history of Central Otago, states that the name Roaring Meg originated in Ireland. Mr Stewart writes: Old cannon still rear their black noses above the “ Splendid walls of Derry,” and among them is one which was presented by the Fishmongers’ Guild of London at the time of the “Ulster plantation.” It made a great noise when fired and was named “Roaring Meg.” In the cosmopolitan crowds which comprised the “ Rush ” to the Dunstan, and to Hartley and Riley’s Beach, near Cromwell, in the sixties, there were many sons of the Emerald Isle, some from the town of Londonderry itself, and among them was one, perhaps, who heard in the noises of the rushing, tumbling waters of the. stream something which reminded him of home and the old fishmongers’ cannon on the seaward wall at Derry. There is also a Roaring Meg on the west coast of the South Island.