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| BALLYSHANNON, COUNTY DONEGAL. -The historic town of Ballyshannon lies on the river Erne, which flows between Donegal and Fermanagh. In Gaelic it is called Belatha-Seanaigh - the Mouth of Seanach's Ford. The inhabitants call it, in general, Ballyshanny, and Professor Joyce claims that the "on," tacked to it in place of the "y," is a comparatively modern innovation. In Elizabethan days, it was the scene of frequent bloody conflicts between Red Hugh O'Donnell and Sir Conyers Clifford, in which the latter finally got worsted. The sketch shows the celebrated fall, called "the Salmon Leap," on the Erne river, which has a width of nearly 500 feet, and, at high water, a fall of more than twenty. This fall is over perpendicular cliffs and the body of the stream below the cataract, unbroken by rocks, is clear, deep and extraordinarily rapid. Tradition says that the gallant Hugh Roe O'Donnell once swam this dangerous current to attack the English garrison. The event is thus commemorated in the allegorical poem, "Dark Rosaleen" (Ireland) by James Clarence Mangan: Over hills and through dales have I roamed for your sake, All yesterday I sailed with sails on river and on lake! The Erne, at its highest flood, I dashed across unseen, For there was lightning in my blood, my Dark Rosaleen! Red lightning lightened through my blood, my Dark Rosaleen! |
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