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| DERRYCUNIGHY COTTAGE, KILLARNEY. -Derrycunighy cascade is one of the favorite "show places" in the Killarney region, and the pretty cottage in the sketch stands in its neighborhood, not far from Galway's bridge, so called because the Galway and Ullauns rivulets unite near that point, and in their rapid descent to the Upper Lake, form the picturesque falls whose music is never silent amid those enchanting mountains. Tradition, that inevitable adjunct to ancient and romantic history, says that the cascade obtained its name from a famous athlete of the olden time who leaped across the river and left his huge foot prints in the rock where he "landed." At least marks that bear a pecular resemblance to the footsteps of man are pointed out on the banks of the stream. Such marks, however, are common enough throughout Ireland, and are explained by geologists in a natural way. But the peasantry persist in believing that they are of supernatural origin, and thus we have "leaps" and "punch bowls" and "chairs" and "beds," marked in, or hewn out of the rocks in every one of the four provinces and in almost every one of the two and thirty countries of the Green Isle. They are harmless and interesting traditions, and constitute much of the folk lore that still makes distinctive the Irish people. |
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