"On every side of the island lay the watery fields, winding themselves into inlets and across bays. Great sheets of water, unbroken save by a group of smaller islands that rode like ships that had run to seed and blossom in tropical seas, with the…
"No record was kept of all the years that passed after the coming of the Danesmen till the Archbishop of Armagh sent a band of canons regular of the rule of Augustine..."
"One soft autumn noon, the lough lay in a haze of golden mist. Behind the eastern clouds the sun puffed out some streaks of red, angry and livid in their broken setting, but softened and mellow ere they reached the hillsides of Ireland or rested on…
"Year by year the Gaelic heart turns thither, as the magnet to the north, and pilgrims come across the division of the seas. The sighs of dead generations are heavy in the air, and the very stones are steeped with their prayers..."
"It is a long passage of time since the men of Ireland first felt the mystery of those quiet little hills and looked for the unseen in the waters that lie at their feet, for the spiritual history of Derg stretches back into the dimmest age of…
