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Tag - Donegal

The Mysterious Tau Cross on Tory Island

Tory Island, located off the northwest coast of County Donegal, Ireland, is home to a unique and mysterious symbol carved into the rugged landscape: the Tau Cross. The origins of the cross are uncertain, but it is believed to date back to the early Christian period, possibly as early as the 7th century. The cross takes its name from the Greek letter...

How Tyrone and Tirconaill (Donegal) got their names.

Tir Eoghan the province of Owen was once a great principality, which stretched its frontier from the west of Lough Erne across Lough Neagh to the shores of the Channel by Belfast. In the days when Irelandhad a fate of her own Tyrone was the country of the O’Neill. Centuries after Strongbow centuries after the Norman invaders had become “more Irish than...

The murder of Lord Leitrim

The third Earl of Leitrim had served in the army, rising to be a colonel, before he succeeded his father in the title. He was a man by no means wholly bad and possessed qualities which might, under happier circumstances, have made him famous absolute courage and a perfectly indomitablc will. Nothing could be less like the careless, absentee landlord who has been the...

A look at Ballyshannon in the 1800s

From A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland, by Samuel Lewis (1837) BALLYSHANNON, a sea-port, market, and posttown (formerly a parliamentary borough), partly in the parish of INNISMACSAINT, but chiefly in that of KILBARRON, barony of TYRHUGH, county of DONEGAL, and province of ULSTER, 35 miles (S. W.) from Lifford, and 102 miles (N. W.) from Dublin; containing...

Rathmullan

Rathmullan, Co. Donegal

Rathmullan is a small, picturesque seaside village on the western shores of Lough Swilly in Co. Donegal. In 1607 the Flight of the Earls took place just outside the village in a place called Carolina Bay. This marked the end of the Gaelic chieftain rule in Ireland, a major point in Irish history. Some other points of interest in the village are: The ruins of a...

Fanad Lighthouse, Donegal

Fanad Lighthouse dates back to 1812 when a lighthouse was proposed for the mouth of Lough Swilly following the terrible shipwreck of HMS Saldanha. George Halpin, a civil engineer, was tasked with the design of the lighthouse and it was first lit in March 1817. The optic of the lighthouse was originally lit using nine sperm oil wick lamps and parabolic reflectors...