You can touch the indistinct
intersection of myth and
ARCHAEOLOGYat Emain Macha
DRAWING THE LINE
From top: mural in homage to Irish republican
women by Danny Devenney and Marty Lyons
in the Bogside neighbourhood of Derry,
Northern Ireland; the border on the road to
Clones in Clonagore, Republic of Irelandthe arrival of Christianity. Macha gave her name to Armagh,
towards which all eyes in Ireland turned when it was the capital
of Ulster, last redoubt of the Gael until Hugh O’Neill fell to the
forces of Elizabeth I and the Protestant Plantation was set in
motion. Saint Patrick established his most important church
here. Brian Boru, last high king of Ireland, is said to be buried
in its walls. It remains the island’s ecclesiastical capital for
high church Protestants and Catholics.
I headed west, crossing the boundaries of Monaghan,
Armagh and Cavan so frequently it seemed I was suturing
closed the porous border, the satellite navigator calling out
her warnings. The Clones (Monaghan) – Cavan train used to
cross the border six times in eight miles, with a customs check
each time. There were yapping dogs, old men in suits driving
tractors, red-cheeked girls with ice cream cones, Gaelic games
grounds, Presbyterian chapels, I.R.A. memorials, reworks
huts, oak forests and barley ields, then soft warm rain
followed by dappled light among the trees.
I got into Enniskillen on a Sunday morning. Churches of
dierent stripes were letting out. Caps were ecumenically
tipped, heads nodded. I passed the constituency oces of
D.U.P. leader Arlene Foster and Sinn Féin’s Jemma Dolan and
went on to the war memorial where the Remembrance Day
I.R.A. bomb went o, the Sisters of Mercy to one side and the
Clinton peace centre on the other.Out on the road to Belleek, where the pottery is made,
lies the Lough Erne Resort. Former U.K. Prime Minister
David Cameron hosted a G8 summit here. The renowned
Noel McMeel, a former step dancer from Toomebridge,
cooked for Putin, Obama and the others, and now for me.
After lunch—hake and fresh red berries—and a chat about
his garden and his bees, he volunteered to drive me to Monea
Castle, touchingly delicate and alone in the mist, and then on
to Magho Point in the Lough Navar Forest, where you can see
the Sperrin Mountains to the north and the Blue Stacks and
Donegal Bay to the west. It’s one of the most breathtaking
spectacles I’ve seen in this country, which has many.
I dropped down into Leitrim and shaded the border past
Sligo and Drumclie, where the poet Yeats is buried. Just
above Ballyshannon, the Republic cinctures in like a cruelly
corseted waist between Fermanagh and the sea, and then
opens grandly into the wild beauties of Donegal.
Derry was at the end of my road. It stands with Prague,
Paris and Selma, Alabama in the annals of protest. Protestants
with just a third of the population ruled over Catholics with a
tone that mixed triumphalism with paranoia, denying votes,
jobs and homes, and constructing imperial monumentsGREEN AS GRASS
Left: the border
between County
Derry, Northern
Ireland and County
Donegal, Republic
of Ireland is marked
by a hedgerow.
Right: farmer John
Sheridan with his
Land Rover and dog
Pip in Cuilcagh
Mountain Park,
County Fermanagh,
Northern IrelandNOVEMBER 2019 VANITY FAIR 6311-19-Travel-Irish-Border.indd 63 24/09/2019 09:56