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The Northern Iron By: George A. Birmingham (1865-1950) |
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By George A. Birmingham Dublin: Maunsel & Co., Limited 1907
TO FRANCIS JOSEPH BIGGER, ARDRIGH, BELFAST. My Dear Bigger, This story, as you have already guessed, is the fruit of a recent
holiday spent in County Antrim. The writing of it has been a great
pleasure, for almost every place mentioned in it recalls the goodness of
the friends who received me and made my holiday a happy one. I think of
kind people when I write of Dunseveric and Ballintoy of hours spent in
their company among the Runkerry cliffs, the sandhills, the Skerries,
and of the morning on which I swam, like Neal and Una, into the Rock
Pigeons' Cave, I remember a time full of interest and delight spent
with you when I mention Donegore, Antrim, and Temple Patrick. My mind
dwells on an older, a very dear friend and relative, when I tell of
Neal's visit to Belfast. And the book is more than the recollection of a
summer holiday. I go back in it to my own country to places familiar
to me in boyhood as the mountains and bays of Mayo are now; to days very
long ago, when I caught cuddings and lithe off the Black Rock or Rackle
Roy and learned to swim in the Blue Pool at Port Ballintrae. Yet I know
that I could not, for all that I remembered of my boyhood or learned
during my holiday, have written this story without your help. You told
me what I wanted to know, you corrected, patiently, my manuscript, and
you have helped me to enter into the spirit of the time. For all this
I owe you many thanks, and if I have succeeded in writing a story which
interests my readers they, too, will owe you thanks. I have tried to be faithful to the facts of history and to represent
the thoughts and feelings of the men who took part in the "Out, unhappy far off things
And battles long ago," of which I chose to write. Most of my characters are purely imaginary.
Of the men who really lived and acted in 1798 only one James
Hope appears prominently in my story. In his case I have taken pains
to understand what manner of man he was before I wrote of him, and I
believe that, feeble though my presentation of his character may be, you
will not find it actually untruthful. I am your friend, GEORGE A. BIRMINGHAM.
THE NORTHERN IRON
CHAPTER I The road which connects Portrush with Ballycastle skirts, so far as any
road can and dare, the sea coast. Sometimes it is driven inland a mile
or so by the impossibility of crossing tracts of sandhills. The mounds
and hollows of these dunes are for ever shifting and changing. The
loose sand is blown into new fantastic heights and valleys by the winter
gales. No road could be built on such insecure foundation. Elsewhere the
road shrinks back among the shelterless fields for fear of mighty cliffs
by which this northern Antrim coast is defended from the Atlantic. No
engineer in the eighteenth century, when the road was made, dared
lay his metal close to the Causeway cliffs or the awful precipice
of Pleaskin Head. Still, now and then, in places where there are no
sandhills and the cliffs are not appalling, the road ventures, for a
mile or two, to run within a few hundred yards of the sea, before it is
swept, like a cord bent by the wind, further inland. Thus, after passing
the ruins of Dunseveric Castle, the traveller sees close beneath him
the white limestone rocks and broad yellow stretch of Ballintoy Strand.
Here, when northerly gales are blowing, he may, if he is not swept off
his feet, cling desperately to his garments and watch the great waves
curl their feathered crests as they rush shorewards. He may listen,
awestruck, to the ocean's roar of amazement when it batters in vain the
hard north coast, the rocks and sand which defy even the strength of the
Atlantic. A quarter of a mile back from this piece of road there stood, in 1798,
the meeting house of the Presbyterians and their minister's manse.
The house stands on the site of a bare, shelterless hill. It is three
storeys high a narrow, gaunt building, grey walled, black slated... Continue reading book >>
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Historical Fiction |
History |
Literature |
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