Fairytale ANTRIMof
A Wee delight: The Lurigethan Mountain and, below, Carice van Houten as Melisandre in Game of Thrones; and Cushendun Caves. Right, a bottle of Bushmills
AS THE cultural critic and historian Jonathan Meades put it, we human beings are a strange species. He based this on a very strange ethos. If you were to say that you believe in God, you’ll be allowed to run a country. In fact, you’ll probably need to say that to run the most powerful country in the world. Another of the most powerful jobs out there, being Pope, also requires you to say you believe in God. But say you believe in fairies, and they’ll cart you to the asylum.
An exception is possibly an area of Co Antrim where the ‘Wee People’, or ‘Wee Folk’, still hold sway. Note they are always ‘Wee’ things in this neck of the woods, never ‘leprechauns’. The belief in an ‘othlarge erworld’ is still quite strong.
The very distinctive outcrop that is known as Lurigethan Mountain, is one of the main settlements of the Wee community in the area.
The fairylike creatures are, according to legend, not necessarily beneficent figures. BBC Northern Ireland has an early photograph of small Antrim boys, possibly as late as the 20th century, dressed in petticoats to look like girls while travelling through this area — the fairies were famous for capturing boys and taking them to the bog.
Because of the ancient Gaelic influences in Antrim, both native Irish and Hebridean Scots Gaelic, this part known as the Glens has a large store of legends and folklore. The sheer majesty and mystery of the landscape has helped — steep-sided valleys, surreal rock shapes, swirling mountain mists and blanket bogs all contribute to a rich store of magic mythology.
Nearby, Cushendun is an exceptionally picturesque seaside village. Just outside is a small ivy-covered ruin called Castle Carra. In the 16th century it was the scene of the climax of a quarrel between the two main Gaelic clans in Ulster, the O’Neills and the MacDonnells. Shane O’Neill, also known as Shane (or
Sean) the Proud, claimed sovereignty over Ulster. However Queen Elizabeth I was having none of it. She sided with the O’Donnells. So the O’Donnells invited Shane to Castle Carra, threw a banquet for him and, in a grave breach of postprandial etiquette, killed him. They then sent his head to the Queen’s Deputy in Dublin.
It’s a scene that could belong to Game Of Thrones, which is coincidental as the Cushendun Caves feature in the HBO series. This is where Davos Seaworth, the Onion Knight and Lady Melisandre landed ashore, and later where Melisandre gave birth to a terrifying shadow baby. So the
Wee People will have been watching this malarkey with some interest.
Cushendun and Cushendall are charming seaside towns, and renowned for traditional music seisúns, which are going full throttle most nights of the week.
The Causeway Coastal Route is also bordered by the Garron Plateau, an extensive area of mountain blanket bog — one of the largest in Ireland — made up of marshes, running water, fens and bogland. The area is flower-rich with many species from bog orchids to heather, as well as a range of sphagnum moss. But it can also look quite menacing when the mist from the sea begins to swirl about.
The bog is also home to a breeding population of red grouse, with a few pairs of golden plover and dunlin.
The water in the streams that eventually run down the glens from the plateau are brown with the colour of the peat.
The make-up of this water is important — and has been for the last 400 years or so, probably longer. Bushmills, at the northwesterly edge of the bog, is the oldest licensed distillery in the world. They’ve been legally manufacturing the cratur since 1608. One of the most important ingredients of whiskey, some would say a critical ingredient, is the water. It needs to be plentiful and preferably soft — and there is a theory that peaty water is the optimum flavour. Bushmills Distillery uses water drawn from Saint Columb’s Rill, a tributary of the River Bush. The rill rises in the bogland that rises in bogland some 8km southeast of the village of Bushmills. For a weekend (or longer break) that includes stunning scenery, bracing walks, a slew of pubs that host some of the best traditional music in Ireland, and the chance to spot a rare red grouse or an even rarer member of the Wee Folk community, you’ll scarcely do better than this corner of Co Antrim.