NEWTOWNMANOR
CHURCH NEWS
Liturgy Times for St Patrick’s Church, Dromahair: No Mass on Mondays; Tuesday at 8 p.m.; Wednesday at 9.30 a.m.; Thursday at 8 p.m.; Friday at 8 p.m.; Saturday (Vigil) Mass at 8 p.m.; Sunday at 11.15 a.m. To access the webcam please type the following into your search engine. churchtv.ie then click on County Leitrim icon, and then click on the Dromahair icon, then click play.
O’ROURKE’S TABLE NOTES
According to local Sligo historian, Padraic Feehily, O’Rourke’s Table became popular with picnickers and sightseers in the 1920s/1930s through the writings of William Bulfin in his book, ‘Rambles in Eirinn’ (1907) and Tadgh Kilgannon’s, ‘Sligo and its Surroundings:
A descriptive and pictorial guide to the history, scenery, antiquities, and places of interest in and around Sligo’ (1926). Apparently, a stone table existed, atop O’Rourke’s Table, where it is reputed that Chieftain O’Rourke held his feasts; a poet penned the lines: ’O’ Rourke’s noble feast shall ne’er be forgot, By those who were there and those who were not.’
According to the late Peter Feehily, whose land was adjacent to O’Rourke’s Table, the stone table was broken sometime around 1940 in mysterious circumstances, though some small portion of it may yet exist. Kilgannon records: ‘At a little distance from the table is another and higher elevation known as O’Rourke’s Chair, doubtless some chair of state, if not the inauguration chair.’
As we know, Thomas Moore made famous the area in his beautiful melody, ‘The valley lay smiling before me.’
One hundred metres from O’Rourke’s Table is situated the underground caverns known as ‘Póll-a ding-dong’. This natural rock formation was explored and photographed by the Irish Antiquarian Society in the early 1950s, concludes the Sligo historian.
CORRESPONDENCE
If anyone has any community news/information/items of interest that they would like to include in the Newtownmanor Notes please contact Séamus on seamus.storey@live.co.uk or call 087 3361561 or 071 9164958 before 5 p.m. on Thursdays.