A magical moment when reality and legend intertwined at a mysterious lake

● I eventually learned what happened to the lake that was said to be populated by a herd of water horses

Working as a security correspondent during the Troubles was a harrowing experience, with shootings and bombings an almost daily occurrence. So our family holiday in Cong, Co Mayo, where the The Quiet Man was filmed, was always a welcome break. My wife and our younger daughters spent many hours exploring the myths and legends as well as the mounds and underground passages in the fields where the ancient Battle of southern Moytura is said to have been fought.

When I was doing research for one of my books for young people, The Legend of the Corrib King, which is now out of print, we found ourselves on the trail of a story about magic water horses. Fanciful as it might seem, it led us to discover a 4,000-year-old archaeological gem in an enchanted lake that didn’t exist. It also led us to wonder where folklore ended and reality began.

Stories about water horses are not confined to Irish folklore. In Scotland they are called kelpies — creatures that inhabit rivers and lochs and emerge to prey on humans. The stories about these supernatural creatures were probably told to children to keep them away from the water. It was said they took many forms, but whatever the form, the moral of the story was that if children went near the water, the kelpie would drag them in and devour them.

The kelpie I like best is described as a beautiful black horse, perhaps with a mane of serpents, enticing its victims on to its back and taking them to a watery grave. It reminded me of a story I came across in the folklore of the west of Ireland.

Young people in The Legend of the Corrib King hear about the magic water horses when they are invited to visit the Corrib at dapping time. They discover there are, in fact, two dapping times — May, when the mayfly comes up to the surface of the lake, and September, when the “daddy long-legs” are blown off the bushes on to the water. Trout love them both, and fishermen who sit in their boats dapping their insect bait on the gently rolling swell are usually well-rewarded, as were one of my daughters and I when we caught a large trout and steamed it on an open fire on one of the islands.

While most of the research for my book was done on the Corrib, the story of the magic water horses led us to another lake where, we discovered, a Stone Age man had been fishing for trout at a time when the burial mounds at Newgrange, Co Meath, were being built near the Boyne and the pyramids were taking shape along the Nile.

According to folklore, Seoirse de Barra, whose castle gave its name to Castlebar, lost his life when he tried to tame one of the water horses. His wife also had a castle, at Annaghdown, farther down the Corrib towards Galway. It was near an enchanted lake called Lough Afoor.

The interesting thing is that Lough Afoor was shown on the Ordnance Survey map of the area, but when we went to the location it was nowhere to be seen. The people who draw these maps, I knew, were seldom wrong, but search as we did, the lake continued to be as elusive as the magic water horses.

It was said that each night the water horses came up out of the lake to graze on Seoirse’s corn fields, and before sunrise they returned down into the lake. Seoirse got men in the area to help him try and cut them off, but without success. Then, a wise old blind man who lived in the district told him that if they could catch just one of the horses, the others wouldn’t come back. So one night they hid in the corn, and when the water horses came up out of the lake they surrounded one of them, a small filly, and caught her.

Seoirse, it was said, took her back to the castle to tame her. The old man warned him that if he took her out before he had her a year and a day, he would have no luck.

Of course, Seoirse ignored him as he wanted to take her out hunting and show her off. So one day he saddled up and took her for a canter. However, as he turned her to come home, she caught sight of the lake and bolted for it. She returned to the lake, but he wasn’t drowned like the victims of the kelpies. He was thrown off and killed just before she entered the water. Or so it was said.

So where was this enchanted lake? It was on the map, but it wasn’t there. Or so we thought, until one day we took the children to Clonboo Riding School, just off the Galway-Cong road.

The school was run by Alexandra Donnelly Nash, and when she had taken the children out riding, her mother, Josephine, showed us a small flint arrowhead Alexandra had found in the marsh beside the laneway.

As it so happened, both Alexandra and her father, Eddie, had studied archaeology, so they got the arrowhead carbon-dated in University College, Galway. This revealed that it was about 4,000 years old. But how did it come to be in the marsh? It was then we learned that the marsh was, in fact, Lough Afoor, which, with the passage of time, had become overgrown with reeds and other vegetation. Prehistoric man must have been trying to spear some trout there when the little arrowhead broke off.

So, if this marsh was once the enchanted lake of Lough Afoor, where was the castle belonging to Seoirse’s wife? On the other side of the road, we were told, and sure enough, when we returned to the road and went down a side road looking for it, there were the ruins.

With the discovery of the lake and the castle, it seemed folklore had ended and reality had begun. All too soon, the magic of the west had ended for me, too. The holiday was over and I was back in the real world covering the shootings and bombings that were euphemistically called the Troubles.