Part I: Kilnaboy Parish

Tullycommane ^[1] (O.S. 10)

Turning off from the main road to Kilfenora, on the rising ground north of Kilnaboy Church, we enter a very wild district, and ascending, in zigzags, a steep hill, a bastion of the great Glasgeivnagh rampart, the true edge of Burren, we reach a plateau, with a glorious view over Inchiquin Lake to Moghane fort and Cratloe. The road turns northward, at one time through low bushes and mossy rocks, at another, unenclosed, through sheets of shining grey crags, like the waves of some vast lake of stone; past the cromlechs and cairns of Leanna, till we drop sharply from the table-land into the deep rugged gorge of Glencurraun. We may conjecture this to be the ‘blind valley of Burren,’ Caechan Boirne - ‘constant the road of the king’ - named in the Book of Rights. Perhaps ‘the road of the king’ is Boher na mic righ (of the king’s sons), running to the foot of these hills. No other valley suits the term Caechan, and possesses a triple (or royal) fort to meet the requirement of the venerable record. It is a curious coincidence that Dermot O’Brien’s army, in 1317, took this very route, up the Boher, over the white crags of Mullachgall, through ‘Leanna’s dairy land,’ and ‘along the fastness-begirt tracks,’ on their way to the battle of Corcomroe Abbey. The probability is increased when we find in the same poem with ‘Caechan Boirne,’ the fort of Kilfenora and Inchiquin hill (Ceann Nathrach).