Few people who see Knocknarea Mountain for the first time as they pass through the Country of Sligo, realise that the object on the flat top, looking like a very large rock, is really an enormous memorial cairn of loose stones. This cairn was named after Queen Maeve of Connaught, and the circumference of its base is about six hundred and thirty feet, while it is seventy feet in height. There have been differences of opinion concerning the name of the mountain. One authority thinks that it means the Hill of Execution; another writer calls it the Hill with the Smooth Level Top; many other say that the Hill of Kings is the true translation.
Visitors to that part of the country are charmed by Knocknarea, about which so many memories of the past seem to cling. The view from the tabletop of the mountain will not soon be forgotten, and has been described by an eighteenth century writer. "From the platform of Maeve's Cairn I took a prospect," he wrote, "on which I feasted for more than half an hour. The counties of Donegal, Fermanagh, Derry, Leitrim and Longford bounded my view on the north and east. Turning my eye southward my view took in the great plain of Connaught, which ran out of sight like the immense ocean west of me."
The Irish Times, September 22nd, 1930.