Out of Belfast, very good news. A marvellous publishing achievement: the final volume in the series of Ordnance Survey Memoirs has appeared, number 40. It deals with the counties of South Ulster - Cavan, Leitrim, Louth, Monaghan and Sligo. You may be familiar with the series individually in booksellers, but as a final flourish, the complete set of the softback version may be had, delivered to your door anywhere in these islands, post free, for £250 sterling. If you get in quick. The whole gives a superb picture of Ireland as seen in its northern setting, mainly, of course, through the eyes of the Ordnance lieutenants concerned, but also availing of the help of local historians or well-known spokesmen of one learned society or another, in the 1830s.
All this comes from the Institute of Irish Studies at the Queen's University of Belfast, General editor of the Institute is Margaret McNulty, while the texts are edited by Angelique Day and Patrick McWilliams, the whole carried out in association with the Royal Irish Academy. With so much to cover in one volume, number 40 can give only brief coverage, but the spirit is there. Lieutenant Taylor waxes lyrical about the little hills of Cavan, in the parish of Drumgoon: "The magna dorsa, elevating their long, carina-shaped forms .. . objects of singular beauty." Wildlife is covered: pike, perch, bream, roach, trout and eel abound in the lakes. Of wildfowl many are named but are declared scarce.
Gentlemen's seats: well, there is Bellamont Forest, "the princely seat of Charles Coote, Esquire, surrounded by a cordon of plantation, 70 feet broad, the circle of which measures 8 English miles". Cavan had figured recently in the news, along with neighbouring counties, in controversies about potholes. Well, according to the same lieutenant, the average breadth of roads (in the parish anyway) is "about 40 feet". Some road. "But they are kept in very bad repair and most of them are very injudiciously laid out." As to the diet of the people: "Potatoes and buttermilk in its season form the chief article of diet which undoubtedly conduce to longevity, for many of the peasantry attain a great age."
You'd wonder if they got a share of the fish and fowl of the air, or was all that reserved? A worthy collection, scholarly and entertaining and thought-provoking. Y