Here in Ireland I am farther than ever before away fro in the rest of the world." Thus Dylan Thomas to a friend when he spent some weeks in a cottage in Donegal in the year 1935. He was 20. "I write by candlelight in a cottage with a view of the Atlantic. Just now I am off on my own for a walk in the dark; that will make me hellishly happy." Indeed, the longish stay was not quite voluntary on his part. He was pushed into it by his friend Geoffrey Grigson, who wanted to wean him off alcohol. At any rate, Thomas only once a week walked the 10 miles to the nearest pub. "It rains and it rains. All the damned seagulls are fallen angels."
This is from an article in a German newspaper, Die Zeit of Hamburg, which is subtitled as a cliffwalk along the coast of the Irish Co Donegal "with a detour on the lyrical poet Dylan Thomas". Indeed, there is almost as much about Thomas and Grigson as there is about the county, but the whole is an enthusiastic endorsement of the unspoiled parts of the landscape which, the writer seems to reckon, are there in abundance. But, like Frank McDonald in his series of this week, he has hard words for "ugly bungalows" which he says, abound everywhere the N56 runs along the coast. On the other hand, time stands still in those parts of the county which the N56 "spurns".
He did have a bit of map difficulty, at first, but the number 10 in the Discovery series eventually brought him to the converted ass's stall where Thomas stayed. It had been converted, in the mid 1920s, by the American painter Rockwell Kent, who also made all the furniture for his studio. This is what Thomas rented. It was at Glenlough, northeast of Glencolumbkille. The writer of the article, Friedhelm Rathjen finds "magic" in the landscape. You can go, he says, with the loveliest views, and the certainty of meeting no one else, along the cliff edge from the Glenlough area to the village of Maghera on Loughros Beg Bay, and, weather allowing, settle own on the giant strand. You need to be fit, he advises.
A last picture of our poets. Dylan Thomas wasn't tired of life, writes Rathjen, but he did something which no one should try to emulate in the Blue Stack Mountains, least of all. He went up to the lake, Lough Belshade, as darkness fell, along with Grigson, and both shouted at the rocky walls of the water, "We are the dead." The echo gave back "We are the dead, are the dead, the dead." Thomas died at the age of 39.