The Area
The ancient name Dunloe is, in Irish, Dún Lug, the ringfort/homestead of Lug. There are many Irish names for a ringfort, but a dún usually referred to a big important stronghold.
Lug, also known as Lóich, Lochi and Locha, was worshipped as the Celtic sun god, and Lughnasa or Lugnásad, the Celtic festival which marked the beginning of the harvest, can be translated as Festival of Lug.
The Gap of Dunloe, which separates the MacGillycuddy Reeks from the Purple Mountain, is one of the finest glaciated valleys in Western Europe. It has been glaciated many times through the millennia, but today’s landscape is a result of the activity of the ice during the end of the last major ice age, the Midlandian. About 20,000 years ago the remarkable U shape of the Gap was caused by the erosion of the passing glacier which was, at one stage, at least 500 metres high.
The movement of the ice, studded with boulders and smaller debris, has rounded and smoothed the surfaces of the rocks over which it passed, and this is very noticeable in the Gap.
The ice didn’t cover the tops of the higher mountains so that they remained unaffected by its scouring action. Today, their serrated profiles can be seen standing out above the shattered old red sandstone fragments caused by the freeze and thaw action of the glacial atmosphere, and which now lie scattered over the mountain slopes.
The lakes of the Gap, which have inspired authors, poets and painters, are a result of the retreating ice which scooped out hollows on the valley floor. These were soon filled by rivers of ice-melt waters which, rushing furiously down the mountains, were often obstructed on their journey to the sea by masses of huge boulders, stones and sediments which had been deposited by the ice.
Today there are signs all-around of the torrent that once thundered frantically through the Gap from the massive melting glaciers, and on the steep sides of the mountains gigantic projecting boulders threaten destruction on all who dare pass by below. That torrent has now become the magnificent River Loe which, with its cascading waterfalls, winds picturesquely through the lake-studded valley. People have been coming here to hunt and fish through the ages. The red deer of today are the far-off descendants of those fine creatures hunted by Fionn MacCumhaill and the Fianna, those ancient warriors who have left signs of their passing in the many placenames of the whole region; Cloch Fionn (the stone building of Fionn), Cathair na Féinne (the stone fort of the Fianna), Doire na Féinne (the wood or oakwood of the Fianna) and Lough Brin(the lake of Bran, Fionn’s favourite hound).
(For a history of the Gap of Dunloe and a full history of Kate Kearney’s Cottage, see Echoes of Dunloe by Mary Coghlan.)