(Ireland of the Welcomes Vol. 28 No.2 March-April 1979)

John McNamara unrolled the long narrow scroll. The roll was coloured with the yellow hue that imparts to ancient documents an immediate identity with long past ages. In the upper right hand corner it was dated 1787 and stated that it was a General Map of the Grand Canal from the City of Dublin to Monasterevan'. At the bottom in flowing script was written 'Lands of Tullamore', and on the left 'Lands of Shragh'.

No modern day map would have at its edge such proud inscriptions. The old maps reinforced my excitement for those very words 'Land of' proclaim adventure. Who among us can put from our minds those childhood stories about Oisin and Tir na nOg - the 'Land of Ever Young' or Dorothy in the 'Land of Oz'? I was, along with my son Kevin and our friend George Person, at the very middle of one of the beautiful but modest adventures of my own life.

I say modest because hiking the tow path (called track in Ireland) of the Grand Canal is not the same as climbing the rocky face of the Cliff of Glencar or even hiking across the Syrian Desert where a missed water hole would leave one's bones to bleach in those shimmering rays. I have done such things but I am older now and besides in these modern days there are not even highwaymen, or I should say 'canalwaymen', to relieve us of our travellers' cheques.

I knew in my heart it would be a peaceful adventure - the kind of interlude that mellows with time like the Irish Mist distilled at Tullamore. It would not be the type of dangerous undertaking that one wonders why on earth one did it when it is all over. I would not be able to write a book proclaiming that I crossed the stormy Atlantic in a handcrafted currach or even alone in a fibreglass ketch. I can only write that I have passed along a track between giant beech trees and golden yellow whin bushes, past broken castle walls, round towers, ancient cemeteries, and quiet country pubs, but best of all I passed among the hardworking gentle people that live along the banks of the Grand Canal of Ireland.

John McNamara was one such person, and as my Irish luck would have it, for I met him in a pub, is the chief engineer for maintaining the canal.
John was unrolling those beautiful old maps so I could photograph them with my little camera. I noticed the road to Philipstown on the left (west) side of the Tullamore map. I had read that Philipstown, given that name during the reign of Philip and Mary, had reverted to its old Irish name of Daingean, meaning stronghold. Indeed the town had originally been the stronghold of the O'Connors.

Kevin, George and I had hiked into Daingean the previous evening and spotted McCann's Pub in the centre of the long narrow street. I went in to inquire about a place to eat. John was there having a stout and talking 'Canal' with his friend Pat Carlyle the district engineer. I had a letter of introduction (to whom it may concern type) from James Larkin of Bord Failte - the Irish Tourist Board but I never used it - after all who needs a letter of introduction in Ireland? When I told John we were hiking the canal track and looking for supper in Daingean he insisted that we go in his car to the Bridge House Hotel in Tullamore where we could get Tullamore's best dinner. He promised to bring us back to Daingean the next day to continue our hike. Philipstown on the left of the map bothered me.

'But John,' I said, 'I thought we stumbled on you in Daingean east of Tullamore.'
'You did,' he smiled, 'north is the bottom of these old canal maps.'

Suddenly I really was in the 'Land of Ever Young.' Like the poet Oisin, son of Finn, and the Fianna I had aged 200 years and was transported back by this strange 'upside- down' map to the Tullamore of 1787. Ancient maps can cause such magic feats.

Ruth Delany's descriptions of the canal being built flowed like the water of the River Barrow through my mind. Work on the canal was begun in 1756. The many difficulties encountered with engineering mistakes, broken banks, and the original wooden bridges and locks arc described in detail in The Grand Canal of Ireland by Ruth Delany.

The Grand Canal Company was formed in 1772 when work commenced in earnest to link up Dublin with the Barrow and Shannon Rivers. The split in the canal comes just past the historical canal town of Robertstown. The River Barrow branch turns south to Carlow and on to Waterford on the southern coast of Ireland. The main branch goes due west to the canal village of Shannon Harbour on the River Shannon. This is the portion that we were hiking along.

We had already passed the old restored Canal Hotel at Robertstown and the Irish Falconry supervised by Noel Spain and his lovely wife Billy. The Falconry at Robertstown is world famous and was begun by Father Murphy of Robertstown as an educational project. Today school children from Ireland and tourists from all over the world learn about falconry and some of the basics of practical ecology from Noel's lectures. During the summer season there is also an old time 'canal days' banquet and canal boat ride for a really fun time in old Ireland's canal town. (Check with any tourist office).

Another picturesque canal town that is closer to Dublin is Sallins. The beautiful stone Leinster Aqueduct carries the Grand Canal over the River Liffey just west of Sallins - a river over a river so to speak. The contract advertisement for 'Executing an Aqueduct' is dated 1776, the year of American Independence. Building the aqueduct was a feat of considerable engineering skill when one considers that its age is the same as the United States.

Michael McGee of Bord na Mona met us at Sallins and took us to Barberstown Castle for the night. Barberstown is a restored Norman tower house with a 19th-century mansion hooked on to its side. It is about three miles north of the canal near Clane. Its furnishings are Victorian and it is now a hotel and a delightful place to stay. I made a sketch of the beautiful building in my notebook and later painted an oil of it that now hangs on our drawing room wall.

The next day on the way back to the canal to resume our hike, Michael took us to a cemetery near Clane where Wolfe Tone, the great Irish patriot of the 1798 Insurrection, is buried.

Wolfe Tone is one of the truly fascinating figures of Irish history. He was a lovable character, and had he survived the Insurrection he might have changed the course of Irish history. His biographer, Frank MacDermot (Tone and His Times) leaves little doubt that Tone was influenced by both the French and American Revolutions. One thing is for certain; his fate was tied directly to the Grand Canal, as is the history of America.

The silver waters of the canal lead directly to the shores of America. Ruth Delany points out that with the 'rising tide of emigration'; more Shannon River fly boats (fast boats) were put on the canal. Much of the emigration was probably to the west of Ireland, but during the famine years most was by way of the Barrow branch to Waterford, or by way of the Shannon branch to America.

In Tullamore, John introduced us to Mr. William Jaffray, Director of the Irish Mist Liqueur Co. He is known as Mr. Irish Mist in Tullamore. We toured the distillery and William Jaffray kindly gave me a copy of a short history of Tullamore. From the little booklet I learned that during the 1798 Insurrection the canal was taken over by the military. The army command sent General Cornwallis's troops by passage boats along the canal to Tullamore. From there they marched overland to Athlone and Roscommon where they met the French invaders who had landed at Killala Bay, Co. Mayo under the command of the French General Humbert.

I wondered if it was the same General Cornwallis that George Washington had defeated at Yorktown. He served as a Major General in Command of British troops in South Carolina. In 1781 he attacked into Virginia but was trapped by the American and French armies at Yorktown and forced to surrender on 19th October, 1781. This Battle ended the Revolutionary War.

I looked him up in the encyclopedia to see if he was the same genera] but I really did not want to know in case I would be disappointed if he were not. Somehow it seemed poetic that a general that lost a revolution to the French and Americans in 1781 should win one against the French and Irish in 1798 and I would rather be a poet than a historian.

It is, of course, the sanic Cornwallis but his loss to the Americans apparently did not harm his career and he was made Viceroy of Ireland in June 1798. Cornwallis was a good tactician and had little use for the way his own government treated the Irish. Before he left Ireland he had gained the good will of Catholics and Orangemen alike.

One of the important factors in any war is the length of supply lines. The long supply lines to America probably had as much to do with the British defeat in America as any tactical manoeuvre. In the Irish revolt of 1798 the French force that landed at Killala Bay in Mayo were up against a major British force of 20,000 soldiers able to move swiftly to the west of Ireland along the smooth surface of the Grand Canal. The canal boat service had been extended to Tullamore in 1798. It was a distance of 56½ miles and cost a passenger 5 shillings ii pence on the same passage boats that carried Cornwallis's troops. When one considered the muddy state of the roads in 1798 and the necessity of bringing a huge army plus heavy artillery across Ireland, then the swift transport of Cornwallis's army along the canal was clearly a major factor in the defeat of the French and Irish and in the capture of Wolfe Tone. The canal points like an arrow straight at the heart of Connemara.

We hiked out of Tullamore past the ruins of Ballycowan Castle and over the beautiful Charleville Aqueduct that crosses the Clodiagh River. Between Plunkett Bridge and Belmont the canal cuts through miles of bogland. We camped our last night in the Bog. This was a portion of the great central Bog of Allen that Bord na Mona - the Turf Board - is grinding up to fuel fires of the electrical plants. I would be sorry to see the bog go for I loved its wild desolate openness. To Bord na Mona's credit, however, they are converting the last few feet of the 30 foot deep layer of peat into excellent agricultural lands. There is still plenty of wild bog on either side of the canal banks. On the last evening of our walk I sat beside my little red tent and watched a graceful, curved-beak curlew make huge figure-eight circles over the canal and nearby River Brosna. I am sure the peculiar flight is the mating display of the male, but not many are privileged to witness such things, unless they sit out a long May evening in the middle of a lonely bog.

As the spooky ringing call of the great bird carried across the late evening sky my mind drifted back to Dublin and the question that Tim Magennis put to me in the office of Bord Failte.
'Why do you want to hike the canal when you can rent a cruiser and do the canal in comfort?'

Tim is a waterways' man and had given me an excellent Guide to the Grand Canal of Ireland to use on our hike. The guide is put out by the Inland Waterways Association of Ireland (Kingston House, Ballinteer, Dublin 14) and gives the boater a series of sectional maps with accompanying descriptions of every lock, pub, store, and historical spot along each of the is sections. A Colonel Michael Gill walked the length of the canal in 1975 and indicated on the waterway guide the best side to walk, so it is an excellent guide for walkers as well as boaters.

I had to agree with Tim that boating the canal, especially for a family, would be a pleasure indeed. I could envision stops at castles and pubs and, best of all, the children hopping ashore to help father and the gatekeeper open the lock - what fun for the young!

For this dreamer, however, the path along the silver waters represents the means of transport back into time as well as a transport across Ireland. A dreamer must move very slowly and pause with drifting time. Only walking allows for such quiet interludes.

The canal is a 'time machine' for understanding the rural ecology and the history of Ireland. The shape of land helps to determine the shape of its culture and for over three centuries the Grand Canal helped shape the culture of Ireland and America.

As we walked into Shannon Harbour the next day I gazed backwards towards the last bridge across the canal at Clononey. What I saw in my mind's eye, besides the pretty bridge, were black, shiny canal gates, swans drifting on the water, great Tudor mansions, pubs and, yes, even red-coated soldiers and lean tough bargemen urging their horses along the tow path.

My heart told me that the Irish would never destroy their beautiful watery pathway into history. My heart is usually a better judge of such things than is my mind and that is why I walked the track by the silver water across the countryside of Ireland.