the Shannon, where it links Lough Garra to Lough Key, there is a lonely
cromlech, whose tremendous crown was once upheld by five massive
pillars. There is a kindred wildness and mystery in the cromlech and the
lonely hills.

Southward again of this, where the town of Lough Rea takes its name from
the Gray Lake, stands a high hill crowned by a cromlech, with an
encircling earthwork. It marks a green ring of sacred ground alone upon
the hill-top, shut off from all the world, and with the mysterious
monument of piled stones in its centre; here, as always, one huge block
upheld in the air by only lesser blocks. The Gray Lake itself, under
this strange sentry on the hill, was in long-passed ages a little
Venice; houses built on piles lined its shores, set far enough out into
the lake for safety, ever ready to ward off attack from the land. This
miniature Venice of Lough Rea is the type of a whole epoch of turbulent
tribal war, when homes were everywhere clustered within the defence of
the waters, with stores laid up to last the rigors of a siege.

The contrast between the insecurity and peril of the old lake dwellings
and the present safety of the town, open on all sides, unguarded and
free from fear, is very marked. But not less complete is the contrast
between the ancient hamlet, thus hidden for security amid the waters,
and the great cromlech, looming black against the sky on the hill's
summit, exposed to the wildness of the winds, utterly unguarded, yet
resting there in lonely serenity.

A little farther south, Lough Gur lies like a white mirror among the
rolling pasture-lands of Limerick, set amongst low hills. On the lake's
shore is another metropolis of the dead, worthy to compare with
Carrowmore on the Sligo headland. Some of the circles here are not