Glenbeigh is known locally as the jewel in the Ring of Kerry: a small, peaceful village in the foothills of Ireland's highest mountain range, close to the head of Dingle Bay. Here sweeping coastline, soaring mountains and glass-like lakes are steeped in myth and fable.
The mountains and glens
The mountains and shadowy glens of Kerry are said to be home to the púca, the shape-shifter of Irish folklore. It often appears as a sleek dark horse with glowing eyes, and can bring good or bad fortune to travellers.
The old advice: never ride a púca after dark, or you may find yourself on a wild midnight flight across the peaks of Ireland's highest mountains.
Glenbeigh Towers · 1 km
The ruined castle on the edge of the village is Glenbeigh Towers, built in 1867–71 for the Hon. Rowland Winn (Allanson-Winn), whose family owned the Glenbeigh estate. The English architect E. W. Godwin designed it. It ran over budget and its walls leaked so badly that Winn sued Godwin for the cost of putting them right. The case was settled out of court, and Godwin is said to have warned other architects: "When offered a commission in Ireland, refuse it."
People in Glenbeigh called it Wynn's Folly. It was believed at the time that rents on the estate were raised to pay for it, and there were many evictions in 1882 and 1883. By the mid-1880s the estate was in the hands of a mortgagee, a Reigate solicitor named Head, and many tenants were years behind with rents they could not pay.
In January 1887 the sheriff's men, bailiffs and the agent, Mr Roe, came with an escort of police. Thatch was set alight and walls were levered down with crowbars so that families could not move back in. The two houses of the Diggins brothers, built by their father, were burned, leaving 18 people homeless; Patrick Diggins was about 80. Reports differ on the numbers: The Spectator counted 21 houses taken and four burned, while other accounts give more. The Glenbeigh evictions were reported around the world and raised in the House of Commons.
In the First World War the castle was let to the British army as a training centre for reservists. Republican forces burned it in 1921, and it was never rebuilt. Winn's son, Rowland George Allanson-Winn, became the fifth Lord Headley in 1913, converted to Islam later that year, made the pilgrimage to Mecca, and is said to have twice turned down the throne of Albania.
The ruin stands on private farmland. You can see it from the public road, but please don't go in.
Plan a visit Sources: Wikipedia: Glenbeigh · The Irish Aesthete: From Kerry to Mecca · The Spectator, 29 Jan 1887 · My Kerry Ancestors: Evictions in Glenbeigh 1887 · Hansard, 11 Feb 1887 · Castles.nl: Wynn's Castle
The Behy valley, behind the village
Gráinne was promised to the ageing Fionn mac Cumhaill. At the betrothal feast she slipped a sleeping potion to the other guests and, by putting a geis (a binding spell) on him, made the young warrior Diarmuid run away with her. Fionn and the Fianna hunted them across Ireland.
Several Fianna legends are set around Glenbeigh, and local tradition says the pair hid for some days in a cave in the valley of the Behy river.
Sources: Wikipedia: Glenbeigh · The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gráinne
Rossbeigh strand · 5 km
Rossbeigh is said to be where the warrior-poet Oisín and Niamh of the Golden Hair rode their white horse into the sea, bound for Tír na nÓg, the Land of Youth.
It felt like only three years to Oisín, but centuries passed in Ireland. When he came home and touched the soil, he became an old man.
Plan a visit Source: Wikipedia: Glenbeigh
Coomasaharn Lake · 9 km
Near the northern end of Coomasaharn Lake, a glacial corrie in the mountains above Glenbeigh, several flat rock surfaces are carved with cups, rings, circles and lines. More decorated panels lie just to the north at Kealduff. They are part of an especially dense cluster of prehistoric open-air rock art around Glenbeigh, and carvings are still being found: a cup-and-ring boulder near the end of the road was only recognised in 2018.
Carvings like these were made in the late Stone Age and early Bronze Age, more than 4,000 years ago. Nobody knows what they meant. Ideas range from marking routes, boundaries and meeting places to religious symbols, but the people who carved them left no words.
We have found no old story written down about the stones themselves. Irish folklore, though, gave lonely mountain places like this to Fionn mac Cumhaill and the Fianna, hunting with their hounds across the hills, and to the Tuatha Dé Danann, the old gods who withdrew into the hills and mounds to become the people of the otherworld. Deep, dark lakes were feared as bottomless, the home of the water-horse, the each uisce, and of the púca, rising from the mist to trick travellers on the lonely passes.
The carvings are on open hillside and farmland: please don't chalk, rub or stand on them.
Plan a visit Sources: Wikipedia: Glenbeigh · Irish Megaliths: Coomasaharn · Hiking the World: Coomasaharn cupmarked stone · Wikipedia: Cup and ring mark
Killorglin · 12 km
Every August a party goes up into the MacGillycuddy's Reeks to catch a wild goat. Back in Killorglin, the Queen of Puck, traditionally a girl from one of the local primary schools, crowns him King Puck, and Puck Fair begins.
One story says a goat that broke away from its herd warned the town that Cromwell's soldiers were coming. Scholars link the fair to Lughnasa, the old Celtic festival at the start of the harvest. Its earliest record is a charter of 1613.
Plan a visit Source: Wikipedia: Puck Fair
North-east of Cahersiveen
Cnoc na dTobar, the hill of the wells, rises above Cahersiveen. Before Christianity it was a place for Lughnasa gatherings in August, with feasting and dancing on the high ground for a good harvest.
It became a pilgrim mountain. St Fursey's Holy Well at its foot was known as a cure for eye complaints, Stations of the Cross were set along the old pilgrim path in 1884–85, and Mass is still said at the summit once a year.
Sources: Wikipedia: Knocknadobar · Discover Iveragh: geosites
Cahersiveen · 28 km
Cahersiveen's Old Barracks, built in 1870–75 for the Royal Irish Constabulary, looks more like a German schloss than a Kerry police station. The story goes that its plans were mixed up with those for a British barracks in India.
The same story is told in other Irish garrison towns, so take it as a legend. The building is now the heritage centre for the Iveragh Peninsula.
Plan a visit Sources: Ask About Ireland: The Old Barracks · Wikipedia: Cahersiveen
Near Cahersiveen · 32 km
Tradition says the first castle here was built by Carbery O'Shea, who gave it his name, and that it passed to the MacCarthy Mór, whose constables, the O'Connells, kept it for them. A story collected in Cahersiveen in the 1930s says the mortar was mixed with the blood of many slaughtered animals, and that is why its walls stood so strong.
Another account from the same years says Sadhbh, a daughter of MacCarthy Mór, lived at Ballycarbery, and that the town of Cahersiveen, Cathair Saidhbhín ("little Sadhbh's stone fort"), takes its name from her.
A story is told of two O'Connell brothers, both constables of the castle, who each wanted to have their lord to dinner on the same night. He said he would dine with whichever had a meal ready first. The elder had the way to the upper floors blocked and guarded so that nobody could get in or out. The younger had all his food cooked in Spanish wine, was ready first, and won.
People also say a tunnel once ran from the castle to the stone forts of Cahergal and Leacanabuaile nearby. No such tunnel has been found, though the forts do have a souterrain, an underground passage, which may be where the story began. English troops badly damaged the castle with cannon in 1652.
Plan a visit Sources: The Irish Aesthete: A Castle by the Sea · Dúchas: Local History of Ballycarbery Castle · Dúchas: Caherciveen and Its Surroundings · Wikipedia: Ballycarbery Castle · Kingdom of Kerry: Ballycarbery Castle
Glenscoheen, south of Tralee
In the old histories, the sons of Míl landed at Inbhear Scéine, the Kenmare River, after the poet Amergin calmed a magic storm. Three days later, say the Annals of the Four Masters, they fought the Tuatha Dé Danann at Sliabh Mis, and Scota, the wife of Míl, was killed.
Her grave is still pointed out in Gleann Scoithín (Glenscoheen), south of Tralee. The National Monuments Service has not accepted the rock as an archaeological monument, so it belongs to legend.
Sources: Wikipedia: Scota · Cusack, Illustrated History of Ireland (1868) · Wikipedia: Amergin
Ross Castle, Killarney · 36 km
Ross Castle was the last place in Munster to hold out against Cromwell. Its defenders took heart from a prophecy that it could only be taken by a ship: "Till on Lough Lein strange ship shall sail". When General Ludlow launched a large boat on the lake, it hastened the surrender, and the prophecy was fulfilled.
The castle was probably built by the chieftain O'Donoghue Mór in the 15th century. Legend says he still sleeps under the lake and rises on the first morning of May every seven years. Anyone who sees him has good luck for life.
Plan a visit Sources: Heritage Ireland: Ross Castle · Wikipedia: Ross Castle
Caherconree, Slieve Mish Mountains
Two-thirds of the way up Caherconree mountain is an Iron Age stone fort, Cathair Con Raoi, Cú Roí's fort. Cú Roí was a king of Munster with magical powers. He carried off Bláthnat, a king's daughter who loved Cú Chulainn.
She betrayed him. In one version she poured milk into the stream below, the Fionnghlaise (white stream), now the Derrymore River. When Cú Chulainn saw the water run white, he stormed the fort and killed Cú Roí. Cú Roí's poet Ferchertne took revenge, seizing Bláthnat and leaping with her from a cliff.
Sources: Wikipedia: Cú Roí · Wikipedia: Slieve Mish Mountains
Torc Waterfall · 41 km
Torc means wild boar. A local legend tells of a man cursed by the Devil to become a wild boar every night. A farmer out looking for missing animals found out his secret; the boar offered him riches to keep quiet, and flew into a rage when the secret got out.
He burst into flames and vanished into the lake on Mangerton Mountain known as the Devil's Punch Bowl. The water that surged out made Torc Waterfall, which hides his cave for ever. Another tale says Fionn mac Cumhaill killed a magic boar on Torc Mountain with his golden spear.
Valentia Island · 46 km
Valentia was said to be the home of Mug Ruith, a powerful blind druid of Munster. He flew through the air in the roth rámach, the "oared wheel", dressed in a hornless bull's hide and a bird mask.
In the tale of the Siege of Knocklong, he defeats the druids of the high king Cormac mac Airt. His daughter Tlachtga gave her name to a hill in County Meath.
Plan a visit Source: Wikipedia: Mug Ruith
Emlagh, west Valentia Island
Legend has it that St Brendan the Navigator sailed to Valentia from Dingle Bay, climbed the cliffs at Culoo Rock, and anointed two dying pagans at a spring, bringing Christianity to the island. The holy well is still there, out on the bog, with three early stone crosses beside it.
The viewing points on Geokaun Mountain have 36 information plaques, and St Brendan's Well and the Skelligs are among their subjects.
Plan a visit Sources: Atlas Obscura: St Brendan's Well · Wikipedia: Geokaun
Dingle Peninsula · 56 km
In 1650 Walter Hussey made his stand against Cromwellian forces in this Fitzgerald castle above a beach of storm-smoothed boulders. When the defenders ran short of shot, sappers packed gunpowder under the vaults and brought the upper floors down on Hussey and most of his men.
In 1845 a writer passed on a story that workmen clearing the rubble found the skeleton of a giant of a man, a large sword beside him, which crumbled to ashes when they touched it.
Boats from Portmagee
Legend says Ír, a son of Míl, the ancestor of the Gaels, drowned on the voyage from Spain and was buried on the island. Daire Domhain, the "King of the World", is said to have stayed there before he attacked Fionn mac Cumhaill at Ventry. A 13th-century German text even names Skellig as the scene of St Patrick's last battle with Ireland's snakes.
The monks who later lived on the rock faced real raiders. The annals record that in 823 Skellig was plundered and the abbot Eitgal carried off, and the Vikings came again in 838.
These are legends, local stories and local history, retold from the sources linked under each one; versions differ from one teller to the next. To visit the places, see Sights & Heritage and Trails, Lakes, Mountains, Woods.
