LOCAL COLOUR

A Mile of Stories

Golden Mile Retreats sits in one of the most quietly remarkable landscapes in Ireland. This is some of what surrounds it.

Jonathan Swift drafted Gulliver’s Travels nearby. Turlough O’Carolan drank for several days with a poet from the next townland. Charlotte Brooke shaped the course of Irish literature a stone’s throw from here. An O’Reilly chieftain kept watch over it all from the hill above. This is that kind of mile.

The Walk

The O’Reilly Castle & the Golden Mile · Medieval · The hill above Mullagh Lake

The Golden Mile is one of those walks that earns its name. Following a gentle loop through woodland and open country, it offers glimpses of Mullagh Lake glinting through the trees and, on the hill above, the remnants of an O’Reilly castle — once home to one of the most powerful Gaelic families in Ulster and Connacht.

The O’Reillys were lords of East Breifne, a territory that roughly corresponds to modern County Cavan, for several centuries. They were patrons of poets and harpers, builders of castles and monasteries, and — when occasion demanded — formidable fighters. Their territory stretched across the lakes and drumlin hills of this part of Ireland, and Mullagh sat squarely within it.

The castle on the hill is gone now, reduced to traces in the landscape, but the view it commanded remains: lake water, hedgerows, the soft roll of Cavan countryside. Walk the Golden Mile and you are walking the same ground the O’Reillys walked. On a clear evening, with the lake below catching the last light, it is not difficult to understand why they chose this spot.

The walk sets off from outside the house.

The Writers

Jonathan Swift 1667–1745 · Gulliver’s Travels · nearby Quilca House

Swift, author of Gulliver’s Travels and arguably the sharpest satirist in the English language, was a regular visitor to Quilca House just outside Mullagh, staying with his friend the Reverend Thomas Sheridan. Substantial parts of his masterpiece were written here, in the Cavan countryside.

Local lore holds that a Mullagh farmer called “Big Doughty” — a man of such extraordinary size that he once hid a fugitive under his coat and on another occasion lifted a pony clean over a fence — was Swift’s model for the giants of Brobdingnag. Another version has it that Doughty was the prototype for Gulliver himself. Either way, the man was memorable.

Let me thy Properties explain, / A rotten Cabin, dropping Rain; / Chimnies with Scorn rejecting Smoak; / Stools, Tables, Chairs, and Bed-steds broke…
— Swift, To Quilca, a Country House not in Good Repair

He was not, evidently, entirely charmed by the accommodation. Golden Mile Retreats is in considerably better repair!

Charlotte Brooke c.1750–1793 · Reliques of Irish Poetry · born at Rantavan, Mullagh

Born at Rantavan House in the parish of Mullagh, Charlotte Brooke rescued Gaelic verse from near-oblivion, influenced Thomas Moore and W.B. Yeats, and announced to the world that Irish literature was not merely old, but extraordinary. Her Reliques of Irish Poetry (1789) was revolutionary — comparable in ambition to Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry — and it emerged from a woman who had taught herself Irish over two years by consulting manuscripts most of her contemporaries couldn’t read.

She applied to the Royal Irish Academy for a position as housekeeper — women were ineligible for membership. A less-qualified man got the job. She wrote a magnificently spirited letter of complaint to Bishop Percy. The Academy’s loss was literature’s gain.

The British muse is not yet informed that she has an elder sister in this isle…
— Charlotte Brooke, preface to Reliques of Irish Poetry, 1789

Henry Brooke 1703–1783 · The Fool of Quality · born and buried at Mullagh

Charlotte’s father, born at Rantavan House and buried in Mullagh churchyard, achieved the remarkable distinction of having his play Gustavus Vasa banned under the Licensing Act of 1737 — the first work to be so honoured. Alexander Pope admired his poetry. John Wesley recommended his novel to new Methodist congregations. He became the first editor of the Freeman’s Journal. He fathered twenty-two children, of whom Charlotte was one of only two to survive to adulthood. Given what she went on to achieve, one can only imagine the others.

The Harpers & Poets

Cathair MacCabe & Turlough O’Carolan c.1670–1740 · Cloughballybeg, near Mullagh

Cathair MacCabe, poet and harper from Cloughballybeg, the road on which Golden Mile Retreats stands, is best remembered as the lifelong companion and occasional tormentor of Turlough O’Carolan, Ireland’s most celebrated harper. Their first meeting set the tone perfectly. O’Carolan, who was blind, asked MacCabe his name. MacCabe replied with a riddle: “My name is under my posterior and my surname between my two shoulders” — punning on cathaoir (chair) and the distinctive cape worn by the MacCabe clan. O’Carolan decoded it instantly, greeted him by name, and the two settled into a drinking session that lasted several days.

On another occasion, MacCabe faked his own death, prompting O’Carolan to compose a heartfelt elegy. When the deception was revealed, both men found it enormously funny. The elegy survived anyway — which is about the best outcome a fake death can produce.

There is no pain, no torment, no distress so heavy and grievous as the death of friends and the parting of companions.
— MacCabe, on the real death of O’Carolan, 1738

MacCabe is buried in Gallon churchyard, near St. Ultan’s Well in Killinkere parish.

Feardorcha O’Farrelly active c.1736 · Mullagh, County Cavan

Another Mullagh poet, O’Farrelly was a friend to both O’Carolan and MacCabe, and moved in the same circle of verse, hospitality, and wit. He trained for the priesthood, didn’t quite finish, returned to farming, and wrote poetry — a sequence of events that will feel familiar to many creative people. Only five poems survive, but they are vivid: one personifies the River Blackwater as a vehicle for sharp political commentary.

Five poems is quite good going for a 17th-century Cavan farmer-poet. Most of us manage fewer.

The Fair

Mullagh Fair: nearly two centuries of cattle, community and craic

Est. 1828 · revived 1996 · one of the largest one-day shows in the Northeast

Before Mullagh had the Fair, the Fair had Mullagh — gathering at the Gates of Mullagh (where Golden Mile Retreats sits), on ground that the earliest maps already marked as the fair green. By 1828 it had moved into the new town, and by 1837 Lewis could record a weekly market and fairs for cattle, pigs, oats, butter, and flax. By 1870 it was monthly. The local publicans, it is said, took more on a fair day than in an entire ordinary month.

The opening of Mullagh Mart in 1957 brought the traditional fair to a close — marts were the modern way, and the old patterns faded. But in 1996 the Mullagh Development Committee brought it back, and today it has grown into one of the largest one-day shows in the Northeast, with all funds reinvested into the community: footpaths, the fair green, the lakefront. Over five years, more than €150,000 has gone to local clubs and organisations.

Even the Foot and Mouth outbreak of 2001, which cancelled the Fair that year, couldn’t break the tradition. Some things in Mullagh are simply too well-rooted.

• • 1621 First charters and licences for a fair granted
• • 1828 First fair in the new town, 28th March
• • 1837 Weekly market and regular fairs recorded by Lewis
• • 1870 Fair becomes a monthly event
• • 1957 Mullagh Mart opens; traditional fair ends
• • 1996 Mullagh Development Committee revives the Fair Day
• • Today One of the largest one-day shows in the Northeast

The Modern Mile

T.P. McKenna 1929–2011 · Abbey Theatre, RSC, Royal National Theatre · born in Mullagh

Born in Mullagh in 1929, the eldest of ten children, T.P. McKenna went on to become one of the most distinguished Irish stage and screen actors of the twentieth century. His introduction to theatre came through the old travelling fit-up shows; Gilbert and Sullivan at St Patrick’s College, Cavan confirmed what he already suspected — that there was nothing else in the world he could do.

He spent six years as an Ulster Bank clerk before resigning when the bank attempted to transfer him back to Cavan. His father was not pleased. The Abbey Theatre was. Over the following decades he performed more than seventy stage roles there, was made a life member in 1968, performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal National Theatre, and played alongside Dustin Hoffman, Gregory Peck, Anthony Hopkins, and John Gielgud. On screen, audiences knew him from Straw Dogs, Ulysses, Ballykissangel, and Inspector Morse.

Off stage he was a superb raconteur who loved the company of writers, numbered Patrick Kavanagh among his friends, gave the oration at Kavanagh’s grave, and performed a one-man show of his work at the Cavan Drama Festival.

He remained forever proud of his Mullagh roots, a regular visitor until the onset of illness in his final years. He died in February 2011 and is buried in the old cemetery here.

His brother Raphael still lives just across the road from Golden Mile Retreats.

Brián F. O’Byrne born 1967 · Tony Award winner · Mullagh

Born in Mullagh on 16 May 1967, Brián F. O’Byrne has had one of the most distinguished careers in contemporary Irish theatre and screen — five Tony Award nominations, one win (for Frozen, 2004), a Primetime Emmy nomination, and a BAFTA TV Award. American audiences know him from Mildred Pierce; Irish audiences know him as DI Mick Moynihan from Love/Hate. After decades in New York he recently returned to Ireland, describing his first year back as “one of the most frustrating years” of his life — and himself as now “deliriously happy.” Mullagh seems to have that effect.

Britney Arendse born 2000 · Paris Paralympics 2024 · Mullagh

Mullagh’s most recent champion. Born in South Africa, Britney moved to Mullagh at age five. After a car accident in 2009 left her with a spinal cord injury, she found her calling in para powerlifting — inspired by her mother Brigitte, herself a successful powerlifter. At the 2024 Paris Paralympics, she finished fourth in the up-to-79kg class and set three personal bests. Her final lift of 133kg brought visible delight to everyone watching. She is the first Irish athlete to set a Junior World Record in her category.