shesk

Updated: May 4, 2025

When the grand Ulster chieftains, the O'Donnells and the O'Neills of Donegal, went under, the third great house of Ulster, the 'Macdonnells of the Isles, was more fortunate, and, thanks to its Scots blood, found favour with James I. It was a Macdonnell who was created first Earl of Antrim, and given a 'grant of the Glens and the Route, from the Curran of Larne to the Cutts of Coleraine. Ballycastle is our nearest large town, and its great days were all under the Macdonnells, where, in the Franciscan abbey across the bay, it is said the ground 'literally heaves with Clandonnell dust. Here are buried those of the clan who perished at the hands of Shane O'Neill Shane the Proud, who signed himself 'Myself O'Neill, and who has been called 'the shaker of Ulster'; here, too, are those who fell in the great fight at Slieve-an-Aura up in Glen Shesk, when the Macdonnells finally routed the older lords, the M'Quillans.

Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin - Penelope's Irish Experiences