Dwelling places for faerie

Ben Bulben or Binn Ghulbain in Irish is set in Yeats country in Sligo.  It is a mountain formed in the Ice Age and the setting of many Irish legends.  It is for example said to be the dwelling of the Fianna, a band of warriors who lived in the 3rd century.  Another example is a story called the wild boar hunt, where the warrior Diarmuid Ua Duibhne is tricked by the giant Finn McCool (Fionn mac Cumhail) into fighting an enchanted boar which kills the warrior by piercing his heart with a tusk.  Benbulben is said to be the resting place of Diarmuid and Grainne his love, who was daughter of the high king Cormac Mac Airt.  In another story, in the 6th century, St Columna led 3,000 soldiers up Ben Bulben to fight for the right for the saint to copy from a psalter he borrowed from St.Finnian. Ireland is such a place of faery and myth, I love it.

 You can understand why ben bulben and the country around inspired Yeats in his poetry

All of the wild foxgloves I've seen growing everywhere throughout Ireland put me in mind of a song I used to sing at school.  I cannot remember the author but I still remember all the words and the melody...

The foxglove bells, with lolling tongue,

Will not reveal what peals were rung

In Faery, in Faery,
A thousand ages gone
All the golden clappers hang
As if but now the changes rang;
Only from the mottled throat
Never any echoes float.
Quite forgotten, in the wood,
Pale, crowded steeples rise;
All the time that they have stood
None has heard their melodies.
Deep, deep in wizardry
All the foxglove belfries stand.
Should they startle over the land,
None would know what bells they be.
Never any wind can ring them,
Nor the great black bees that swing them
Ev'ry crimson bell, down-slanted,
Is so utterly enchanted.
The foxglove bells, with lolling tongue,
Will not reveal what peals were rung
In Faery, in Faery,
A thousand ages gone.

 Seeing me getting out of my car to peer at the castle in the distance, a lovely man let me into his house and through into his back garden so I could stare out at the view.  

Endless fields of leek!

Goodbye Ireland.  I'll miss you.