Cave Hill

Belfast without the Cave Hill, the Cave Hill without Belfast: Killarney without its lakes: the causeway without guides or specimens. We love the old mountain still, but the attention which was paid it in days of yore has ceased, I am afraid, for ever. The al fresco feasts, the joyous junketings, and the explorations of its wonderful caves no longer take place on its breezy slopes. Time was, and not so long ago, when the Cave Hill was famous for its Easter Monday revellings. The vicinity was thronged with country cousins, who gazed with awe at the Corsican's Head or scaled the dizzy height towards McArt's Fort [...]

A few years ago, when a local geologist discovered a marvellous diamond - a ponderous stone which weighed pounds avoirdupois instead of orthodox carats - I thought it would boom the Cave Hill into activity again. This matchless diamond was stated at the time to be a relic of Finn McCoul, the head of his breastpin in fact, but personally I do not believe the giant cared for, or wore such an adornment as a breastpin. I don't believe he even wore a waistcoat [...]

One might have supposed that a belief in magic and spells and fairies had all died away, and that in this very vulgar and materialistic and somewhat sceptical age, none could have been found, at least in this part of Ulster, to credit the tales of our grandmothers, and to act upon them. But there are some good people in Sandy-row who still retain the elder faith on these subjects - and, if works can prove the sincerity of conviction, theirs must be very sincere indeed. [...]

It is not gold, scattered about in dust or even in "nuggests," which formed the object of this search, but compactly laid up in chests - deposited, as the fairy records say, upon the summit of the "hill" by the Danes, in those days when they were compelled to make a hasty retreat from this part of the isle.

More than once have these gold-seekers struck upon these iron chests, but, just at that moment, the propitious influence was absent, and a kind of mysterious darkness and confusion fell upon their eyes. They believe, too, they heard a voice - "procul, o procul este profani" of the ancients. However this be, the chests still remain precisely where the Danes placed them, and these indefatigable Sandy-rowites are, at the present time, making inquiry, far and wide, for the seventh son of a seventh son, gifted with seventh sight, and possessing the power, as the legends tell, to take off the spell which has for ages rested upon this gold.

[...] You must not suppose that I am calling upon my imagination in this narrative. I give you the facts in my own way, it is true, but in substance exactly as I learned them from a person most intimately connected with one of these gold-seekers. [...]