County Sligo Guide (Sligeach)
“The Yeats County” - in the province of Connacht. County town: Sligo.
Benbulben, surf beaches and the landscape that inspired W.B. Yeats.
Sligo is Yeats country - the great poet is buried “under bare Ben Bulben’s head”, the flat-topped mountain that watches over the county. It pairs a lively, creative county town with surf beaches, megalithic tombs at Carrowmore older than Newgrange, and some of the most poetically beautiful landscapes in the north-west.
Yeats called it the Land of Heart's Desire, and Sligo's landscape explains why: the great flat-topped prow of Benbulben, the cairn-crowned summit of Knocknarea, Lough Gill with its Isle of Innisfree, and Atlantic strands running from Enniscrone to Mullaghmore. W.B. Yeats spent his childhood summers here with his Pollexfen relations and asked to be buried at Drumcliff in Benbulben's shadow, while his brother Jack painted the county's horses, fairs and shorelines. But Sligo's story is far older than the Yeatses: the megalithic cemetery at Carrowmore is among the largest and most ancient in Ireland.
The name comes from Sligeach, the shelly place, after the abundant shellfish of the Garavogue estuary, and the sea still defines the county. Strandhill and Easkey are internationally known surfing breaks, Mullaghmore draws big-wave riders from around the world, and the Edwardian seaweed baths of Enniscrone carry on a distinctly Sligo cure. The town itself is the commercial capital of the north-west, with a strong traditional music heritage in the south of the county around Tubbercurry and Gurteen, the homeland of fiddle legend Michael Coleman, whose American recordings shaped Irish music worldwide.
Cities, towns and villages in Sligo
- Sligo - The county town and largest urban centre in the north-west, straddling the Garavogue river, rich in Yeats associations and home to a 13th-century abbey.
- Strandhill - Surfing village beneath Knocknarea with a famous beach break, seaweed baths and a seafront where swimming is banned but surfing thrives.
- Rosses Point - Seaside village loved by the Yeats brothers, with a championship links course and the Metal Man beacon guiding ships since 1821.
- Enniscrone - West Sligo resort on Killala Bay known for its five-kilometre beach and Kilcullen's hot seaweed baths, in business since 1912.
- Tubbercurry - South Sligo's largest town and a stronghold of traditional music, hosting the South Sligo Summer School each July.
- Ballymote - Market town with a great Norman castle where the Book of Ballymote, key to deciphering ogham script, was compiled around 1391.
- Drumcliff - Village beneath Benbulben where W.B. Yeats is buried in the churchyard of a monastery founded by St Colmcille, under his own epitaph.
- Mullaghmore - Harbour village with a big-wave surf reef offshore, overlooked by Classiebawn Castle, the summer home of Lord Mountbatten.
- Grange - North Sligo village near Streedagh Strand, where three ships of the Spanish Armada were wrecked in 1588.
Famous people from Sligo
- W.B. Yeats - Nobel Prize-winning poet who spent formative childhood summers in Sligo, drew lifelong inspiration from its landscape, and is buried at Drumcliff.
- Jack B. Yeats - Ireland's most celebrated 20th-century painter, raised in Sligo with his grandparents, whose scenes of west of Ireland life won Ireland's first Olympic medal, for art, in 1924.
- Constance Markievicz - 1916 Rising leader and the first woman elected to the Westminster parliament, raised at Lissadell House on Sligo Bay.
- Eva Gore-Booth - Poet, suffragist and labour activist, sister of Constance Markievicz, also raised at Lissadell and remembered in Yeats's verse.
- Michael Coleman - Fiddler from Killavil whose 1920s and 1930s recordings in New York became the single greatest influence on Irish traditional fiddle playing.
- Shane Filan - Sligo town native and lead singer of Westlife, the chart-topping boyband formed in Sligo with fellow locals Kian Egan and Mark Feehily.
- Neil Jordan - Oscar-winning writer and director of The Crying Game and Michael Collins, born in Sligo town in 1950.
- Ray MacSharry - Sligo politician who served as Tánaiste, Minister for Finance and European Commissioner, nicknamed Mac the Knife for his budget discipline.
- Tommy Fleming - One of Ireland's best-loved folk and ballad singers, from Aclare in south Sligo.
Did you know?
- Carrowmore is one of the largest and oldest megalithic cemeteries in Ireland, with some monuments believed to predate Newgrange.
- The huge unexcavated cairn on Knocknarea is reputed to be the grave of Queen Maeve of Connacht, and tradition asks climbers to carry a stone up to add to it.
- Three ships of the Spanish Armada were wrecked at Streedagh Strand in 1588, and survivor Francisco de Cuéllar left one of the most vivid first-hand accounts of Armada-era Ireland.
- W.B. Yeats won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923 and lies at Drumcliff beneath the epitaph he wrote himself: cast a cold eye on life, on death.
- Sligo's Irish name, Sligeach, means the shelly place, a reference to the shellfish-rich estuary of the Garavogue.
- Lord Mountbatten was assassinated by an IRA bomb on his boat off Mullaghmore in August 1979.
- Sligo Rovers, playing at the Showgrounds since 1928, are one of the few fully supporter-owned senior football clubs in Ireland.
- The Book of Ballymote, compiled in the county around 1391, provided the key that allowed scholars to decipher the ancient ogham alphabet.
Places to visit in Sligo
- Benbulben - The flat-topped mountain of Yeats country.
Surnames from Sligo: McGowan · Boland · Higgins · Feeney · O'Dowd · O'Hara · Harte · McDonagh · Finn · Carty · Cawley · Conlon