Drumlins, Drumlins, Drumlins

Drumlins, Drumlins, Drumlins The landscape changes from the little hills of Monaghan, to the flat, or gentler inclines of Louth, around Ardee. These drumlins spread up through Monaghan, out through Cavan, and up through Lough Erne in Fermanagh. The islands in Lough Erne are half submerged drumlins. The net effect of this mass of drumlins, meant from ancient to medieval times, that Ulster as a whole, was easily defended from the South, and from the English Pale.
Each hill would typically have been a townland, though some have merged or been split over time. There would have been one extended family, living in a fort or a homestead, a bally if you like. Families, typically but not exclusively native families, were living that way here, up till the Napoleonic Wars and some even later than that. But the hills weren’t divided into fields like now. Those hedges are an 19th Century innovation encouraged by the landlords. Each drumlin was surrounded by undrained lowland, wet, boggy, overgrown and (hopefully) impassable to livestock escaping, and to trouble coming in. The outlines of the townlands still follow the streams today. Livestock would be let out in the morning and brought back in at night. More like the Masai in Kenya, than Little Boy Blue’s The sheep’s in the meadow, the cow’s in the corn.