The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1915-04-07
ANCIENT TOWN
Of T|PPERARY
Some Facts About the Irish Town
and Country Famous in Song.
And where is Tipperary?

is singing. Wnlcn Is tne uIillosI Iiio'
the majority of the singers know
about the real Tipperary, says the
Philadelphia Record.
1t is related that Cornwell once
stood on a hill top in Erin and sur
veyed the smiling expanse of fertile
plain that unfolded before his eyes.
What is the land worth fighting
forp he exclaimed. He was gaz-
ing at the golden vale-the heart
of Tipperary.
Tipperary today is a region as
beautiful as it's people are hospita-
BILE and kindly; peaceful region
Quietly prosperous, people proud
of their history and relics of the
golden age of Cashet of the kings.
It is a region whose story is inter-
woven with the most glorious and
the most distressing events of Irish
history. 1t is region bright with
color and vivid with romance.
A word about the Tipperary of to-
day. There is Tipperary the country
and Tipperary the garrison town.
No matter which of the two the
rimester had in mind when he made
his song. Tipperary town is desert
bed as "slow" sort of place,
which never recovered from the
"kick up" in the Irish party after
Parnell's death-but most of this
later. Tipperary county is in the
Irish province of Muster, and is the
sixth largest county in Ireland, hav
ing 1,O62,963 acres of peat bog,
meadow, field and mountain. 1t is
varied and picturesque land. Most
Of it is great plain. On its south
ern border are the Knock-mealdown
mountains, and north of them the
wild Galtees-Galtymore, the high
est of them, lifts it's ancient head
over 5000 feet in air. On the east
are the Silieve Ardagh hills, and
near the town of Templemore the
storied Devils Bit mountains. The
Son is Tipperary's biggest river. 1t
takes its rise in the Devils Bit, and
flows southwark and eastward by the
historic town of Templemor Thurles,
Cashed and Clonmel. The river
Shannon, the poets own river, wash
es the border of the county.
Tipperary of this modern day is
one of the best agricultural districts
in Ireland. From Cashel to LINER
lex, right in the midst of Tipperary,
stretches the golden vale, the most
fertile valley in all Erin. Tipperary
is given mostly to agriculture and
dairying. There ale some ancient
lead mines, whose ores hold trace
of silver, but they engage only
small portion of the populace. Large
meal and flour mills are scattered
over the country, and the town of
Tipperary comes second only to the
city of Cork as butter market.
The town of Tipperary is very an
cient. King John built a castle there
as far back as the 18th century and
one of the landmarks of the place
is an old gate house which belonged
to an Augustinian monastery found
ed by Henry ILL.,, One of the show
places Of the town is the barracks,
built by the English government,
about which, by the way, a humor-
Gus story is told. 1t seems that the
government architects were stimuli
taneously planning a barracks for
Tipperary and a barracks for Hong
Kong, China. Both sets of plans
were drawn up and forwarded to
their destinations. By some blunder
the Tipperary plans went to Hong
Kong and the Hong Kong plans to
Tipperary. No one was any the
wiser until the work of the builders
was complete. So it happens that a
fine piece of Anglo-C Chinese archi-
lecture can be seen any day at the
base of the Slieve-na-Muck hills of
Tipperary.
"Tip-rar-ry," as the townspeople
call it, hasn't very large popula-
tion-6,000, according to the last
available census figures. And one