Norwich bulletin., 1920-07-21
IN THE DAYS NEWS
Londonderry.

The National Geographic Society has
 issued from it's Washington, D. C., 1 headquarters, the following bulletin about Londonderry Ireland
 Derry, or Londonderry. in Ulster,
 known in song and legend as the Maiden City of Ireland has the charm of the cheery, busy town and is truly charac- terized by the stirring marching song which these Irish sing on their days of celebration:
 Where Foyle his swelling waters rolls northward to the main,
 Here, Queen of Erin's daughters, fair Derry fixed her reign;
 A holy temple crowned her, and com merce graeed her street
 i A rampant wall was round her, the river at her feet
 These four lines briefly tell London derTy's story. Along the two-mile auays
 of the river Irishmen jolly each other as ] they load and unload the foreign, colonial | and coasting trade of the docking ves- sells. For the Foyle is wide and deep, and large tonnage ships sailing the flags
 of France, Australia, Brazil, the United
 States, and India bring their wares to | her port. Busy looms in the city make | linen, and then laughing, twinkly-eyed 1 Irish girls make the linen into shirts be- 1 fore it leaves Londonderry. The salmon 1 fishery on the Foyle is important and the
 town has timber mills, foundries grain mills, and shipyards.
 But Derry has for the traveller a charm greater than its hustle and up- l! and-doing atmosphere-the story of a 1 past replete with romance, devotion to 1 principle, and the exhibition of an in ] domitable spirit. Columba. the greatest ! of the Irish saints after Patrick and 1 Brigid, in 546 looked on the oak-clad hills and coveted them. Here he found ed his abbey, known as Daire- Columb- kille, or Columba's Oak Grove within the
 shadow of the great fort on a neighbor- l ing hill, the stronghold of the Lord of Tyrone, in order that his sanctuary
 might have the protection of the fort. But in vain did he reckon his chances against his shores. Despite their plum dering and burnings, the settlement, of which he had made the nucleus, grew and maintained its independence against even the English until 1909.
 I Derry was then given to the corpora I tion of London, which tackled on the ] prefix London. Three years later the i Irish Society, to which Londonderry and much of the surrounding country had been given, pledged itself to enclose Der try within walls, and these walls wide enough for coach and four, are excel lently preserved today, perhaps to the in- ,l convenience of the inhabitants but cer- tainly in accordance with their sentiment and wishes. Any one who expressed a desire that they be taken down would be treated as a traitor. Long ago they grew too small to encompass all the in habitants of the hustiing port, but they stand like a stiff belt around the waist I line of the hill on which the city is built
 The most inconvenient thing about them
 is that, though they are more than a
 mile in circumference there are only
 seven gates leading through them. Be- cause the walls defended the city in the siege begun by James II, busy mar must make quite a jaunt out of his way to find passageway through them, but true to Irish sentiment, he does it with. out a murnur. On one of the bastions of the wall an old gun, affeetionately known as Roaring Meg, points her nose
 over the city.
 Here. too, on the hill in the center oi a crowded old graveyard stands the
 quaint. squat cathedral with it's queer
 pinnacled tower. It is called after St
 Colunba, although it is not on the site oi the old abbey built by the Saint four
 teen centuries ago.
 II 'On a high, inaccessible hill in the 7 distance, looms the stronghold of the s LorQS or tyrone. It Is said that St ,i Patrick came to the fort to baptize Il Owen who first set himself up to rule t over the province of Tyrone, and St s Columbia visited it be/ore his exile
 Here, too, captive Danes who had g threatened the peace of the city were . dragged in triumph. Though every trace of the old castle 7 has been obliterated, the massive stone l wall fourteen feet thick and eighteen 5 feet high, resembling the handiwork o1