Geography
The town, in the heart of typical South Ulster drumlin and lake countryside, lies above the western shore of Lough Muckno, an 'area of primary amenity value' and the largest lake in County Monaghan. The River Fane flows eastwards from the lake to the Irish Sea at Dundalk in County Louth. As the Irish name of the lake, 'the place where pigs swim', suggests, the area is associated with the Black Pig's Dyke (also known locally in parts of Counties Cavan and Monaghan as the Worm Ditch), an ancient Iron Age boundary of Ulster. A few miles to the north-east is the highest elevation in County Monaghan, 'Mullyash', altitude 317 m (1,034 ft), designated as an 'area of secondary amenity value'. It was associated with folk festivals until modern times that were often disapproved of by the churches. Since the 17th century, markets and fair days were held in the town, but these faded away in recent decades. Beyond the town, there are a variety of proposed natural heritage sites.
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Famous quotes containing the word geography:
“Where the heart is, there the muses, there the gods sojourn, and not in any geography of fame. Massachusetts, Connecticut River, and Boston Bay, you think paltry places, and the ear loves names of foreign and classic topography. But here we are; and, if we tarry a little, we may come to learn that here is best. See to it, only, that thyself is here;—and art and nature, hope and fate, friends, angels, and the Supreme Being, shall not absent from the chamber where thou sittest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Ktaadn, near which we were to pass the next day, is said to mean “Highest Land.” So much geography is there in their names.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)