Ballymahon

On the Inny in the south of the county, in the country Oliver Goldsmith grew up in. Lissoy nearby, where he was raised, is taken to be the Auburn of his poem, emptied as he said by a landlord clearing ground for a demesne.

Ballymahon is the town of Mahon, but which Mahon is disputed: some say Brian Boru's elder brother, believed by some to have fought a battle at Shrule nearby in 960; others Mahon O'Ferrall, chief of Annaly, who died in 1353. The first record of the town is from 1578, when land here was granted to the Dillons, later Earls of Roscommon, and the Down Survey of 1654 shows a cluster of houses on the Inny. The late-Georgian town was built up in the 19th century by the Shuldhams and King-Harmans, and from 1788 to 1853 the Catholic bishops of Ardagh lived here.

Drawn from the History section of the Wikipedia article on Ballymahon ↗, rewritten here and adding nothing it does not say; licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

• Portlick Castle · castle · 13 km

Straight-line distances from the town centre, from each site's documented coordinates.

• Corlea Trackway · An 18-metre stretch of the great oak road of 148 BC, preserved in a climate-controlled hall exactly where the bog swallowed it.
• Hill of Uisneach · The mythic navel of Ireland, where the five provinces met at the Catstone and the great Bealtaine fire was lit — answered by fires on hills across the island.
• Hill of Uisneach · Where the goddess Ériu, who gave Ireland its name, met the invading Milesians and was promised the island would bear her name forever. It has.
• Brí Léith — Midir and Étaín · Midir of the Sídhe played the High King Eochaid at fidchell for his own wife back, lost on purpose until the last game, then took Étaín out through the roof as two swans. Eochaid dug into this hill after her and was given fifty women wearing her face.

All of these are pinned on the Hidden Ireland map.