Ballymote

The castle here was built about 1300 by Richard de Burgh, the Red Earl, and it was from Ballymote that O'Donnell marched to Kinsale in 1601. The Book of Ballymote, compiled here about 1390, carries the key to ogham that let the alphabet be read again.

• Carrowkeel passage tombs · Fourteen Neolithic tombs on the Bricklieve ridges, one aligned so the midsummer sunset shines down its passage — the mirror of Newgrange, with no crowds.
• Tobernalt Holy Well · A Penal-era Mass site in a wooded glen where the priest's stone altar still stands — the well older than Patrick, the crowds still gathering on Garland Sunday.
• Creevelea Friary · The last Franciscan house founded in Ireland before the suppression — 1508, by Eóghan O’Rourke of West Bréifne and his wife Margaret O’Brian. Burned by accident in 1536 and rebuilt, dissolved about 1598, reoccupied in 1642, cleared out by the Cromwellians, and lived in again after that until 1837. A cloister carving shows Francis preaching to the birds.
• Moytura · Second Battle of Mag Tuired: the Tuatha Dé Danann against the Fomorians. Lugh of the Long Arm kills his grandfather Balor of the Evil Eye with a sling-stone through the eye.
• Knocknarea — Medb's cairn · Queen Medb stands buried upright inside, in armour, facing Ulster. Add a stone for luck — take one and she comes for it.
• Lough Gill — the Isle of Innisfree · Not myth but poem: Yeats's lake isle, where the 'bee-loud glade' and the fairy faith of Sligo gave a modern poet his oldest music.

All of these are pinned on the Hidden Ireland map.