Monaghan

A drumlin-country market town, seat of the MacMahon lordship of Oriel until its partition by English commissioners in 1591 — a rehearsal for the plantation of Ulster. The poet Patrick Kavanagh farmed this 'stony grey soil' at Inniskeen.

• Navan Fort (Emain Macha) · Capital of the Ulaid and stage of the Ulster sagas — where a huge timber temple was built, filled with stones and deliberately burned around 95 BC.
• Clones · Tigernach’s 6th-century monastery. A round tower, a stone sarcophagus said to be the saint’s, and a five-metre high cross whose shaft was carved between 825 and 875 — the head added later, by other hands.
• The Yellow Ford · August 1598: Hugh O'Neill destroys an English army marching to relieve the Blackwater fort — the worst defeat England ever suffered in Ireland.
• Benburb · June 1646: Owen Roe O'Neill's Spanish-trained army annihilates Monro's Scots on the Blackwater — the greatest Irish victory of the Confederate wars.
• Emain Macha — the Red Branch · Court of King Conchobar and the Red Branch knights; where the boy Sétanta killed Culann's hound and became Cú Chulainn, 'the Hound of Culann'.
• Emain Macha — Macha's curse · Forced to race the king's horses while pregnant, Macha cursed the men of Ulster to suffer birth-pangs in their hour of greatest need — which is why one boy fought the Táin alone. The site bears her name.
• Emain Macha — Deirdre of the Sorrows · Deirdre, promised to King Conchobar, fled with Naoise; when he was killed on their return to Emain she died of grief. In some tellings, yew trees grew from the two graves and twined together.
• The Black Pig’s Dyke · A huge black boar tore up the ground with its tusks, and the ridge it threw up runs yet — in broken stretches across Leitrim, Longford, Cavan, Monaghan and Fermanagh. The boar is folklore; the bank is not. Timber from the Monaghan stretch dates to 390–370 BC. This pin marks one length of a very long thing.

All of these are pinned on the Hidden Ireland map.