The World of The Warrior's Daughter
by Holly Bennett
The Plain of Muirthemne
The Warrior's Daughter takes place in this area.
Dun Dealgan
This is the site of Dun Dealgan, Cuchulainn's stronghold and my heroine Luaine's home. The tower standing here now was built much later, during the British occupation of Ireland. It stands on a hill reinforced with a stone wall, and you can see for miles and miles in every direction.
This place gave me the chills. I sat at the edge of the wall just staring at the countryside, thinking, "she lived right here." Suddenly Luaine seemed real to me.
You can see the little white flowers in the grass that I describe in the book. For some reason they made quite an impression on me.
Dun Dealgan View
You have to mentally block out the town of Dundalk to see the view northeast from Luaine's home. The hills in the distance are the beginning of the Cooley Mountains. It's overcast (as usual!) in this picture so a bit hard to see, but the gold haze on the hills is made by stands of gorse.
Holly and Richard
Still at Dundealgan. This is Richard Marsh, the storyteller and guide who showed us these places and was an endless mine of information—and me dutifully taking notes. You can see Richard is used to dressing for changeable Irish weather—look at all the layers!
Baile's Strand
It's just a beach like many others. But a lot happens in Irish legend on this beach—or strand, as the Irish call it. In The Warrior's Daughter, this is where the tragic fight between Cuchulainn and his only son took place
Emain Macha Embankment
Yep, King Conchobor's strong-hold was a real place, and so was his huge hall. You can't see the scope of it on the ground -- but do a Google image search of "Navan Fort," (what it's called now) and you'll see a perfectly round hill with round indentations still visible where some of the biggest buildings were. This is the ditch surrounding the site. In Luaine's time, it would have been surmounted by a strong fence.
Irish National Heritage Park
This is what ordinary people lived in—wattle homes covered in mud daub and with a conical thatched roof. Nobles seemed to have lived in really big versions of more or less the same thing. When I started writing the book, it was really hard to get the idea of medieval stone castles out of my head, and replace it with an image of big, round, thatched houses!
(That's my husband John on the right.)
Chuchulainn's Death Pillar
This is claimed to be the very stone that Luaine's father tied himself to when mortally wounded, "the way he would die standing up, facing his enemies." It's taller than me, just standing there in a farmer's field. Kinda creepy.
Chuchulainn Statue
And here he is, dying tied to that same stone, with the famous crow (or raven? Looks like a raven to me!) on his shoulder.
This statue is in the window of the Post Office in Dublin. There's too much glare from the glass to get a good picture head-on, but I sort of like the dramatic light in this shot.
The Isle of Women
Another gray Irish day! But I loved this place, now a shrine to Mary called Our Lady's Island, and a bird sanctuary.
This is the view from the tip of the main island, across to the small Island that is a place of power in The Warrior's Daughter.
As for that mysterious tree, apparently it is the only survivor of 60 trees that were once planted there. Someone took their goats to graze on the island, and they ate all the other saplings!