353 



of Kildare," drawn up for Sir William Petty, by a Mr. Thomas Monk, in 

 the time of the seventeenth Earl of Kildare, and therefore between the 

 years 1660 and 1664, in which the Curragh is thus referred to : 



4< Near the centre of this county is the Curragh of Kildare, a large 

 spatious plaine, and common to all the adjacent neighbourhood, who 

 find it a rich and commodious, as well as healthful pasturage, especially 

 for sheep, that bear a fine staple, and the finest flesh of any in the king- 

 dom — it being thronged with flocks all the year round. It is about 

 nine miles in compasse, and togeather with the adjoyneing grounds, is 

 reckoned one of the most pleasant sytes these kingdoms anywhere can 

 shew : the easie assents yeildinge noble and various prospects, and the 

 gentle declineings give content to the wearied traveller, as well as re- 

 create and please the gentiele horsman and keeper ; it being a place 

 naturally addapted to pleasure ; and its vicinity to Dublin — being but 

 seventeen miles distant — occasions that hither repaires the Lord Lieu- 

 tenant, or Chiefe Governor, when his Majestie's important affaires will 

 admit leisure to unbend, and slacken from trying cares. Hither are 

 also seen to come all the nobility and gentry of the kingdome, that 

 either pretende to love, or delight in hawking and hunting, or raceing; 

 for in this clearer and finer aire, the falcon goes to a higher pitch, or 

 mount, soe as often to be scarce visible; the hounds enjoy the scent 

 more freely, and the courser, in his swift carreare, is lesse sensible of 

 pressiure or opposition then other where." 



A few years previously also, i.e. in 1657, the Commissioners ap- 

 pointed to carry out the Act of Settlement returned the Curragh as a 

 pasturage common to various towns, although in the reigns of James I. 

 and Charles I. the right of pasturage thereon was granted to certain 

 patentees ; but it would seem that these grants were re-grants of rights 

 previously forfeited. 



It remains to say a word as to the extent of the Curragh. It com- 

 prises at present 4885 acres ; but it seems likely that it was anciently 

 much more extensive. Dr. 0' Donovan and others have been of opinion 

 that the Curragh extended to the River Liffey on the eastern side, as it 

 is referred to in the ancient records as being ar hru Life, i. e. " on the 

 brink of the Liffey." But the expression ar hru Life is only relatively 

 used, in the same way as Glasnevin is described in the "Martyrology of 

 Donegal" (p. 272), as "for hru ahhainn Life" "on the brink of the 

 River Liffey," although it is much farther from the river than the pre- 

 sent eastern limits of the Curragh. It is very probable, however, that 

 the Curragh extended in another direction as far as the town of Kildare. 

 St. Brogan asserts in his hymn that St. Brigid built her establishment 

 in a plain, " in campo extruxit suam civitatem." There are many no- 

 tices in her lives, implying that the land in immediate contiguity to 

 her church was a plain. This is also supported by a scholium at the 

 1st of February, in the Festology of Aengus Cele De, a copy of which 

 is preserved in a twelfth-century MS. in the Bodleian Library, which 

 represents the saint's cows as having on one occasion given so much 

 milk, that the surplus, after filling all the pails, formed the lake called 



