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The island of INISHBOFIN is a mellow, balmy place, quite different from the mainland. It's more fertile, with sheltered sandy beaches, and there's a general softness to its contours. The only jagged features are the cliffs to the west (the Stags ), a fine vantage point for viewing seals basking on the shore. Even the high, heathery moorland soon gently descends to the placid Lough Boffin , rimmed with rustling water iris and bullrushes. The lough is the scene of the island's most durable myth , a story that explains how it got its name. Several versions of the tale exist, but the basic elements are constant. For eons the island lay shrouded in mist under the spell of an enchantment, but one day two lost fishermen came upon it and lit a fire by the shore, thus breaking the spell. As the mist cleared, they saw an old woman driving a white cow along the strand. She hit it with a stick and was instantly turned to rock. Taking her for a witch, the men hit her and they too immediately turned to rock: Inis Bo Finne means "Island of the White Cow". The known history of the island starts in the seventh century, when St Colman arrived here from Iona after a quarrel with Rome over the method of calculating the date of Easter. No remains exist of the monastery he founded, but ruins of a thirteenth-century church stand on the original site in a sheltered vale beside the lake in the east. Later the island was taken over by the O'Flaherties, and then Grace O'Malley is supposed to have fortified the place for her fleet. Coming into the island's long protected harbour you'll see the remains of a sixteenth-century castle, low on the hummocky terrain. It was taken and strengthened yet further by Cromwell, who used Inishbofin - and other west coast islands - as a kind of concentration camp for clerics. The most chilling reminder of his barbarity is the rock visible in the harbour at low tide. Known as Bishop's Rock , it was here that Cromwell chained one unfortunate ecclesiastic, then let his troops watch the tide come slowly in and drown him.
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