The group is now assembled. It seems that Glenkildove is a remote glen on the far side of the mountain. You'll need to climb up the mountain and over its shoulder, and then pick your way down into the narrow valley along a steep, precipitous path.
"It's hard to get to," Simon says, as the six of you leave the main road once again and begin climbing up a trail that leads upslope through the woods. "But that's part of what makes it special. The last wolf in Ireland was killed in Glenkildove. Fadó fadó, as the storytellers say. A long, long time ago."
Simon goes on to describe the history of the glen. It seems to have been a sacred place even in neolithic times; there's a circle of standing stones in the western part of the valley. When Christianity came to Ireland, monks began looking for places far from civilization in which they could meditate and pray undisturbed. One group, led by a monk named Enda, left their old monastery in Clonmacnoise after a row with the abbot there. They traveled east, found their way up to the hidden glen here, and built a settlement by the lake at its heart.
"They called the lake the Devil's Cauldron and the valley itself the Glen of the Black Wood," Simon says. "They thought that all the glen was haunted by the numina, the spirits of the earth that the old Irish had worshipped there."
"Strange place to build a monastery."
"Why is it called 'Glenkildove' now if they called it the Glen of the Black Wood?"
"Do we know anything more about the standing stones and the people who put them there?"
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