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The lively town of BALLYSHANNON , four miles north of Bundoran at the mouth of the River Erne, was the site of a major battle in 1591 when Hugh Roe O'Donnell drove off the besieging English army, but nowadays its hilly streets become most animated during the Traditional Music Festival on the first weekend in August. This is one of the most popular traditional music events in Ireland with performances by major names, such as Donegal's own Altan, along with a multitude of unknown talents. You'll need to book accommodation well in advance, though impromptu space can often be found on someone's floor.

The town stands a few hundred yards upstream from a ford, at the point where the river's fresh waters begins to mingle with the ocean. Most of the interest lies up the steep northern slope and is easily combined in a single, straightforward stroll. The main arteries here form a wishbone, and near the top of the left-hand branch, signposted to the left, is St Anne's Church and graveyard, built on the site of the ancient palace of Mullaghanshee. A simple marble slab, inscribed with the word "poet", lies to the left of the church, indicating the burial place of William Allingham (1824-89). Allingham was born in Ballyshannon and began work in a bank (the Allied Irish Bank has a bust of the poet and preserves the words scratched by him on a windowpane). His first volume, Poems (1850), contains his best-known work The Fairies ("Up the airy mountain, down the rushy glen, we dare not go a'hunting for fear of little men&"). Unsurprisingly, such verse attracted him to the pre-Raphaelites: another work, Day and Night Songs , was illustrated by Rosetti and Millais, before Allingham moved on to the more serious poetic subject of his homeland. His posthumous Diary , which was edited by his wife, the illustrator Helen Paterson, recounts his friendships with literary contemporaries, most notably Tennyson. Allingham was also a fiddler and balladeer of some skill and contributed to Petrie's collections of "Ancient Irish Music".

From the graveyard there's a marvellous view over the town. Down at the quay, you can see the backs of the tall, old warehouses lined along the river bank, their basement walls dripping with seaweed, and also the ancient isle of Inis Saimer just out in the river. There's only a wooden summerhouse on the island now, but it claims to have sheltered the first colonists of Ireland, around 3500 BC, offering safety from the ferocious beasts that would have roamed the forests on the mainland. A recently excavated ancient Greek coin has provided evidence of the site's antiquity. The water here teems with fish, and you'll find anglers still trying to bag them well into the night.