Frommer's Review
Eight kilometers (5 miles) north of Sligo Town, Drumcliff is a small, stone church that somehow manages to dominate the valley in which it sits -- drawing your eye with its tall steeple and its ancient Celtic crosses. When Yeats died in 1939 in France, he asked that, "If I die here, bury me up there on the mountain, and then after a year or so, dig me up and bring me privately to Sligo." True to his wishes, in 1948 his body was moved here, to the church where his great-grandfather had been a rector. As you walk into the graveyard, Yeats's grave is marked with a dark, modest stone just to the left of the church. He's buried alongside his young wife, Georgie Hyde-Lee (when they married in 1917 he was 52 and she was 23). The moving epitaph ("Cast a cold eye on life, on death . . .") comes from his poem "Under Ben Bulben." The church sits atop the 6th-century foundations of the monastery St. Columba, and the round tower on the main road dates from that earlier building. The high cross in the churchyard is from the 11th century, and its faded eastern side shows Christ, Daniel in the lions' den, Adam and Eve, and Cain murdering Abel. On the simpler west side, there's a scene of the crucifixion. The little visitor center has a few gifts and doodads, and an excellent tea shop with marvelous cakes; good, hearty sandwiches; and fresh hot soup.
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