Garret Island is impenetrable under a canopy of trees growing at every conceivable angle. When the Irish Examiner visited recently there was a feeling of a lost city to this small but fascinating place in the monument-rich Lough Gur, Co Limerick. The Earl of Desmond, Garret, having failed to act against the rebels, fell out of favour with Queen Elizabeth and he was a marked man. This earl’s fortress at Lough Gur was under constant attack from Carew’s men stationed at nearby Kilmallock. But once in every seven years, on clear moonlight nights, he emerges temporarily, when the Lough Gur peasantry sees him as a phantom mounted on a phantom white horse, leading a phantom or fairy cavalcade across the lake and land.”Garret Island is the only natural island on Lough Gur.

Source: Irish Examiner June 09, 2019 18:11 UTC