The Hill of Slane: The Fire That Was Not Allowed

Muirchú, writing a heavily mythologised Life of Patrick in the seventh century, says that Patrick lit a Paschal fire on this hilltop in 433, in direct defiance of the High King Lóegaire, who had forbidden any fire while the festival fire burned on Tara. Historians think Muirchú moved a fire lit somewhere else to Slane for the sake of the story — and the reason the story works at all is that you can see Tara from here, sixteen kilometres away. The hilltop now carries a ruined 16th-century friary and college.