![]() Carrickfergus and the surrounding area was, for a time, treated as a separate county. Belfast Lough itself was known as 'Carrickfergus Bay' well into the 17th century. Īs an urban settlement, Carrickfergus far pre-dates the capital city Belfast and was for a lengthy period both larger and more prominent than the nearby city. According to one tale, his ship ran aground on a rock by the shore, which became known as "Carraig Fhearghais" – the rock of Fergus. The town is said to take its name from Fergus Mór (Fergus the Great), the legendary king of Dál Riata. The British peerage title of Baron Carrickfergus, which had become extinct in 1883, was bestowed upon Prince William on his wedding day in 2011. Riach has also alleged that, in addition to being an immortal work of Scottish Gaelic literature, The Birlinn of Clanranald, is, "one of the great poems of world literature." Alan Riach, who has translated the poem into English, has praised the genius of its 18th-century author and how brilliantly he emulated both Homer and Virgil in telling his tale of men against the sea. Scottish Gaelic poet Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair's immram poem Birlinn Chloinne Raghnaill ("The Birlinn of Clanranald"), describes the sea voyage of a Highland war galley from Loch Eynort, in South Uist, to Carrickfergus. The town is the subject of the classic Irish folk song " Carrickfergus", a 19th-century translation of an Irish-language song ( Do Bhí Bean Uasal) from Munster, which begins with the words, "I wish I was in Carrickfergus". It is also a townland of 65 acres, a civil parish and a barony. Carrickfergus was the administrative centre for Carrickfergus Borough Council, before this was amalgamated into the Mid and East Antrim District Council in 2015, and forms part of the Belfast Metropolitan Area. After the earldom's collapse, it remained the only English outpost in Ulster for the next four centuries. Carrickfergus Castle, built in the late 12th century at the behest of Anglo-Norman knight John de Courcy, was the capital of the Earldom of Ulster. It is County Antrim's oldest town and one of the oldest towns in Ireland as a whole. The town had a population of 27,998 at the 2011 Census. It sits on the north shore of Belfast Lough, 11 miles (18 km) from Belfast.
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