SNIPPET: Per Ian HILL, in "Irish Counties," J. J. LEE, Salamander Books Lmt, London -- "Just as the old men, pipe smoking dark tobacco in public houses in County Down, oblige with the fiction that there is one island in Strangford Lough for every day of the year, those in County Cavan will proffer you the obverse. Cavan, a lakeland labyrinth, has, they boast, a lake in the county for each and every day of the 365. A 'disappearing' one, over a limestone sump, takes a curtain call each leap year. Fanciful or not, it is a description which will suffice for the county's fortunes, precarious enough at times, and its principal legends have water at their fount. At its centre, is a scatter of lakes linked by waterways natural and unnatural. The 250 mile-long (402 km) Shannon, Ireland's greatest river, and major provider both of the country's indigenous hydro-electric power, and its water-based tourism, has its source in the moistness of the western slopes of Cuilcagh Mountain. Here, water sparkles down in the deep pool under the lichen-covered trees and the river, which takes its name from 'Sionna,' grand-daughter of 'Lir,' the god of the seas, begins its journey to the Atlantic. Meanwhile its neighbour, the River Erne, rises near Crosskeys and flows first south, then, in Lough Gowna, turns north towards Fermanagh's two broad lakes, upper and Lower Lough Erne. In the mid-19th century the proximity of these two rivers, the Shannon and the Erne, inspired the construction of the ill-planned Ballinamore-Ballyconnell Canal which it was hoped would complete the circuit of commercial canals that was to link Dublin to Belfast. However, this was never to be. As the budget overran, as canal budgets always seemed to, several economies of scale were made: depth was reduced to just over 3 feet (1 m), while canal towpaths, which were expensive to construct, were maintained despite the patent impossibility of operating a horse-tow across the wider lakes. By the time the canal was completed in 1860, having taken 14 years to build, a sad catalogue of penny-pinching, mismanagement, and general ineptitude had rendered it virtually unusable and certainly no match for the increasingly commercial railway companies. From the minute it was officially opened, water leaked from locks, banks caved and when what would be the last boat to do so passed through its locks in 1936, it took three weeks. Official records show that only eight boats had paid tolls on the 36 mile (58 km) journey, in either direction, in the 76 years since construction had been completed. Today, in a period of post-industrial nostalgia and increasing leisure time, there is a burgeoning desire to observe (gin and tonic in hand) the manicured outdoors and the remnants of that once labour-intensive environment. The European Commission has funded much of the reopening of the Ballinamore-Ballyconnell Canal, now promoted - logically, but with little eye for the nuances of nostalgia with which its attractions are imbued - as the Shannon-Erne Waterway. The massive, hand-chiselled locks tower over the boats as always, but a credit card-like device allows captains-for-the-week, piloting their shallow, plastic-skinned hire-cruisers, to operate the huge wooden lock gates by sweatless and silent electric power. Bankside alder, willow, hazel, flat iris, watchful heron and dipping grebe accustom themselves to the habits of these new invaders of their once-silent water world." ....