The Mourne Mountains were once called Beanna Boirche, the peaks of Boirche. In a medieval text Boirche was the cowherd of Ross the Red, King of Ulster in the 3rd century, and his seat was the great peak, Slieve Donard. The Yorkshire Ramblers' Club journal of 1901 uses a 12th-century poem for his story.
The writer walks the old Brandy Paths, the smugglers' roads over the pass between the Devil's Coach Road cliffs and Slieve Commedagh, by which brandy and tobacco went on ponies to the markets of Hilltown, Rathfriland and Lurgan. He says no accident on them ever gave rise to a legend, but that Borcha, the ghostly herdsman of Ulster, still gathers and drives his cattle through the moaning night wind or the creeping fog.
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