Gulliver's Travels:

Any ‘Lord of the Rings' fans will appreciate the huge and highly lucrative fuss which was made over all things Tolkien and Middle-earth, when Peter Jackson's award-winning movie trilogy was created and launched in New Zealand.Although New Zealand had no tangible links with or influences on Tolkien's legendarium, Jackson's vision - and not to mention the vision of the local and national authorities - turned the country into a veritable Mecca for ‘Rings' fans. Seven years later, nothing has changed.Now, I'm not suggesting for one second that the new Gulliver's Travels movie is as big as the Jackson trilogy, or that Jonathan Swift's novel of the same name is as widely read as Tolkien's tome.In fact, the movie hasn't won the affections of critics, with Empire Magazine slating it as “a low-grade comedy that'll have Jonathan Swift turning in his grave”.But even if the movie is terrible, surely that will only encourage people to go back to the real story; either way, many eyes across the world are focused on Swift, his work, and Lilliput.Therein lies a a renewed opportunity for the town and the county to promote Swift's links with Westmeath, especially with regard to the etymology of Lilliput - one of two fictional, fantastical islands visited by Lemuel Gulliver in the satirical novel.Lilliput is, of course, supposedly named after the real area of Lilliput, located on the shores of Lough Ennell near Dysart, Mullingar.Throughout his life, Swift - the Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin - was a regular visitor to Westmeath, often as a guest of the Rochfort family of Gaulstown House, on the Milltownpass-Rochfortbridge road not far from Belvedere House and Gardens.He was a close friend of George Rochfort of Gaulstown, the father of Robert Rochfort, who commissioned Belvedere and became famous as ‘The Wicked Earl', who locked up his wife for 31 years after she had reportedly been unfaithful to him.During one of his sojourns in Westmeath, Swift is said to have visited the Dysart shore of Lough Ennell. One day, while on a boat on the lake, he spotted a number of people walking along the opposite shore, and being so far away, they appeared tiny to his eye. It is at this moment that Swift came up with the idea of the Lilliputians - the pint-sized race of people at the centre of Gulliver's Travels.The area around Lough Ennell visited by Swift had been known as Nure since ancient times, though it is likely that the Dean was aware of, or had been told of, its ancient name. Known in early Christian times for its links to St. Patrick's sister, it is said that “Lilliput” derives from her name, Lupita.Such was the success of Gulliver's Travels, that shortly after the publication of the book in 1726, locals in Westmeath once again began to refer to the lakeshore as Lilliput, as it is called to this day.Physically, Swift identified Lilliput and its neighbouring island, Blefuscu, as being situated in the Indian Ocean, not far east of the Indonesian island of Sumatra.But spiritually and conceptually, we are fortunate enough to say, the origins of Gulliver's Travels go back to the shores of one of Westmeath's great lakes.