Page 138 - Demo

138 Stephen Dunford: The Journey of The IrIsh
in 1152, accompanied by a band of chosen horsemen, swept into the territory of Tier- nan O’Rourke, prince of Breffni, his enemy of long standing, when the latter was away on pilgrimage of attonement to the Holy Island of St. Patrick, at Lough Derg, Donegal, and carried off Dervorgilla, O’Rourke’s wife.
The powerful O’Rourkes who once ruled lands from the modern town of Kells in coun- ty Meath to the northern tip of county Sligo, had a long association with the Abbey of Clonmacnoise, so unsurprisingly the Annals of Clonmacnoise recorded the unsupported propaganda statement that Diramuid took Dervorgilla “to satisfy his insatiable carnel and adulterous lust.”
Now neither Dervorgilla or Diarmuid could be blamed for acting in the folly of youth-he was forty-two and she was forty-four, but posterity is still puzzled as to whether Dervorgilla who is called “the Helen of Ireland,” was a mere scapegoat or alternatively a scarlet women and Diarmuid her paramour. Was she forcibly abducted, did she elope for love or did she depart with Diarmuid for some other unknown reason? –questions which history is still di- vided on. Yet, she sort of proved the old maxim that a man chases a woman until she catches him and some Irish and Norman accounts say that it was she who arranged the abduction. In any case, we will probably never know the truth, but, what we do know for certain is that as a result, there were many influential individuals, ready, willing, and as it turned out, able, to get rid of Diramuid.
I looked for the lamp which she told me Should shine when the pilgrim returned But the darkness began to enfold me No lamp from the battlements burned
I flew to her chamber-‘twas empty,
As if the loved tenant lay dead;-
Ah, would it were death, and death only! But no, the young false one had fled.
(2/8 verses of The Song of O Rourke by Thomas Moore)
fff