Abstract
In the mid-1830s the great Irish scholar John O’Donovan toured the country gathering local traditions on behalf of the Ordnance Survey, and when he visited the townland of Ballynagran, co. Wicklow, he was informed that the ruined structure there, known locally as Mac Dermot’s castle, was the place to which Diarmait Mac Murchada had brought Derbforgaill, the wife of Tigernán Ua Ruairc, when he abducted her in 1152.1 The story has little to recommend it since the castle may postdate the event by as much as a century, but, if it tells us anything, it is that one should not underestimate the force of tradition. The so-called ‘rape of Dervorgilla’ may be just a line in a set of annals, but at some point it entered the public imagination. Historians, anxious not to allow undue weight to personal animus, tend to play down the importance of events such as these as motivating forces, but in this case they may be wrong. When, during a raid on Bréifne in 1152, Diarmait Mac Murchada made off with the wife of Tigernán Ua Ruairc, he made an enemy for life; and it was an outrage for which, as we shall see, Tigernán later sought harsh vengeance.
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Notes and references
The Book of Leinster, I, ed. R. I. Best, Osborn Bergin, and M. A. O’Brien (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1954), p. xvii.
J.J. O’Meara, ‘Giraldus Cambrensis in Topographia Hiberniae. Text of the first recension’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 52, C (1948–50), 131; Giraldus Cambrensis, History and Topography of Ireland, ed. O’Meara, p. 52.
For discussion, see John Gillingham, ‘The English invasion of Ireland’, in B. Bradshaw, A. Hadfield, and W. Maley (eds.), Representing Ireland: Literature and the Origins of Conflict, 1534–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 24–42.
Goddard Henry Orpen (ed.), The Song of Dermot and the Earl (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892), pp. 23–5.
A. B. Scott and F. X. Martin (eds.), Expugnatio Hibernica. The Conquest of Ireland by Giraldus Cambrensis (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 1978), p. 27.
See W. L. Warren, ‘The interpretation of twelfth-century Irish history’, in Historical Studies VII, ed. J. C. Beckett (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), pp. 1–19 (at pp. 9–13).
Perhaps the best introduction to the world of Henry II and his dynasty is John Gillingham, The Angevin Empire (London: Edward Arnold, 1984); the phrase occurs on p. 29.
Quoted in A. J. Otway-Ruthven, A History of Medieval Ireland (London: Ernest Benn, 1968), p. 47.
Gervase of Canterbury, Historical Works, ed. William Stubbs (London: Rolls Series, 1879–80), I, p. 235.
J. E. Lloyd, A History of Wales from Earliest Times to the Conquest, 2 vols (London: Longman, Green and Co., 1911), II, pp. 545–6.
J. T. Gilbert (ed.), Chartularies of St Mary’s Abbey, Dublin, 2 vols (London: Rolls Series, 1884–6), II, p. 305.
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© 1997 Seán Duffy
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Duffy, S. (1997). Adventus Anglorum. In: Ireland in the Middle Ages. British History in Perspective. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25171-1_4
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