AN GAODHAL.
483
GAEL GLAS ON THE PROPHECIES.
(Third Letter)
Sept, 4th. 1885.
To the Editor of the GAEL.
Dear Sir, — In my last letter I demonstrated,
from the writings of that impartial Irish Protest¬
ant historian, Sir James Ware, that Ireland had
in ancient times numerous prophetic sages who
foretold the future destiny of their nation; and
as he had in the compilation of his Annals and An¬
tiquities of Ireland, the valuable assistance of that
profound Celtic scholar, genealogist and antiquary,
the erudite Duald MacFirbis of Sligo, there may
be no reasonable doubt of the veracity of the facts
which these learned savants have recorded.
In my remarks upon the European prophecies,
foreign to Ireland, I omitted to important facts
which should not be overlooked, namely, that St.
Edward the Confessor foretold the re-conversion
of England, and that Blessed Bobola, a Polish
saint, has prophesied that the liberation of Poland
should take place during a great warlike crisis,
when the armed hosts of Europe should be engag¬
ed in the strife of deadly warfare. I have not dee¬
med it necessary to allude to the apocryphal por¬
tion of those predictions which, I am satisfied, will
never be verified, but have dwelt more largely up¬
on the promised advent of that great character, the
Charlovingian monarch of the future. Concerning
this remarkable personage, his identity, nationali¬
ty and time of appearance, I may hazard a conjec¬
ture when, in my next letter I begin to give my
interpretation of some of the unfulfilled scriptural
prophecies; but in the present article I shall con¬
fine myself to giving my opinion upon the cause
which primarily led to the national subjugation of
Ireland while at the same time showing what
steps must necessarily be taken in order to bring
about her ultimate redemption. According to my
opinion it was the contentions, belligerent, rapa¬
cious dispositions of the chief monarchs, provin¬
cial kings, and ruling toparks, together with the
general moral depravity of a great portion of the
people, which took place during the 158 years
which elapsed between the death of Brian Boru
at the Battle of Clontarf in 1014 and the invasion
by Henry the Second, which took place in the year
1172, which gradually led to, and was principally
the incipient cause of, Irish bondage. It was dur¬
ing the afore-mentioned interval that, according
to the Annals of Boyle and other authorities, the
most reprehensible practise prevailed of cruelly
putting out the eyes of royal captives in order to
disqualify them for sovereignty; that the sacrilege
of plundering churches and monasteries became
notorious; and that the inhabitants of Breffny
plundered the monastery of Clonfert in Connaught
and, according to the Annals of the Four Masters,
burned a monastery with its inmates in the same
province. It was during this unsettled time that
Donough, son of Brian Boru, having become very
unacceptable to the ruling princes and nobility of
the country, was deposed by them from the sup¬
reme authority as partially acknowledged monarch
of the island; and that they decided in a general
assembly to obey him no longer, but to bestow the
whole island upon Pope Urban the Second, which
was accordingly done, (See O'Connors Keating,
page 211,) and the said Donough having gone on
a pilgrimage to Rome he there, it is said, surren¬
dered the crown of his nation into the hands of the
Sovereign Pontiff. It was pursuant to these acts
and in order to heal dissention that the popes of
Rome, according to the same author, exer¬
cised for some sixty years a kind of quasi
regal superintendence over the government
of Ireland. But it was during this papal
regime that, according to the Annals of the Four
Masters, the great battle of Moinmore in South
Munster was fought, wherein seven thousand of
the valorous Dalcassians were slain by the combi¬
ned forces of Connaught, Ulster and Leinster.
And that the wife of O'Rourke, Lord of Breffny,
had been forcibly abducted during her husband's
absence at Lough Dearg, by that licherous traitor
Dermod Mac Murrough, King of Leinster, which
wicked crime notoriously led to the invasion and
ultimate conquest of Ireland by the English.
Abbe MacGeoghegan has exhibited great weak¬
ness of mind in endeavoring to extenuate the guilt
of Dermod by calling his crime an act of gallant¬
ry, because, as he says, the lady had sent for him
to come and take her away. Dr. Keating too
blames her for her want of fidelity to her hus¬
band. And Moore also, in his history of Ireland,
following in the same strain, inculpates her; and
in one of his melodies has, I think, the bad taste
if not the impropriety of styling her, "Falsest of
women," and also, "The young false one." The
Four Masters tell us that she was not young, but
that she was over forty years of age when she was
carried away; while Keating admits that she ut¬
tered loud cries and made a great show of resist¬
ance at the time of her seizure. The historians
have seemed to think that the absence of her hus¬
band at that time effords a plausibility of her guilt:
but this is evidently wrong for the king of Lein¬
ster who suddenly rushed to her mansion with a
troop of armed horsemen would have made no ac¬
count of the presence of O'Rourke on that occas¬
ion. Bishop John O'Connell who wrote his Dirge
of Ireland about 160 years ago bears testimony to
the depravity of morals which prevailed in Ireland
before and after the English invasion, and charac¬
terizes some of the excesses and irregularities com¬
mitted as. —
"Goid is bruid, is bhreith air éigion; a
mná d'a malartúghadh thar a chéile, is a
mná féin aco d'a d-tréigion"
But the moral delinquency here alluded to could
