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IRISH MELODIES. 61 |
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THE SONG OF O'RUARK,
PRINCE OF BREFFXI. *
The valley lay smiling before me,
"Where lately I left her behind; Yet I trembled, and something hung o'er me
That sadden'd the joy of my mind. I look'd for the lamp which, she told me,
Should shine, when her Pilgrim return'd; But, though darkness began to infold me,
No lamp from the battlements burn'd.
* These stanzas are founded upon an event of most melancholy importance to Ireland; if, as we are told by our Irish historians, it gave England the first opportunity of profiting by our divisions and subduing us. The following are the circumstances, as related by O'Halloran : —" The king of Leinster had long conceived a violent affection for Dearbhorgil, daughter to the king of Meath ; and though she had been for some time married to O'Ruark, prince of Iireffhi, yet it could not restrain his passion. They carried on a private correspondence, and she informed him that O'Ruark intended soon to go on a pilgrimage (an act of piety frequent in those days), and conjured him to embrace that opportunity of conveying her from a husband she detested to a lover she adored. Mac Murchad too punctually obeyed the summons, and had the lady conveyed to his capital of Ferns."—The monarch Roderick espoused the cause of O'Ruark, while Mac Murchad fled to England, and obtained the assistance of Henry II.
" Such," adds Giraldus Cambrensis (as I find him in an old translation), " is the variable and fickle nature of woman, by whom all mischiefs in the world (for the most part) do happen and come, as may appear by Marcus Antonius, and by the destruction of Troy." |
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