"'I flew to her chamber--'twas lonely, As if the loved tenant lay dead;-- Ah, would it were death, and death only; But no, the young false one had fled. And there hung the lute that could soften My very worst pains into bliss; While the hand, which had waked it so often, Now throbbed to a proud rival's kiss.'"
I wish I could convey the tremor of the voice with which O'Connell, journeyman tailor, recited these silly lines. I can see him yet, standing there, one hand against his heart, his eyes straining up to the battlements from which no welcoming light gleamed. I can see the proprietor of the little shop, as he lounged against his counter, smiling good-naturedly. I can see the two or three other men who had drifted in, listening with all their ears.
And then O'Connell went on to tell how O'Rourke, finding his wife had fled with MacMurrough, appealed to his overlord, King Turlough O'Conor, and how the two of them so harassed MacMurrough that he was compelled to restore Dervorgilla to her husband and to flee to England, where he went to Strongbow and persuaded him to bring his Normans to Ireland to help him in his feud; and how Strongbow, once he got a firm grip on the land, refused to loosen it, and the curse of English rule had been on Ireland ever since.
I looked this story up, afterwards, and found that legend tells it much as O'Connell did, and it is probably true. But, just the same, it is hardly fair to lay the whole blame for Ireland's woes on Dervorgilla, for the Normans had been looking longingly across the Irish Sea years before MacMurrough fled to them, and would no doubt have crossed it, sooner or later, without an invitation. The tragic point of the story is that, as usual, the invader found the Irish divided and so unable to resist. We shall see the castle from which Dervorgilla fled, before our journey is done, and also the place where she lies buried, at Mellifont, in the valley of the Boyne.
The quotation from Tom Moore had turned my little tailor's thoughts toward poetry, and he asked if I knew this poem and that, and when I didn't, as was frequently the case, he would quote a few lines, or sing them, if they had been set to music.
"Of course you know 'To the Dead of Ninety-eight'?" he asked.