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| RUINS OF MELLIFONT ABBEY, CO. LOUTH. -These highly interesting ruins lie in the midst of a beautiful lowland vale, rather that deep valley - a feature of scenery peculiar to the more fertile portions of Ireland. Mellifont is not a Gaelic name, and bears a Latin stamp upon it. The abbey was founded and endowed by O'Carrell, Prince of Oriel, in 1142, and was the first establishment of the Cistercian Order of monks in Ireland. Although it was originally a vast structure, or combination of structures, time, war and vandalism have reduced the ruins to their present scanty proportions. Apart from its interests, as a relic of Ireland's epoch of scholastic and ecclesiastical glory, Mellifont is famous as the place in which Dearvorgil, the faithless wife of O'Ruarc, whose fall from grace with McMurrough led to the Anglo Norman invasion, died in 1193. This is the woman of whom Moore has written- Now, Oh degenerate daughter And thro' ages of bondage and slaughter Of Erin, how fallen is thy fame; Thy country shall bleed for thy shame! Mellifont was witnessed, on March 30, 1603, the saddest day that ever dawned on Ireland, the surrender of Hugh O'Neill, the victor of the Yellow Ford and Drumfluich, to Lord Deputy Mountjoy, after a bloody struggle of eight long years, in which the great Earl of Tyrone, as the English called O'Neill, won imperishable renown. |
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