Mr. Petrie on the History and Antiquities of Tara HilL 127 



with their prayers, they besaught the king againe to enlarge unto them Hugh Gwairye, which he 

 did as absolutely refuse as hee did before ; and then Roadanus and a bushop that was with him 

 tooke their bells that they had, which they rung hardly, and cursed the king and place, and prayed ■ 

 God that noe king or queen ever after would or could dwell in Tarach, and that it should be wast 

 for ever, without court or pallace, as it fell out accordingly. KingDermot himself nor his sucessors 

 kings of Ireland could never dwell in Tarach, since the time of that curse, but every one of the 

 kings chose himselfe such a place as in his one discression he thought fittest, and most conve- 

 nient for him to dwell, &c., as Moyleseacluin more, Donasgiah ; Bryan Bowrowey, Kyncory, &c. 

 Eoadanus being thus refused, he tendered a ransom of 30 horses, which the king was content to 

 accept, and soe granted him Hugh Gwairye." — MS. in Trin. Col. Dub. F. 3. 19, p. 45, et seq. 



The same account, but at greater length, is given in an Irish manuscript in 

 Trinity College, class H. 1. 15. It is also given in the chapter, " Qualiter 

 maledixit Themoriam,''' in the Life of St. Ruadhan, in the Codex Kilkenni- 

 ensis, an ancient vellum MS. of Lives of Saints, in Marsh's Library, Class V. 3. 

 Tab. 1. No. 4. r, and in the life published by the BoUandists, at the 25th of 

 April, from the Codex Salmaticensis. 



The detail of circumstances connected with this event, as above given, are, it 

 must be confessed, strongly marked with those marvellous incidents which 

 characterize the writings of the middle ages ; yet, there is no reason to reject the 

 groundwork of facts on which the superstructure of fable has been raised, and 

 which appears simply to have been, that the monarch Dermot had for some 

 offence captured the relative of the Saint of Lorrah, and that the latter in the 

 manner usual with the saints of that age, took revenge by cursing him and his 

 palace, a curse which in a superstitious age had the effect of deterring the suc- 

 ceeding monarchs from residing there. It cannot indeed admit of doubt that 

 Tara was abandoned at that period : the malediction of Ruadhan, with its conse- 

 quences. Is referred to by the ancient Scholiast on Fiech of Sletty's Irish Poem 

 in praise of St. Patrick, preserved in the Liber Hymnorum ; and an ancient 

 Icelandic work called the Konungs-shuggsio, or Royal Mirror, states that it had 

 been abandoned and utterly destroyed, in revenge of an unjust judgment pro- 

 nounced by a king who had once ruled over it. — See Johnstone's Antiq. Celto- 

 Scand. p. 287, st seq. 



This desertion of Tara, in consequence of the malediction of an ecclesiastic, 

 affords a striking, but, as already shewn, not a solitary example of the power of 

 the clergy in a superstitious age ; for, though the Irish monarchs continued to 



