Derbforgaill ingen Maeleachlainn

She is famously known as the "Helen of Ireland" as her abduction from her husband Tigernán Ua Ruairc by Diarmait Mac Murchada, king of Leinster, in 1152 played some part in bringing the Anglo-Normans to Irish shores, although this is a role that has often been greatly exaggerated and often misinterpreted.

As the Annals of Tigernach are attested to being composed contemporary to Dearbhforghaill's time, the fragmentary nature of the older texts is supplanted by newer transcription (as Leinster, Ulster, Connacht, and more fill these gaps.

[6] The description in the seventeenth-century Annals of Clonmacnoise is quite close to that of the Annals of the Four Masters, although more lurid and it is the only Irish annalistic source to offer a moral judgement on Mac Murchada, while simultaneously apportioning blame on Ua Ruairc:Dermott mcMurrogh king of Leinster tooke the lady Dervorgill, daughter of the said Morrogh o’Melaghlin, and wife of Tyernan o’Royrck, with her cattle with him, and kept her for a long space to satisfie his insatiable, carnall and adulterous lust, shee was procured and enduced thereunto by her unadvised brother Melaghlin for some abuses of her husband Tyernan don before.

[9] The two earliest English accounts to deal with Derbforgaill’s abduction are Gerald of Wales’ Expugnatio Hibernica (‘Conquest of Ireland’) and the anonymous Anglo-Norman French poem commonly known by the modern title The Song of Dermot and the Earl.

King Ua Ruairc was stirred to extreme anger on two counts, of which however the disgrace, rather than the loss of his wife, grieved him more deeply, and he vented all the venom of his fury with a view to revenge.

The men of Leinster, seeing that their prince was now in a difficult position and surrounded on all sides by his enemies' forces, sought to pay him back, and recalled to mind injustices which they had long concealed and stored deep in their hearts..

They made common cause with his enemies, and the men of rank among this people deserted Mac Murchada along with his good fortune... he finally trusted his life to the sea in flight, and so to speak had recourse to this last hope of saving himself.