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58 LEINSTER
before yet the Normans had crossed the sea. The
Cistercian Abbey of Mellifont was the first of its
order in Ireland, and it was built by Irish craftsmen
trained at Clairvaux, in Normandy. Enough of the
ruin is left to show how noble and how pure was the
work of these early builders, who brought into Ireland
the Norman civilization but not the Norman rule. Yet
there is also the monument of her who gets the blame
of bringing in the hostile, not the peaceful, invasion.
Dervorgilla is buried there, O'Rourke's wife, whose
abduction by Dermot MacMurrough led to Mac-
Murrough's banishment from Ireland, and so to his
calling in of foreign aid.
De Lacy's castle at Trim is not the only evidence
that the Normans, when they came, were quick to
fasten upon this fertile valley. At Randalstown, near
Navan, Colonel Everard's tobacco plantations are an
object of interest to thousands to-day; but perhaps
not many of them realize that this enterprising country
gentleman is living to-day where his forefathers have
lived since the first of them got a grant there in the
twelfth century, among the other knights and squires
who rode with De Lacy. Norman they were and
Irish they soon became, yet here in the pale they
kept far more distinct than the Geraldines of Desmond
or the De Burgos of Connaught ; and so they kept on
the lucky side, the side whose supremacy was finally