[Illustration: WINDOW OF LADY CHAPEL, FRANCISCAN ABBEY, CASTLEDERMOT.
(From “Grose’s Antiquities,” 1792; destroyed 1799.)]
She was a patron too of the schools of the learned, which under the Irish revival had sprung into new and vigorous life, training students in every corner of Ireland, and sending out scholars to all the universities of Europe. “The company that read all books, they of the church and of the poets both: such of these as shall be perfect in knowledge, forsake not thou their intimacy ever”--this, according to an Irish poet, was the high duty of chiefs, of the noble and wealthy; and Margaret was faithful to the tradition of her people. Her friendship for the learned, the royal magnificence of her bounty was long remembered in Ireland. The year 1433 was a year of trouble. Ormond ravaged the land of Ely and destroyed the fortresses of the O’Carrolls. Margaret’s daughter Finola--“the most beautiful and stately, the most renowned and illustrious woman of her time, her own mother only excepted,” blessed with “the blessing of guests and strangers, of poets and philosophers”--only saved Tirconail from the enemies of O’Neill and of MacDonnell and his Scots by herself going, after the fashion of the strong-hearted and independent women of Ireland, to meet them at Inishowen, and there “made peace without leave from O’Donnell.” It was a year terribly named in Irish tradition, “‘the summer of slight acquaintance,’ because no one used to recognise friend or relative,” for the greatness of the famine that lay on the land. Such was the time of Margaret’s great benevolence. “It is she that twice in one year proclaimed to and commonly invited (_i.e._, in the dark days of the year, to wit, on the feast day of Da Sinchell [26 March] in Killachy), all persons, both Irish and Scottish, or rather Albaines, to two general feasts of bestowing both meat and moneys, with all manner of gifts, whereunto gathered to receive gifts the matter of two thousand and seven hundred persons, besides gamesters and poor men, as it was recorded in a Roll to that purpose, and that accompt was made thus, _ut vidimus_--viz., the chief _kins_ of each family of the learned Irish was by Gilla-na-naemh MacÆgan’s hand, the chief Judge to O’Connor, written in the Roll, and his adherents and kinsmen, so that the aforesaid number of 2,700 was listed in that Roll with the Arts of _Dan_, or poetry, Music, and Antiquity. And Maelin O’Maelconry, one of the chief learned of Connacht, was the first written in that Roll, and first paid and dieted, or set to supper, and those of his name after him, and so forth every one as he was paid he was written in that Roll, for fear of mistake, and set down to eat afterwards. And Margaret on the garrots of the great church of Da Sinchell clad in cloth of gold, her dearest friends about her, her clergy and Judges too. Calvagh himself on horseback by the church’s outward side, to the end that all things might be done orderly, and each one served successively. And first of all she gave two chalices of gold as offerings that day on the Altar to God Almighty, and she also caused to nurse or foster too [two] young orphans. But so it was, we never saw nor heard neither the like of that day nor comparable to its glory and solace. And she gave the second inviting proclamation (to every one that came not that day) on the feast day of the Assumption of our Blessed Lady Mary in harvest, at or in the Rath-Imayn, and so we have been informed that that second day in Rath-Imayn was nothing inferior to the first day.”