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Updated: June 9, 2025
The anecdote of the rookery, of which Melaghlin complained, and the remedy for which his visitor suggested to be "to cut down the trees and the rooks would fly," has a suspicious look of the "tall poppies" of the Roman and Grecian legend; two things only do we know for certain about the matter: firstly, that Turgesius was taken and drowned in Lough Owel in the year 843 or 844; and secondly, that this catastrophe was brought about by the agency and order of his neighbour, Melaghlin.
For all this superstructure of romance there is neither ground-work nor license in the facts themselves, beyond this, that Turgesius was evidently captured by some clever stratagem.
In the neighbouring town of Athlone seven or eight miles distant the Treasurer, Brabazon, had lately erected a strong "Court" or Castle, from which, in the year 1552, the garrison sallied forth to attack "the place of the sons of the nobles," which is the meaning of the name. In executing this task they exhibited a fury surpassing that of Turgesius and his Danes.
The victory of Moynith and the death of Turgesius were followed by some local successes against other fleets and garrisons of the enemy. Their colleagues of Dublin, undeterred by recent reverses, made their annual foray southward into Ossory, in 844, and immediately we find King Nial moving up from the north to the same scene of action.
The introduction of these supposed a total change necessary in the customs of the natives, and stringent regulations to which the people could not but be radically opposed. And strange was their manner of introduction by these northern hordes. Keating tells us how Turgesius understood them. They were far worse than the imaginary laws of the Athenians as recorded in the "Birds" of Aristophanes.
Thirty and three dead men, some of whom had many years been buried, did this great reviver raise from the dead, as above we have more fully recorded. And of all those things which so wondrously he did in the world, sixty and six books are said to have been written, whereof the greater part perished by fire in the reigns of Gurmundus and of Turgesius.
But the tide of success for the first few years after 837 ran strongly against him. In this campaign Saxolve, who is called "the chief of the foreigners," was slain; and to him, therefore, if to any commander-in-chief, Turgesius must have succeeded.
Patrick's successors, slaughtered the monks, took possession of the whole east coast, and marching into the centre of the island, established himself in a strong position near Athlone. Beyond all other Land Leapers, this Thorgist, or Turgesius, seems to have hated the churches.
King Nial seems to have been in this memorable year, 843, defending as well as he might his ancestral province Ulster against the ravagers of Lough Neagh, and still another party whose ships flocked into Lough Swilly. In the same year, or the next, Turgesius was captured by Melaghlin, Lord of Westmeath, apparently by stratagem, and put to death by the rather novel process of drowning.
If we were to receive the chronology while rejecting the embellishments of the Bards, Turgesius must have first come to Ireland with one of the expeditions of the year 820, since they speak of him as having been "the scourge of the country for seventeen years," before he assumed the command of the forces landed from the fleet of 837.
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