Giraldus, who seems to have been himself in Wales at the time, speaks sentimentally of the unfortunate exile, and describes him inhaling the scent of his beloved country from the Welsh coast, and feasting his eyes tenderly upon his own land:  “Although the distance,” he more prosaically adds, “being very great, it was difficult to distinguish mountains from clouds.”  As a matter of fact, Dermot McMurrough, we may be sure, was not the person to do anything of the sort.  He was simply hungry—­as a wild beast or a savage is hungry—­for revenge, and would have plunged into any number of perjuries, or have bound himself to give away any amount of property he had no right to dispose of in order to get it.  He could safely trust, too, he knew, to the ignorance of his new allies as to what was or was not a legal transfer in Ireland.

His purpose achieved, “inflamed,” says Giraldus, “with the desire to see his native land,” but really the better to concoct his plans, he returned home, landing a little south of Arklow Head, and arriving at Ferns, where he was hospitably entertained during the winter by its bishop.  The following spring, in the month of May, the first instalment of the invaders arrived under Robert FitzStephen, a small fleet of Welsh boats landing them in a creek of the bay of Bannow, where a chasm between the rocks was long known as “FitzStephen’s stride.”

Here they were met by Donald McMurrough, son of Dermot, and ten days later drew up under the walls of Wexford, having so far encountered no opposition.

In this old Danish town a stout fight was made.  The townsfolk, no longer Vikings but simple traders, did what they could in their own defence.  They burnt their suburbs, consisting doubtless of rude wooden huts; shut the gates, and upon the first two assaults drove back the assailants.  So violently were they repelled, “that they withdrew,” Giraldus tells us, “in all great haste from the walls.”  His own younger brother, Robert de Barri, was amongst the wounded, a great stone falling upon his helmet and tumbling him headlong into one of the ditches, from the effects of which blow, that careful historian informs us incidentally, “Sixteen years later all his jaw teeth fell out!”

Next morning, after mass, they renewed the assault; this time with more circumspection.  Now there were at that time, as it happened, two bishops in the town, who devoted their energies to endeavouring to induce the citizens to make peace.  In this attempt they were successful, more successful than might have been expected with men descended from the old Land Leapers.  Wexford opened its gates, its townsmen submitting to Dermot, who thereupon presented the town to his allies, FitzStephen, true to his Norman instincts, proceeding forthwith to build a castle upon the rock of Carneg, at the narrowest point of the river Slaney, the first of that large crop of castles which subsequently sprang up upon Irish soil.