Gerald FitzGerald 3rd Earl of Desmond
d. 1398
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About
Gerald FitzGerald, third Earl of Desmond, called Gearoid Iarla, was Justiciar of Ireland in 1367 and the rarest kind of colonial magnate: a Gaelic poet whose Irish verse survives and is still read. Legend refused to let him die at all - he sleeps, the country people said, beneath the waters of Lough Gur, and rides out across them once in every seven years. He married Eleanor Butler, the Earl of Ormond's daughter, and this line descends through his son the sixth Earl.
Research notes
✓ GERALD 'the POET' FITZGERALD, 3rd EARL OF DESMOND (c.1335-1398), Justiciar of Ireland 1367, Gaelic poet ('Gearoid Iarla'); m. Eleanor Butler (da. of the 2nd Earl of Ormond, note-only - a further Ormond knot); father of James 6th Earl (our line). Source: CP 'Fermoy' pp.327 + the standard Desmond succession (numbering follows identity; the earls' ordinals vary between authorities because of the 1462 usurpation); contested rungs note-only.