occasion of the awakening is not known, other than that following
upon the signs of religious discontent upon the continent the monks of
Ireland roused themselves to earnest and arduous religious labors. The
chronicler gives illustration of her practical charity in the account
of her two "invitations": twice in the one year did she call upon
all persons "Irish and Scottish" to bestow largely of their money
and goods as a feast for the poor. Thousands resorted to the place of
distribution, and, as each was aided in an orderly manner, they had
their names and the amount and nature of their relief entered in
a book kept for the purpose. In summing up her life's work, the
chronicler says: "While the world lasts, her very many gifts to the
Irish and Scottish nations cannot be numbered. God's blessing, the
blessing of all saints, and every our blessing from Jerusalem to Innis
Glauir be on her going to Heaven, and blessed be he that will reade
and will heare this, for the blessing of her soule. Cursed be the sore
in her breast that killed Margrett." Such a picture as this serves to
offset the more usual idea of the women of Ireland during the Middle
Ages as coarse, half-civilized beings. Such a character would lend
dignity and worth to any people during any age.

The many benefactions and the public spirit of this great lady
make her deserving of mention in any account of the development of
charities. The poet D'Arcy McGee has immortalized her in a poem in
which, referring to the occasion of her "great Invitation," he says:

In cloth of gold, like a queen new-come out of the royal wood
On the round, proud, white-walled rath Margeret O'Carroll stood;
That day came guests to Rath Imayn from afar from beyond the sea
Bards and Bretons of Albyn and Erin--to feast in Offaly!"

To be celebrated for beauty alone is the prerogative of a few of
the women of the ages. What nation is there that does not hold in as
cherished regard the women who have represented its noblest physical
possibilities as their women of unusual sanctity or those who have
glorified their literature or ennobled their arts? A beautiful
woman--a woman whose beauty is not alone flawless in feature and
full of the instinctive intellectuality of a soul mirrored in
a countenance, but also typical of the expression of racial
characteristics, is as much a product of ages, as much a climax of
evolution at the point of perfection, as the saint, the artist, the
d