This week, I decided to focus on the Dearg Due (pronounced DAH-ruhg DU-ah), a lady vampire from Irish mythology. I had used the dearg due before (two of them to be precise) in a previous story but without doing any research first. Now that I have done that research, I have discovered that the Dearg Due is a very rich and complex character and a rather tragic figure. Her story reads almost like a dark fairy tale.
Dearg Due translates as “Red Thirst” or “Red Bloodsucker.” She was the daughter of a Waterford nobleman that lived two millennia ago. She was beautiful with long silver-blonde hair and red lips, smart, and kind and loved by all the villagers and common folk that lived in the area.
In what could be considered a bit of a trope, the girl (who would become the Dearg Due) loved a peasant boy, who was kind and pure like her. Their love was strong and passionate. Unfortunately, her father had other plans. He would not waste his daughter’s nobility on a mere peasant and instead arranged a marriage between her and a local chieftain.
The girl’s husband-to-be had a reputation for being as cruel and violent as she was kind. He was also very rich, which was her father’s focus. They were married, and the girl’s new husband abused her mercilessly. He mocked her in public, often beat her senseless, and used her for pleasure whenever he felt like it. Some versions of her story state that her husband cut her just so he could watch her red blood drop down her fair skin. What made matters even worse was that the girl’s father knew all about the abuse his daughter was being subjected to abuse and did nothing to help her.
The girl was not allowed to leave the tower her husband had locked her in and could only sit there and wait for him to visit her every night. She also hoped her beloved peasant boy would find a way to save her. Unfortunately, Irish folklore rarely has happy endings. As much as he may have wanted to, there was simply no way the peasant boy could rescue his love. It was beyond his power.
The girl’s hope vanished little by little. It became replaced with rage. In her final days, the girl felt nothing for anyone and hated everyone. She decided that death was her only means of escape, so she starved herself, hiding the food her husband’s servants brought so they would not suspect anything.
It was a long painful process, but the girl ended up passing away. When her husband found out, he was barely fazed. Her burial was quick and modest, more befitting a commoner than the wife of a powerful chieftain.
According to the traditions of that period, when a person who had an “evil” life died, there was a risk they would return from the grave as a monster. Those graves were covered with stones so they could not rise up and wreak havoc. But everyone in Waterford loved the girl and remembered as being a kind, beautiful woman. Little did they know how much rage and hatred lay in her heart at the time of her death. Her grave was shallow and covered only with soft dirt.
One year later, on the anniversary of her death, the girl rose from her grave. She was now the Dearg Due, an undead monster consumed with rage and hatred for everyone who had done her wrong. Her first target was her father.
In one version of the story, the Dearg Due killed him in his sleep. In another version, her father was awake, and the Dearg Due had to be invited inside by her father before she could kill him. This would become part of modern vampire lore.
Her father invited the Dearg Due inside, perhaps out of guilt. She killed him quickly then went after her former husband. In some versions, she attacked him in his bedroom while he was in the midst of an orgy with several women. In other versions, she caught him late at night on the way home from the pub. She drank all of his blood, leaving behind nothing but a shallow husk.
The Dearg Due then paid a visit to her former peasant lover, bitter and enraged that he didn’t save her – even though there was no way he could. But she found out she still loved him, enough that she spared his life.
Killing her father and husband created an insatiable hunger for blood inside of the Dearg Due. She roamed the lands of southeast Ireland at night, attacking men who had made the mistake of being out late at night. Many of her victims, she killed on the spot. There were some that she simply drained enough of their blood to make them pass out. They would eventually recover.
The people of Waterford were desperate to correct their mistake. According to legend, and this also became part of modern vampire lore, it was believed that the Dearg Due returned to her grave before sunrise. Believing she was in her grave, they covered it with a tall pile of stones, hoping to keep her imprisoned. Two thousand years later, the grave can still be found in a churchyard in Waterford under what people now call Strongbow’s Tree. Visitors like to chuck an extra stone on the Dearg Due’s grave to make sure she does not escape.
Only was she really in her grave when it was covered with stones? Did she have another place to hide out? Did she continue killing but keep it on the down low?
I do plan on bringing this character to life (pun intended) in a future story. I love the attention that is given to her seeking revenge against her male tormentors. I imagined this appealed to many women during that time who were similarly mistreated. I wonder if it would be popular with women today.
