River Dargle

River Dargle
River Dargle in Bray, County Wicklow
Native name	An Deargail
Basin features
Main source	Wicklow Mountains
River mouth	Irish Sea at Bray Harbour

The River Dargle (Irish: An Deargail, meaning "little red spot", so called with reference to the prevailing tint of its rocks) rises in the Wicklow Mountains of Ireland on the northern slopes of Djouce Mountain and flows over the highest waterfall in Ireland, falling 121m (398 feet) at Powerscourt Waterfall. It then flows through the Glencree Valley where it is fed by the River Glencree before flowing east for a further 14 km (8.7 mi) to reach the Irish Sea at Bray Harbour.

In August 1402 the O'Byrne clan of County settled a large mercenary army, composed mainly of their relatives, the O'Meagher clan, at the Dargle near Bray. Dublin received advance warning of the intended raid from the Walsh family of Carrickmines, whose lands stood directly in the path of the mercenary army. Led by John Drake, who was three times Lord Mayor of Dublin, the citizens of Dublin, and the Walsh clan, scored a decisive victory, commemorated as the Battle of Bloody Bank, over the O'Byrnes and O'Meaghers on the banks of the Dargle. The slaughter was so terrible (one estimate puts the death toll at 4000, although this was probably an exaggeration) that the area became known as Bloody Bank, until it was renamed in the nineteenth century as Sunny Bank. The outcome greatly improved the security of Dublin, and seriously weakened the power of the O'Byrne clan.

Sir Walter Scott visited the area in 1825 and mistakenly assumed that Dargle was the name for any glen, etc. He used the word in his novel Redgauntlet seven years later: Glen, nor dargle, nor mountain, nor cave, could hide the puir hill-folk.

About 1838 the eminent judge Philip Cecil Crampton, who lived at St. Valery House, by the Dargle, became a supporter of the temperance movement: to show his fidelity to the cause, he emptied the entire contents of his wine cellar into the river.