Dessie

Déisi, Old Irish for tenants or vassals, was the name of a number of communities in early Ireland. These included Déisi Temro (of Tara), otherwise Déisi Breg, who were located in the modern barony of Deece in Meath, the Déisi of Waterford, and the Déisi of Limerick, one branch of which migrated to Clare and subsequently became the Dál Cais. The Waterford Déisi survived until the Anglo‐Norman conquest. Eoin MacNeill believed the Déisi were rent paying, a suggestion based in part on the 8th‐century compilation Tairired na nDessi (Expulsion of the Déisi), which depicts them as subordinate communities, dependent for land on overlords. This text recounts how the Déisi were forced to flee Tara after having blinded King Cormac mac Airt in one eye. According to the tale, they had various homes in Leinster and Munster before coalescing with other exiled peoples and settling in Tipperary and Waterford. One variant depicts a group of Déisi as migrating to Dyfed in Wales; these are normally seen by scholars as ancestors of a dynasty which ruled Dyfed until the 10th century. Early connections between Dyfed and Co. Waterford are implied by the high concentration of ogam stones in both areas.

Catherine Swift

Dessie   Dessye, or Dese , town (1994 pop. 97,314), capital of Wallo prov., central Ethiopia, in the Great Rift Valley. It is an administrative, military, and commercial center. Dessie has an important marketplace dealing in animal skins and agricultural products. The local handicrafts industry is also a significant economic activity.