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A Popular
History of Ireland:
from the
Earliest Period
to the
Emancipation of the Catholics
by Thomas D'Arcy McGee
In Two Volumes
Volume I
PUBLISHERS' PREFACE.
Ireland, lifting herself from the dust, drying her tears, and proudly
demanding her legitimate place among the nations of the earth, is a
spectacle to cause immense progress in political philosophy.
Behold a nation whose fame had spread over all the earth ere the flag
of England had come into existence. For 500 years her life has been
apparently extinguished. The fiercest whirlwind of oppression that ever
in the wrath of God was poured upon the children of disobedience had
swept over her. She was an object of scorn and contempt to her
subjugator. Only at times were there any signs of life—an occasional
meteor flash that told of her olden spirit—of her deathless race.
Degraded and apathetic as this nation of Helots was, it is not strange
that political philosophy, at all times too Sadducean in its
principles, should ask, with a sneer, "Could these dry bones live?" The
fulness of time has come, and with one gallant sunward bound the "old
land" comes forth into the political day to teach these lessons, that
Right must always conquer Might in the end—that by a compensating
principle in the nature of things, Repression creates slowly, but
certainly, a force for its overthrow.
Had it been possible to kill the Irish Nation, it had long since ceased
to exist. But the transmitted qualities of her glorious children, who
were giants in intellect, virtue, and arms for 1500 years before Alfred
the Saxon sent the youth of his country to Ireland in search of
knowledge with which to civilize his people,—the legends, songs, and
dim traditions of this glorious era, and the irrepressible piety,
sparkling wit, and dauntless courage of her people, have at last
brought her forth like. Lazarus from the tomb. True, the garb of the
prison or the cerements of the grave may be hanging upon her, but
"loose her and let her go" is the wise policy of those in whose hands
are her present destinies.
A nation with such a strange history must have some great work yet to
do in the world. Except the Jews, no people has so suffered without
dying.
The History of Ireland is the most interesting of records, and the
least known. The Publishers of this edition of D'Arcy McGee's excellent
and impartial work take advantage of the awakening interest in Irish
literature to present to the public a book of _high-class history_, as
cheap as _largely circulating romance_. A sale as large as that of a
popular romance is, therefore, necessary to pay the speculation. That
sale the Publishers expect. Indeed, as truth is often stranger than
fiction, so Irish history is more romantic than romance. How Queen
Scota unfurled the Sacred Banner. How Brian and Malachy contended for
empire. How the "Pirate of the North" scourged the Irish coast. The
glories of Tara and the piety of Columba. The cowardice of James and
the courage of Sarsfield. How Dathi, the fearless, sounded the Irish
war-cry in far Alpine passes, and how the Geraldine forayed Leinster.
The deeds of O'Neil and O'Donnell. The march of Cromwell, the
destroying angel. Ireland's sun sinking in dim eclipse. The dark night
of woe in Erin for a hundred years. '83—'98—'48—'68. Ireland's sun
rising in glory. Surely the Youth of Ireland will find in their
country's records romance enough!
The English and Scotch are well read in the histories of their country.
The Irish are, unfortunately, not so; and yet, what is English or
Scottish history to compare with Irish? Ireland was a land of saints
and scholars when Britons were painted savages. Wise and noble laws,
based upon the spirit of Christianity, were administered in Erin, and
valuable books were written ere the Britons were as far advanced in
civilization as the Blackfeet Indians. In morals and intellect, in
Christianity and civilization, in arms, art, and science, Ireland shone
like a star among the nations when darkness enshrouded the world. And
she nobly sustained civilization and religion by her missionaries and
scholars. The libraries and archives of Europe contain the records of
their piety and learning. Indeed the echoes have scarcely yet ceased to
sound upon our ears, of the mighty march of her armed children over the
war-fields of Europe, during that terrible time when England's cruel
law, intended to destroy the spirit of a martial race, precipitated an
armed torrent of nearly 500,000 of the flower of the Irish youth into
foreign service. Irish steel glittered in the front rank of the most
desperate conflicts, and more than once the ranks of England went down
before "the Exiles," in just punishment for her terrible penal code
which excluded the Irish soldier from his country's service.
It was the Author's wish to educate his countrymen in their national
records. If by issuing a cheap edition the present Publishers carry out
to any extent that wish, it will be to them a source of satisfaction.
It is impossible to conclude this Preface without an expression of
regret at the dark and terrible fate which overtook the high-minded,
patriotic, and distinguished Irishman, Thomas D'Arcy McGee. He was a
man who loved his country well; and when the contemptible squabbles and
paltry dissensions of the present have passed away, his name will be a
hallowed memory, like that of Emmet or Fitzgerald, to inspire men with
high, ideals of patriotism and devotion.
CAMERON & FERGUSON.
[Note: From 1857 until his death, McGee was active in Canadian
politics. A gifted speaker and strong supporter of Confederation, he is
regarded as one of Canada's fathers of Confederation. On April 7, 1868,
after attending a late-night session in the House of Commons, he was
shot and killed as he returned to his rooming house on Sparks Street in
Ottawa. It is generally believed that McGee was the victim of a Fenian
plot. Patrick James Whelan was convicted and hanged for the crime,
however the evidence implicating him was later seen to be suspect.]
CONTENTS—VOL. I.
BOOK I.
CHAPTER I.—The First Inhabitants
CHAPTER II.—The First Ages
CHAPTER III.—Christianity Preached at Tara—The Result
CHAPTER IV.—The Constitution, and how the Kings kept it
CHAPTER V.—Reign of Hugh II.—The Irish Colony in Scotland obtains
its Independence
CHAPTER VI.—Kings of the Seventh Century
CHAPTER VII.—Kings of the Eighth Century
CHAPTER VIII.—What the Irish Schools and Saints did in the Three First
Christian Centuries
BOOK II.
CHAPTER I.—The Danish Invasion
CHAPTER II.—Kings of the Ninth Century (Continued)—Nial
III.—Malachy I.—Hugh VII
CHAPTER III.—Reign of Flan "of the Shannon" (A.D. 879 to 916)
CHAPTER IV.—Kings of the Tenth Century—Nial IV.—Donogh
II.—Congal III.—Donald IV
CHAPTER V.—Reign of Malachy II. and Rivalry of Brian
CHAPTER VI.—Brian, Ard-Righ—Battle of Clontarf
CHAPTER VII.—Effects of the Rivalry of Brian and Malachy on the Ancient
Constitution
CHAPTER VIII.—Latter Days of the Northmen in Ireland
BOOK III.
CHAPTER I.—The Fortunes of the Family of Brian
CHAPTER II.—The Contest between the North and South—Rise of the
Family of O'Conor
CHAPTER III.—Thorlogh More O'Conor—Murkertach of
Aileach—Accession of Roderick O'Conor
CHAPTER IV.—State of Religion and Learning among the Irish previous to
the Anglo-Norman Invasion
CHAPTER V.—Social Condition of the Irish previous to the Norman Invasion
CHAPTER VI.—Foreign Relations of the Irish previous to the Anglo-Norman
Invasion
BOOK IV.
CHAPTER I.—Dermid McMurrogh's Negotiations and Success—The First
Expedition of the Normans into Ireland
CHAPTER II.—The Arms, Armour and Tactics of the Normans and Irish
CHAPTER III.—The First Campaign of Earl Richard—Siege of
Dublin—Death of King Dermid McMurrogh
CHAPTER IV.—Second Campaign of Earl Richard—Henry II. in Ireland
CHAPTER V.—From the Return of Henry II. to England till the Death of Earl
Richard and his principal Companions
CHAPTER VI.—The Last Years of the Ard-Righ, Roderick O'Conor
CHAPTER VII.—Assassination of Hugh de Lacy—John "Lackland" in
Ireland—Various Expeditions of John de Courcy—Death of Conor
Moinmoy, and Rise of Cathal, "the Red-Handed" O'Conor—Close of the Career
of De Courcy and De Burgh
CHAPTER VIII.—Events of the Thirteenth Century—The Normans in
Connaught
CHAPTER IX.—Events of the Thirteenth Century—The Normans in Munster
and Leinster
CHAPTER X.—Events of the Thirteenth Century—The Normans in Meath
and Ulster
CHAPTER XI.—Retrospect of the Norman Period in Ireland—A Glance at
the Military Tactics of the Times—No Conquest of the Country in the
Thirteenth Century
CHAPTER XII.—State of Society and Learning in Ireland during the Norman
Period
BOOK V.
CHAPTER I.—The Rise of "the Red Earl"—Relations of Ireland and
Scotland
CHAPTER II.—The Northern Irish enter into Alliance with King Robert
Bruce—Arrival and First Campaign of Edward Bruce
CHAPTER III.—Bruce's Second Campaign and Coronation at Dundalk—The
Rising in Connaught—Battle of Athenry—Robert Bruce in Ireland
CHAPTER IV.—Battle of Faughard and Death of King Edward
Bruce—Consequences of his Invasion—Extinction of the Earldom of
Ulster—Irish Opinion of Edward Bruce
BOOK VI.
CHAPTER I.—Civil War in England—Its Effects on the
Anglo-Irish—The Knights of St. John—General Desire of the
Anglo-Irish to Naturalize themselves among the Native Population—A Policy
of Non-Intercourse between the Races Resolved on in England
CHAPTER II.—Lionel, Duke of Clarence, Lord Lieutenant—The Penal
Code of Race—"The Statute of Kilkenny," and some of its Consequences
CHAPTER III.—Art McMurrogh, Lord of Leinster—First Expedition of
Richard II. of England to Ireland
CHAPTER IV.—Subsequent Proceedings of Richard II.—Lieutenancy and
Death of the Earl of March—Second Expedition of Richard against Art
McMurrogh—Change of Dynasty in England
CHAPTER V.—Parties within "the Pale"—Battles of Kilmainham and
Killucan—Sir John Talbot's Lord Lieutenancy
CHAPTER VI.—Acts of the Native Princes—Subdivision of Tribes and
Territories—Anglo-Irish Towns under Native Protection—Attempt of
Thaddeus O'Brien, Prince of Thomond, to Restore the Monarchy—Relations of
the Races in the Fifteenth Century
CHAPTER VII.—Continued Division and Decline of "the English
Interest"—Richard, Duke of York, Lord Lieutenant—Civil War again in
England—Execution of the Earl of Desmond—Ascendancy of the
Kildare Geraldines
CHAPTER VIII.—The Age and Rule of Gerald, Eighth Earl of
Kildare—The Tide begins to turn for the English Interest—The
Yorkist Pretenders, Simnel and Warbeck—Poyning's Parliament—Battles
of Knockdoe and Monabraher
CHAPTER IX.—State of Irish and Anglo—Irish Society during the
Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries
CHAPTER X.—State of Religion and Learning during the Fourteenth and
Fifteenth Centuries
BOOK VII.
CHAPTER I.—Irish Policy of Henry the Eighth during the Lifetime of
Cardinal Wolsey
CHAPTER II.—The Insurrection of Silken Thomas—The Geraldine
League—Administration of Lord Leonard Gray
CHAPTER III.—Sir Anthony St. Leger, Lord Deputy—Negotiations of
the Irish Chiefs with James the Fifth of Scotland—First Attempts to
Introduce the Protestant Reformation—Opposition of the
Clergy—Parliament of 1541—The Protectors of the Clergy
Excluded—State of the Country—The Crowns United-Henry the Eighth
Proclaimed at London and Dublin
CHAPTER IV.—Adhesion of O'Neil, O'Donnell, and O'Brien—A new
Anglo-Irish Peerage—New Relations of Lord and Tenant—Bishops
appointed by the Crown—Retrospect
BOOK VIII.
CHAPTER I.—Events of the Reign of Edward Sixth
CHAPTER II.—Events of the Reign of Philip and Mary
CHAPTER III.—Accession of Queen Elizabeth—Parliament of
1560—The Act of Uniformity—Career and Death of John O'Neil "the
Proud"
HISTORY OF IRELAND
BOOK I.
CHAPTER I.
THE FIRST INHABITANTS.
Ireland is situated in the North Atlantic, between the degrees
fifty-one and a half and fifty-five and a half North, and five and a
quarter and ten and a third West longitude from Greenwich. It is the
last land usually seen by ships leaving the Old World, and the first by
those who arrive there from the Northern ports of America. In size it
is less than half as large as Britain, and in shape it may be compared
to one of those shields which we see in coats-of-arms, the four
Provinces—Ulster, Connaught, Leinster, and Munster—representing the
four quarters of the shield.
Around the borders of the country, generally near the coast, several
ranges of hills and mountains rear their crests, every Province having
one or more such groups. The West and South have, however, the largest
and highest of these hills, from the sides of all which descend
numerous rivers, flowing in various directions to the sea. Other rivers
issue out of large lakes formed in the valleys, such as the Galway
river which drains Lough Corrib, and the Bann which carries off the
surplus waters of Lough Neagh (_Nay_). In a few districts where the
fall for water is insufficient, marshes and swamps were long ago
formed, of which the principal one occupies nearly 240,000 acres in the
very heart of the country. It is called "the Bog of Allen," and, though
quite useless for farming purposes, still serves to supply the
surrounding district with fuel, nearly as well as coal mines do in
other countries.
In former times, Ireland was as well wooded as watered, though hardly a
tree of the primitive forest now remains. One of the earliest names
applied to it was "the wooded Island," and the export of timber and
staves, as well as of the furs of wild animals, continued, until the
beginning of the seventeenth century, to be a thriving branch of trade.
But in a succession of civil and religious wars, the axe and the torch
have done their work of destruction, so that the age of most of the
wood now standing does not date above two or three generations back.
Who were the first inhabitants of this Island, it is impossible to say,
but we know it was inhabited at a very early period of the world's
lifetime—probably as early as the time when Solomon the Wise, sat in
Jerusalem on the throne of his father David. As we should not
altogether reject, though neither are we bound to believe, the wild and
uncertain traditions of which we have neither documentary nor
monumental evidence, we will glance over rapidly what the old Bards and
Story-tellers have handed down to us concerning Ireland before it
became Christian.
The _first_ story they tell is, that about three hundred years after
the Universal Deluge, Partholan, of the stock of Japhet, sailed down
the Mediterranean, "leaving Spain on the right hand," and holding
bravely on his course, reached the shores of the wooded western Island.
This Partholan, they tell us, was a double parricide, having killed his
father and mother before leaving his native country, for which horrible
crimes, as the Bards very morally conclude, his posterity were fated
never to possess the land. After a long interval, and when they were
greatly increased in numbers, they were cut off to the last man, by a
dreadful pestilence.
The story of the _second_ immigration is almost as vague as that of the
first. The leader this time is called Nemedh, and his route is
described as leading from the shores of the Black Sea, across what is
now Russia in Europe, to the Baltic Sea, and from the Baltic to
Ireland. He is said to have built two royal forts, and to have "cleared
twelve plains of wood" while in Ireland. He and his posterity were
constantly at war, with a terrible race of Formorians, or Sea Kings,
descendants of Ham, who had fled from northern Africa to the western
islands for refuge from their enemies, the sons of Shem. At length the
Formorians prevailed, and the children of the second immigration were
either slain or driven into exile, from which some of their posterity
returned long afterwards, and again disputed the country, under two
different denominations.
The _Firbolgs_ or Belgae are the _third_ immigration. They were
victorious under their chiefs, the five sons of Dela, and divided the
island into five portions. But they lived in days when the earth—the
known parts of it at least—was being eagerly scrambled for by the
overflowing hosts of Asia, and they were not long left in undisputed
possession of so tempting a prize. Another expedition, claiming descent
from the common ancestor, Nemedh, arrived to contest their supremacy.
These last—the _fourth_ immigration—are depicted to us as accomplished
soothsayers and necromancers who came out of Greece. They could quell
storms; cure diseases; work in metals; foretell future events; forge
magical weapons; and raise the dead to life; they are called the
_Tuatha de Danans_, and by their supernatural power, as well as by
virtue of "the Lia Fail," or fabled "stone of destiny," they subdued
their Belgic kinsmen, and exercised sovereignty over them, till they in
turn were displaced by the Gaelic, or _fifth_ immigration.
This fifth and final colony called themselves alternately, or at
different periods of their history, _Gael_, from one of their remote
ancestors; _Milesians_, from the immediate projector of their
emigration; or _Scoti_, from Scota, the mother of Milesius. They came
from Spain under the leadership of the sons of Milesius, whom they had
lost during their temporary sojourn in that country. In vain the
skilful _Tuatha_ surrounded themselves and their coveted island with
magic-made tempest and terrors; in vain they reduced it in size so as
to be almost invisible from sea; Amergin, one of the sons of Milesius,
was a Druid skilled in all the arts of the east, and led by his wise
counsels, his brothers countermined the magicians, and beat them at
their own weapons. This Amergin was, according to universal usage in
ancient times, at once Poet, Priest, and Prophet; yet when his warlike
brethren divided the island between them, they left the Poet out of
reckoning. He was finally drowned in the waters of the river Avoca,
which is probably the reason why that river has been so suggestive of
melody and song ever since.
Such are the stories told of the _five_ successive hordes of
adventurers who first attempted to colonize our wooded Island. Whatever
moiety of truth may be mixed up with so many fictions, two things are
certain, that long before the time when our Lord and Saviour came upon
earth, the coasts and harbours of Erin were known to the merchants of
the Mediterranean, and that from the first to the fifth Christian
century, the warriors of the wooded Isle made inroads on the Roman
power in Britain and even in Gaul. Agricola, the Roman governor of
Britain in the reign of Domitian—the first century—retained an Irish
chieftain about his person, and we are told by his biographer that an
invasion of Ireland was talked of at Rome. But it never took place; the
Roman eagles, although supreme for four centuries in Britain, never
crossed the Irish Sea; and we are thus deprived of those Latin helps to
our early history, which are so valuable in the first period of the
histories of every western country, with which the Romans had anything
to do.
CHAPTER II.
THE FIRST AGES.
Since we have no Roman accounts of the form of government or state of
society in ancient Erin, we must only depend on the Bards and
Story-tellers, so far as their statements are credible and agree with
each other. On certain main points they do agree, and these are the
points which it seems reasonable for us to take on their authority.
As even brothers born of the same mother, coming suddenly into
possession of a prize, will struggle to see who can get the largest
share, so we find in those first ages a constant succession of armed
struggles for power. The petty Princes who divided the Island between
them were called _Righ_, a word which answers to the Latin _Rex_ and
French _Roi_; and the chief king or monarch was called _Ard-Righ_, or
High-King. The eldest nephew, or son of the king, was the usual heir of
power, and was called the _Tanist_, or successor; although any of the
family of the Prince, his brothers, cousins, or other kinsmen, might be
chosen _Tanist_, by election of the people over whom he was to rule.
One certain cause of exclusion was personal deformity; for if a Prince
was born lame or a hunchback, or if he lost a limb by accident, he was
declared unfit to govern. Even after succession, any serious accident
entailed deposition, though we find the names of several Princes who
managed to evade or escape this singular penalty. It will be observed
besides of the _Tanist_, that the habit of appointing him seems to have
been less a law than a custom; that it was not universal in all the
Provinces; that in some tribes the succession alternated between a
double line of Princes; and that sometimes when the reigning Prince
obtained the nomination of a _Tanist_, to please himself, the choice
was set aside by the public voice of the clansmen. The successor to the
Ard-Righ, or Monarch, instead of being simply called _Tanist_, had the
more sounding title of _Roydamna_, or King-successor.
The chief offices about the Kings, in the first ages, were all filled
by the Druids, or Pagan Priests; the _Brehons_, or Judges, were usually
Druids, as were also the _Bards_, the historians of their patrons. Then
came the Physicians; the Chiefs who paid tribute or received annual
gifts from the Sovereigns, or Princes; the royal stewards; and the
military leaders or Champions, who, like the knights of the middle
ages, held their lands and their rank at court, by the tenure of the
sword. Like the feudal _Dukes_ of France, and _Barons_ of England,
these military nobles often proved too powerful for their nominal
patrons, and made them experience all the uncertainty of reciprocal
dependence. The Champions play an important part in all the early
legends. Wherever there is trouble you are sure to find them. Their
most celebrated divisions were the warriors of the _Red Branch_—that is
to say, the Militia of Ulster; the _Fiann_, or Militia of Leinster,
sometimes the royal guard of Tara, at others in exile and disgrace; the
_Clan-Degaid_ of Munster, and the _Fiann_ of Connaught. The last force
was largely recruited from the Belgic race who had been squeezed into
that western province, by their Milesian conquerors, pretty much as
Cromwell endeavoured to force the Milesian Irish into it, many hundred
years afterwards. Each of these bands had its special heroes; its
Godfreys and Orlandos celebrated in song; the most famous name in
Ulster was Cuchullin: so called from _cu_, a hound, or watch-dog, and
_Ullin_, the ancient name of his province. He lived at the dawn of the
Christian era. Of equal fame was Finn, the father of Ossian, and the
Fingal of modern fiction, who flourished in the latter half of the
second century. Gall, son of Morna, the hero of Connaught (one of the
few distinguished men of Belgic origin whom we hear of through the
Milesian bards), flourished a generation earlier than Finn, and might
fairly compete with him in celebrity, if he had only had an Ossian to
sing his praises.
The political boundaries of different tribes expanded or contracted
with their good or ill fortune in battle. Immigration often followed
defeat, so that a clan, or its offshoot is found at one period on one
part of the map and again on another. As _surnames_ were not generally
used either in Ireland or anywhere else, till after the tenth century,
the great families are distinguishable at first, only by their tribe or
clan names. Thus at the north we have the Hy-Nial race; in the south
the Eugenian race, so called from Nial and Eoghan, their mutual
ancestors.
We have already compared the shape of Erin to a shield, in which the
four Provinces represented the four quarters. Some shields have also
_bosses_ or centre-pieces, and the federal province of MEATH was the
_boss_ of the old Irish shield. The ancient Meath included both the
present counties of that name, stretching south to the Liffey, and
north to Armagh. It was the mensal demesne, or "board of the king's
table:" it was exempt from all taxes, except those of the Ard-Righ, and
its relations to the other Provinces may be vaguely compared to those
of the District of Columbia to the several States of the North American
Union. ULSTER might then be defined by a line drawn from Sligo Harbour
to the mouth of the Boyne, the line being notched here and there by the
royal demesne of Meath; LEINSTER stretched south from Dublin
triangle-wise to Waterford Harbour, but its inland line, towards the
west, was never very well defined, and this led to constant border wars
with Munster; the remainder of the south to the mouth of the Shannon
composed MUNSTER; the present county of Clare and all west of the
Shannon north to Sligo, and part of Cavan, going with CONNAUGHT. The
chief seats of power, in those several divisions, were TARA, for
federal purposes; EMANIA, near Armagh, for Ulster; LEIGHLIN, for
Leinster; CASHEL, for Munster; and CRUCHAIN, (now Rathcrogan, in
Roscommon,) for Connaught.
How the common people lived within these external divisions of power it
is not so easy to describe. All histories tell us a great deal of
kings, and battles, and conspiracies, but very little of the daily
domestic life of the people. In this respect the history of Erin is
much the same as the rest; but some leading facts we do know. Their
religion, in Pagan times, was what the moderns call _Druidism_, but
what they called it themselves we now know not. It was probably the
same religion anciently professed by Tyre and Sidon, by Carthage and
her colonies in Spain; the same religion which the Romans have
described as existing in great part of Gaul, and by their accounts, we
learn the awful fact, that it sanctioned, nay, demanded, human
sacrifices. From the few traces of its doctrines which Christian zeal
has permitted to survive in the old Irish language, we see that _Belus_
or "Crom," the god of fire, typified by the sun, was its chief
divinity—that two great festivals were held in his honour on days
answering to the first of May and last of October. There were also
particular gods of poets, champions, artificers and mariners, just as
among the Romans and Greeks. Sacred groves were dedicated to these
gods; Priests and Priestesses devoted their lives to their service; the
arms of the champion, and the person of the king were charmed by them;
neither peace nor war was made without their sanction; their own
persons and their pupils were held sacred; the high place at the king's
right hand and the best fruits of the earth and the waters were theirs.
Old age revered them, women worshipped them, warriors paid court to
them, youth trembled before them, princes and chieftains regarded them
as elder brethren. So numerous were they in Erin, and so celebrated,
that the altars of Britain and western Gaul, left desolate by the Roman
legions, were often served by hierophants from Erin, which, even in
those Pagan days, was known to all the Druidic countries as the "Sacred
Island." Besides the princes, the warriors, and the Druids, (who were
also the Physicians, Bards and Brehons of the first ages,) there were
innumerable petty chiefs, all laying claim to noble birth and blood.
They may be said with the warriors and priests to be the only freemen.
The _Bruais_, or farmers, though possessing certain legal rights, were
an inferior caste; while of the Artisans, the smiths and armorers only
seem to have been of much consideration. The builders of those
mysterious round towers, of which a hundred ruins yet remain, may also
have been a privileged order. But the mill and the loom were servile
occupations, left altogether to slaves taken in battle, or purchased in
the market-places of Britain. The task of the herdsman, like that of
the farm-labourer, seems to have devolved on the bondsmen, while the
_quern_ and the shuttle were left exclusively in the hands of the
bondswomen.
We need barely mention the names of the first Milesian kings, who were
remarkable for something else than cutting each other's throats, in
order to hasten on to the solid ground of Christian tunes. The
principal names are: Heber and Heremhon, the crowned sons of Milesians;
they at first divided the Island fairly, but Heremhon soon became
jealous of his brother, slew him in battle, and established his own
supremacy. Irial the Prophet was King, and built seven royal
fortresses; Tiern'mass; in his reign the arts of dyeing in colours were
introduced; and the distinguishing of classes by the number of colours
they were permitted to wear, was decreed. Ollamh ("the Wise")
established the Convention of Tara, which assembled habitually every
ninth year, but might be called oftener; it met about the October
festival in honour of Beleus or _Crom_; Eocaid invented or introduced a
new species of wicker boats, called _cassa_, and spent much of his time
upon the sea; a solitary queen, named Macha, appears in the succession,
from whom Armagh takes its name; except Mab, the mythological Queen of
Connaught, she is the sole female ruler of Erin in the first ages; Owen
or Eugene Mor ("the Great") is remembered as the founder of the notable
families who rejoice in the common name of Eugenians; Leary, of whom
the fable of Midas is told with variations; Angus, whom the after
Princes of Alba (Scotland) claimed as their ancestor; Eocaid, the tenth
of that name, in whose reign are laid the scenes of the chief
mythological stories of Erin—such as the story of Queen Mab—the story
of the Sons of Usna; the death of Cuchullin (a counterpart of the
Persian tale of Roostam and Sohrab); the story of Fergus, son of the
king; of Connor of Ulster; of the sons of Dari; and many more. We next
meet with the first king who led an expedition abroad against the
Romans in Crimthan, surnamed _Neea-Naari_, or Nair's Hero, from the
good genius who accompanied him on his foray. A well-planned
insurrection of the conquered Belgae, cut off one of Crimthan's
immediate successors, with all his chiefs and nobles, at a banquet
given on the Belgian-plain (Moybolgue, in Cavan); and arrested for a
century thereafter Irish expeditions abroad. A revolution and a
restoration followed, in which Moran the Just Judge played the part of
Monk to _his_ Charles II., Tuathal surnamed "the Legitimate." It was
Tuathal who imposed the special tax on Leinster, of which, we shall
often hear—under the title of _Borooa_, or Tribute. "The Legitimate"
was succeeded by his son, who introduced the Roman _Lex Talionis_ ("an
eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth") into the Brehon code; soon
after, the Eugenian families of the south, strong in numbers, and led
by a second Owen More, again halved the Island with the ruling race,
the boundary this time being the _esker_, or ridge of land which can be
easily traced from Dublin west to Galway. Olild, a brave and able
Prince, succeeded in time to the southern half-kingdom, and planted his
own kindred deep and firm in its soil, though the unity of the monarchy
was again restored under Cormac Ulla, or _Longbeard_. This Cormac,
according to the legend, was in secret a Christian, and was done to
death by the enraged and alarmed Druids, after his abdication and
retirement from the world (A.D. 266). He had reigned full forty years,
rivalling in wisdom, and excelling in justice the best of his
ancestors. Some of his maxims remain to us, and challenge comparison
for truthfulness and foresight with most uninspired writings.
Cormac's successors during the same century are of little mark, but in
the next the expeditions against the Roman outposts were renewed with
greater energy and on an increasing scale. Another Crimthan eclipsed
the fame of his ancestor and namesake; Nial, called "of the Hostages,"
was slain on a second or third expedition into Gaul (A.D. 405), while
Dathy, nephew and successor to Nial, was struck dead by lightning in
the passage of the Alps (A.D. 428). It was in one of Nial's Gallic
expeditions that the illustrious captive was brought into Erin, for
whom Providence had reserved the glory of its conversion to the
Christian faith—an event which gives a unity and a purpose to the
history of that Nation, which must always constitute its chief
attraction to the Christian reader.
CHAPTER III.
CHRISTIANITY PREACHED AT TARA—THE RESULT.
The conversion of a Pagan people to Christianity must always be a
primary fact in their history. It is not merely for the error it
abolishes or the positive truth it establishes that a national change
of faith is historically important, but for the complete revolution it
works in every public and private relation. The change socially could
not be greater if we were to see some irresistible apostle of Paganism
ariving from abroad in Christian Ireland, who would abolish the
churches, convents, and Christian schools; decry and bring into utter
disuse the decalogue, the Scriptures and the Sacraments; efface all
trace of the existing belief in One God and Three Persons, whether in
private or public worship, in contracts, or in courts of law; and
instead of these, re-establish all over the country, in high places and
in every place, the gloomy groves of the Druids, making gods of the sun
and moon, the natural elements, and man's own passions, restoring human
sacrifices as a sacred duty, and practically excluding from the
community of their fellows, all who presumed to question the divine
origin of such a religion. The preaching of Patrick effected a
revolution to the full as complete as such a counter-revolution in
favour of Paganism could possibly be, and to this thorough revolution
we must devote at least one chapter before going farther.
The best accounts agree that Patrick was a native of Gaul, then subject
to Rome; that he was carried captive into Erin on one of King Nial's
returning expeditions; that he became a slave, as all captives of the
sword did, in those iron times; that he fell to the lot of one Milcho,
a chief of Dalriada, whose flocks he tended for seven years, as a
shepherd, on the mountain called Slemish, in the present county of
Antrim. The date of Nial's death, and the consequent return of his last
expedition, is set down in all our annals at the year 405; as Patrick
was sixteen years of age when he reached Ireland, he must have been
born about the year 390; and as he died in the year 493, he would thus
have reached the extraordinary, but not impossible age of 103 years.
Whatever the exact number of his years, it is certain that his mission
in Ireland commenced in the year 432, and was prolonged till his death,
sixty-one years afterwards. Such an unprecedented length of life, not
less than the unprecedented power, both popular and political, which he
early attained, enabled him to establish the Irish Church, during his
own time, on a basis so broad and deep, that neither lapse of ages, nor
heathen rage, nor earthly temptations, nor all the arts of Hell, have
been able to upheave its firm foundations. But we must not imagine that
the powers of darkness abandoned the field without a struggle, or that
the victory of the cross was achieved without a singular combination of
courage, prudence, and determination—God aiding above all.
If the year of his captivity was 405 or 406, and that of his escape or
manumission seven years later (412 or 413), twenty years would
intervene between his departure out of the land of his bondage, and his
return to it clothed with the character and authority of a Christian
Bishop. This interval, longer or shorter, he spent in qualifying
himself for Holy Orders or discharging priestly duties at Tours, at
Lerins, and finally at Rome. But always by night and day he was haunted
by the thought of the Pagan nation in which he had spent his long years
of servitude, whose language he had acquired, and the character of
whose people he so thoroughly understood. These natural retrospections
were heightened and deepened by supernatural revelations of the will of
Providence towards the Irish, and himself as their apostle. At one
time, an angel presented him, in his sleep, a scroll bearing the
superscription, "the voice of the Irish;" at another, he seemed to hear
in a dream all the unborn children of the nation crying to him for help
and holy baptism. When, therefore, Pope Celestine commissioned him for
this enterprise, "to the ends of the earth," he found him not only
ready but anxious to undertake it.
When the new Preacher arrived in the Irish Sea, in 432, he and his
companions were driven off the coast of Wicklow by a mob, who assailed
them with showers of stones. Running down the coast to Antrim, with
which he was personally familiar, he made some stay at Saul, in Down,
where he made few converts, and celebrated Mass in a barn; proceeding
northward he found himself rejected with scorn by his old master,
Milcho, of Slemish. No doubt it appeared an unpardonable audacity in
the eyes of the proud Pagan, that his former slave should attempt to
teach him how to reform his life and order his affairs. Returning again
southward, led on, as we must believe, by the Spirit of God, he
determined to strike a blow against Paganism at its most vital point.
Having learned that the monarch, Leary (_Laeghaire_), was to celebrate
his birthday with suitable rejoicings at Tara, on a day which happened
to fall on the eve of Easter, he resolved to proceed to Tara on that
occasion, and to confront the Druids in the midst of all the princes
and magnates of the Island. With this view he returned on his former
course, and landed from his frail barque at the mouth of the Boyne.
Taking leave of the boatmen, he desired them to wait for him a certain
number of days, when, if they did not hear from him, they might
conclude him dead, and provide for their own safety. So saying he set
out, accompanied by the few disciples he had made, or brought from
abroad, to traverse on foot the great plain which stretches from the
mouth of the Boyne to Tara. If those sailors were Christians, as is
most likely, we can conceive with what anxiety they must have awaited
tidings of an attempt so hazardous and so eventful.
The Christian proceeded on his way, and the first night of his journey
lodged with a hospitable chief, whose family he converted and baptized,
especially marking out a fine child named Beanen, called by him
Benignus, from his sweet disposition; who was destined to be one of his
most efficient coadjutors, and finally his successor in the Primatial
see of Armagh. It was about the second or third day when, travelling
probably by the northern road, poetically called "the Slope of the
Chariots," the Christian adventurers came in sight of the roofs of
Tara. Halting on a neighbouring eminence they surveyed the citadel of
Ancient Error, like soldiers about to assault an enemy's stronghold.
The aspect of the royal hill must have been highly imposing. The
building towards the north was the Banquet Hall, then thronged with the
celebrants of the King's birth-day, measuring from north to south 360
feet in length by 40 feet wide. South of this hall was the King's Rath,
or residence, enclosing an area of 280 yards in diameter, and including
several detached buildings, such as the house of Cormac, and the house
of the hostages. Southward still stood the new rath of the reigning
king, and yet farther south, the rath of Queen Mab, probably
uninhabited even then. The intervals between the buildings were at some
points planted, for we know that magnificent trees shaded the well of
Finn, and the well of Newnaw, from which all the raths were supplied
with water. Imposing at any time, Tara must have looked its best at the
moment Patrick first beheld it, being in the pleasant season of spring,
and decorated in honour of the anniversary of the reigning sovereign.
One of the religious ceremonies employed by the Druids to heighten the
solemnity of the occasion, was to order all the fires of Tara and Meath
to be quenched, in order to rekindle them instantaneously from a sacred
fire dedicated to the honour of their god. But Patrick, either
designedly or innocently, anticipated this striking ceremony, and lit
his own fire, where he had encamped, in view of the royal residence. A
flight of fiery arrows, shot into the Banqueting Hall, would not have
excited more horror and tumult among the company there assembled, than
did the sight of that unlicensed blaze in the distance. Orders were
issued to drag the offender against the laws and the gods of the Island
before them, and the punishment in store for him was already decreed in
every heart. The Preacher, followed by his trembling disciples,
ascended "the Slope of the Chariots," surrounded by menacing minions of
the Pagan law, and regarded with indignation by astonished spectators.
As he came he recited Latin Prayers to the Blessed Trinity, beseeching
their protection and direction in this trying hour. Contrary to
courteous custom no one at first rose to offer him a seat. At last a
chieftain, touched with mysterious admiration for the stranger, did him
that kindness. Then it was demanded of him, why he had dared to violate
the laws of the country, and to defy its ancient gods. On this text the
Christian Missionary spoke. The place of audience was in the open air,
on that eminence, the home of so many kings, which commands one of the
most agreeable prospects in any landscape. The eye of the inspired
orator, pleading the cause of all the souls that hereafter, till the
end of time, might inhabit the land, could discern within the
spring-day horizon, the course of the Blackwater and the Boyne before
they blend into one; the hills of Cavan to the far north; with the
royal hill of Tailtean in the foreground; the wooded heights of Slane
and Skreen, and the four ancient roads, which led away towards the four
subject Provinces, like the reins of empire laid loosely on their
necks. Since the first Apostle of the Gentiles had confronted the
subtle Paganism of Athens, on the hill of Mars, none of those who
walked in his steps ever stood out in more glorious relief than
Patrick, surrounded by Pagan Princes, and a Pagan Priesthood, on the
hill of Tara.
The defence of the fire he had kindled, unlicensed, soon extended into
wider issues. Who were the gods against whom he had offended? Were they
true gods or false? They had their priests: could they maintain the
divinity of such gods, by argument, or by miracle? For his God, he,
though unworthy, was ready to answer, yea, right ready to die. His God
had become man, and had died for man. His name alone was sufficient to
heal all diseases; to raise the very dead to life. Such, we learn from
the old biographers, was the line of Patrick's argument. This sermon
ushered in a controversy. The king's guests, who had come to feast and
rejoice, remained to listen and to meditate. With the impetuosity of
the national character—with all its passion for debate—they rushed into
this new conflict, some on one side, some on the other. The daughters
of the king and many others—the Arch-Druid himself—became convinced and
were baptized. The missionaries obtained powerful protectors, and the
king assigned to Patrick the pleasant fort of Trim, as a present
residence. From that convenient distance, he could readily return at
any moment, to converse with the king's guests and the members of his
household.
The Druidical superstition never recovered the blow it received that
day at Tara. The conversion of the Arch-Druid and the Princesses, was,
of itself, their knell of doom. Yet they held their ground during the
remainder of this reign—twenty-five years longer (A.D. 458). The king
himself never became a Christian, though he tolerated the missionaries,
and deferred more and more every year to the Christian party. He
sanctioned an expurgated code of the laws, prepared under the direction
of Patrick, from which every positive element of Paganism was rigidly
excluded. He saw, unopposed, the chief idol of his race, overthrown on
"the Plain of Prostration," at Sletty. Yet withal he never consented to
be baptized; and only two years before his decease, we find him
swearing to a treaty, in the old Pagan form—"by the Sun, and the Wind,
and all the Elements." The party of the Druids at first sought to stay
the progress of Christianity by violence, and even attempted, more than
once, to assassinate Patrick. Finding these means ineffectual they
tried ridicule and satire. In this they were for some time seconded by
the Bards, men warmly attached to their goddess of song and their lives
of self-indulgence. All in vain. The day of the idols was fast verging
into everlasting night in Erin. Patrick and his disciples were
advancing from conquest to conquest. Armagh and Cashel came in the wake
of Tara, and Cruachan was soon to follow. Driven from the high places,
the obdurate Priests of Bel took refuge in the depths of the forest and
in the islands of the sea, wherein the Christian anchorites of the next
age were to replace them. The social revolution proceeded, but all that
was tolerable in the old state of things, Patrick carefully engrafted
with the new. He allowed much for the habits and traditions of the
people, and so made the transition as easy, from darkness into the
light, as Nature makes the transition from night to morning. He seven
times visited in person every mission in the kingdom, performing the
six first "circuits" on foot, but the seventh, on account of his
extreme age, he was borne in a chariot. The pious munificence of the
successors of Leary, had surrounded him with a household of princely
proportions. Twenty-four persons, mostly ecclesiastics, were chosen for
this purpose: a bell-ringer, a psalmist, a cook, a brewer, a
chamberlain, three smiths, three artificers, and three embroiderers are
reckoned of the number. These last must be considered as employed in
furnishing the interior of the new churches. A scribe, a shepherd to
guard his flocks, and a charioteer are also mentioned, and their proper
names given. How different this following from the little boat's crew,
he had left waiting tidings from Tara, in such painful apprehension, at
the mouth of the Boyne, in 432. Apostolic zeal, and unrelaxed
discipline had wrought these wonders, during a lifetime prolonged far
beyond the ordinary age of man.
The fifth century was drawing to a close, and the days of Patrick were
numbered. Pharamond and the Franks had sway on the Netherlands; Hengist
and the Saxons on South Britain; Clovis had led his countrymen across
the Rhine into Gaul; the Vandals had established themselves in Spain
and North Africa; the Ostrogoths were supreme in Italy. The empire of
barbarism had succeeded to the empire of Polytheism; dense darkness
covered the semi-Christian countries of the old Roman empire, but
happily daylight still lingered in the West. Patrick, in good season,
had done his work. And as sometimes, God seems to bring round His ends,
contrary to the natural order of things, so the spiritual sun of Europe
was now destined to rise in the West, and return on its light-bearing
errand towards the East, dispelling in its path, Saxon, Frankish, and
German darkness, until at length it reflected back on Rome herself, the
light derived from Rome.
On the 17th of March, in the year of our Lord 493, Patrick breathed his
last in the monastery of Saul, erected on the site of that barn where
he had first said Mass. He was buried with national honours in the
Church of Armagh, to which he had given the Primacy over all the
churches of Ireland; and such was the concourse of mourners, and the
number of Masses offered for his eternal repose, that from the day of
his death till the close of the year, the sun is poetically said never
to have set—so brilliant and so continual was the glare of tapers and
torches.
CHAPTER IV.
THE CONSTITUTION, AND HOW THE KINGS KEPT IT.
We have fortunately still existing the main provisions of that
constitution which was prepared under the auspices of Saint Patrick,
and which, though not immediately, nor simultaneously, was in the end
accepted by all Erin as its supreme law. It is contained in a volume
called "the Book of Rights," and in its printed form (the Dublin
bilingual edition of 1847), fills some 250 octavo pages. This book may
be said to contain the original institutes of Erin under her Celtic
Kings: "the Brehon laws," (which have likewise been published), bear
the same relation to "the Book of Rights," as the Statutes at large of
England, or the United States, bear to the English Constitution in the
one case, or to the collective Federal and State Constitutions in the
other. Let us endeavour to comprehend what this ancient Irish
Constitution was like, and how the Kings received it, at first.
There were, as we saw in the first chapter, beside the existing four
Provinces, whose names are familiar to every one, a fifth principality
of Meath. Each of the Provinces was subdivided into chieftainries, of
which there were at least double or treble as many as there are now
counties. The connection between the chief and his Prince, or the
Prince and his monarch, was not of the nature of feudal obedience; for
the fee-simple of the soil was never supposed to be vested in the
sovereign, nor was the King considered to be the fountain of all
honour. The Irish system blended the aristocratic and democratic
elements more largely than the monarchical. Everything proceeded by
election, but all the candidates should be of noble blood. The Chiefs,
Princes, and Monarchs, so selected, were bound together by certain
customs and tributes, originally invented by the genius of the Druids,
and afterwards adopted and enforced by the authority of the Bishops.
The tributes were paid in kind, and consisted of cattle, horses,
foreign-born slaves, hounds, oxen, scarlet mantles, coats of mail,
chess-boards and chess-men, drinking cups, and other portable articles
of value. The quantity in every case due from a King to his
subordinate, or from a subordinate to his King—for the gifts and grants
were often reciprocal—is precisely stated in every instance. Besides
these rights, this constitution defines the "prerogatives" of the five
Kings on their journeys through each other's territory, their accession
to power, or when present in the General Assemblies of the Kingdom. It
contains, besides, a very numerous array of "prohibitions"—acts which
neither the Ard-Righ nor any other Potentate may lawfully do. Most of
these have reference to old local Pagan ceremonies in which the Kings
once bore a leading part, but which were now strictly prohibited;
others are of inter-Provincial significance, and others, again, are
rules of personal conduct. Among the prohibitions of the monarch the
first is, that the sun must never rise on him in his bed at Tara; among
his prerogatives he was entitled to banquet on the first of August, on
the fish of the Boyne, fruit from the Isle of Man, cresses from the
Brosna river, venison from Naas, and to drink the water of the well of
Talla: in other words, he was entitled to eat on that day, of the
produce, whether of earth or water, of the remotest bounds, as well as
of the very heart of his mensal domain. The King of Leinster was
"prohibited" from upholding the Pagan ceremonies within his province,
or to encamp for more than a week in certain districts; but he was
"privileged" to feast on the fruits of Almain, to drink the ale of
Cullen, and to preside over the games of Carman, (Wexford.) His
colleague of Munster was "prohibited" from encamping a whole week at
Killarney or on the Suir, and from mustering a martial host on the
Leinster border at Gowran; he was "privileged" to pass the six weeks of
Lent at Cashel (in free quarters), to use fire and force in compelling
tribute from north Leinster; and to obtain a supply of cattle from
Connaught, at the time "of the singing of the cuckoo." The Connaught
King had five other singular "prohibitions" imposed on him—evidently
with reference to some old Pagan rites—and his "prerogatives" were
hostages from Galway, the monopoly of the chase in Mayo, free quarters
in Murrisk, in the same neighbourhood, and to marshal his border-host
at Athlone to confer with the tribes of Meath. The ruler of Ulster was
also forbidden to indulge in such superstitious practices as observing
omens of birds, or drinking of a certain fountain "between two
darknesses;" his prerogatives were presiding at the games of Cooley,
"with the assembly of the fleet;" the right of mustering his border
army in the plains of Louth; free quarters in Armagh for three nights
for his troops before setting out on an expedition; and to confine his
hostages in Dunseverick, a strong fortress near the Giant's Causeway.
Such were the principal checks imposed upon the individual caprice of
Monarchs and Princes; the plain inference from all which is, that under
the Constitution of Patrick, a Prince who clung to any remnant of
ancient Paganism, might lawfully be refused those rents and dues which
alone supported his dignity. In other words, disguised as it may be to
us under ancient forms, "the Book of Rights" establishes Christianity
as the law of the land. All national usages and customs, not
conflicting with this supreme law, were recognized and sanctioned by
it. The internal revenues in each particular Province were modelled
upon the same general principle, with one memorable exception—the
special tribute which Leinster paid to Munster—and which was the cause
of more bloodshed than all other sources of domestic quarrel combined.
The origin of this tax is surrounded with fable, but it appears to have
arisen out of the reaction which took place, when Tuathal, "the
Legitimate," was restored to the throne of his ancestors, after the
successful revolt of the Belgic bondsmen. Leinster seems to have clung
longest to the Belgic revolution, and to have submitted only after
repeated defeats. Tuathal, therefore, imposed on that Province this
heavy and degrading tax, compelling its Princes not only to render him
and his successors immense herds of cattle, but also 150 male and
female slaves, to do the menial offices about the palace of Tara. With
a refinement of policy, as far-seeing as it was cruel, the proceeds of
the tax were to be divided one-third to Ulster, one-third to Connaught,
and the remainder between the Queen of the Monarch and the ruler of
Munster. In this way all the other Provinces became interested in
enforcing this invidious and oppressive enactment upon Leinster which,
of course, was withheld whenever it could be refused with the smallest
probability of success. Its resistance, and enforcement, especially by
the kings of Munster, will be found a constant cause of civil war, even
in Christian times.
The sceptre of Ireland, from her conversion to the time of Brian, was
almost solely in the hands of the northern Hy-Nial, the same family as
the O'Neills. All the kings of the sixth and seventh centuries were of
that line. In the eighth century (from 709 to 742), the southern
annalists style Cathal, King of Munster, Ard-Righ; in the ninth century
(840 to 847), they give the same high title to Felim, King of Munster;
and in the eleventh century Brian possessed that dignity for the twelve
last years of his life, (1002 to 1014). With these exceptions, the
northern Hy-Nial, and their co-relatives of Meath, called the southern
Hy-Nial, seem to have retained the sceptre exclusively in their own
hands, during the five first Christian centuries. Yet on every
occasion, the ancient forms of election, (or procuring the adhesion of
the Princes), had to be gone through. Perfect unanimity, however, was
not required; a majority equal to two-thirds seems to have sufficed. If
the candidate had the North in his favour, and one Province of the
South, he was considered entitled to take possession of Tara; if he
were a Southern, he should be seconded either by Connaught or Ulster,
before he could lawfully possess himself of the supreme power. The
benediction of the Archbishop of Armagh, seems to have been necessary
to confirm the choice of the Provincials. The monarchs, like the petty
kings, were crowned or "made" on the summit of some lofty mound
prepared for that purpose; an hereditary officer, appointed to that
duty, presented him with a white wand perfectly straight, as an emblem
of the purity and uprightness which should guide all his decisions,
and, clothed with his royal robes, the new ruler descended among his
people, and solemnly swore to protect their rights and to administer
equal justice to all. This was the civil ceremony; the solemn blessing
took place in a church, and is supposed to be the oldest form of
coronation service observed anywhere in Christendom.
A ceremonial, not without dignity, regulated the gradations of honour,
in the General Assemblies of Erin. The time of meeting was the great
Pagan Feast of Samhain, the 1st of November. A feast of three days
opened and closed the Assembly, and during its sittings, crimes of
violence committed on those in attendance were punished with instant
death. The monarch himself had no power to pardon any violator of this
established law. The _Chiefs_ of territories sat, each in an appointed
seat, under his own shield; the seats being arranged by order of the
Ollamh, or Recorder, whose duty it was to preserve the muster-roll,
containing the names of all the living nobles. The _Champions_, or
leaders of military bands, occupied a secondary position, each sitting
under his own shield. Females and spectators of an inferior rank were
excluded; the Christian clergy naturally stepped into the empty places
of the Druids, and were placed immediately next the monarch.
We shall now briefly notice the principal acts of the first Christian
kings, during the century immediately succeeding St. Patrick's death.
Of OLLIOL, who succeeded Leary, we cannot say with certainty that he
was a Christian. His successor, LEWY, son of Leary, we are expressly
told was killed by lightning (A.D. 496), for "having violated the law
of Patrick"—that is, probably, for having practised some of those Pagan
rites forbidden to the monarchs by the revised constitution. His
successor, MURKERTACH, son of Ere, was a professed Christian, though a
bad one, since he died by the vengeance of a concubine named Sheen,
(that is, _storm_,) whom he had once put away at the instance of his
spiritual adviser, but whom he had not the courage—though brave as a
lion in battle—to keep away (A.D. 527). TUATHAL, "the Rough," succeeded
and reigned for seven years, when he was assassinated by the tutor of
DERMID, son of Kerbel, a rival whom he had driven into exile. DERMID
immediately seized on the throne (A.D. 534), and for twenty eventful
years bore sway over all Erin. He appears to have had quite as much of
the old leaven of Paganism in his composition—at least in his youth and
prime—as either Lewy or Leary. He kept Druids about his person,
despised "the right of sanctuary" claimed by the Christian clergy, and
observed, with all the ancient superstitious ceremonial, the national
games at Tailteen. In his reign, the most remarkable event was the
public curse pronounced on Tara, by a Saint whose sanctuary the
reckless monarch had violated, in dragging a prisoner from the very
horns of the altar, and putting him to death. For this offence—the
crowning act of a series of aggressions on the immunities claimed by
the clergy—the Saint, whose name was Ruadan, and the site of whose
sanctuary is still known as Temple-Ruadan in Tipperary, proceeded to
Tara, accompanied by his clergy, and, walking round the royal rath,
solemnly excommunicated the monarch, and anathematized the place. The
far-reaching consequences of this awful exercise of spiritual power are
traceable for a thousand years through Irish history. No king after
Dermid resided permanently upon the hill of Tara. Other royal houses
there were in Meath—at Tailteen, at the hill of Usna, and on the margin
of the beautiful Lough Ennell, near the present Castlepollard, and at
one or other of these, after monarchs held occasional court; but those
of the northern race made their habitual home in their own patrimony
near Armagh, or on the celebrated hill of Aileach. The date of the
malediction which left Tara desolate is the year of our Lord, 554. The
end of this self-willed semi-Pagan (Dermid) was in unison with his
life; he was slain in battle by Black Hugh, Prince of Ulster, two years
after the desolation of Tara.
Four kings, all fierce competitors for the succession, reigned and
fell, within ten years of the death of Dermid, and then we come to the
really interesting and important reign of Hugh the Second, which lasted
twenty-seven years (A.D. 566 to 593), and was marked by the
establishment of the Independence of the Scoto-Irish Colony in North
Britain, and by other noteworthy events. But these twenty-seven years
deserve a chapter to themselves.
CHAPTER V.
REIGN OF HUGH II.—THE IRISH COLONY IN SCOTLAND OBTAINS ITS
INDEPENDENCE.
Twenty-seven years is a long reign, and the years of King-Hugh II. were
marked with striking events. One religious and one political
occurrence, however, threw all others into the shade—the conversion of
the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (then called Alba or Albyn by the
Gael, and Caledonia by the Latins), and the formal recognition, after
an exciting controversy, of the independence of the Milesian colony in
Scotland. These events follow each other in the order of time, and
stand partly in the relation of cause and effect.
The first authentic Irish immigration into Scotland seems to have taken
place about the year of our Lord 258. The pioneers crossed over from
Antrim to Argyle, where the strait is less than twenty-five miles wide.
Other adventurers followed at intervals, but it is a fact to be
deplored, that no passages in our own, and in all other histories, have
been so carelessly kept as the records of emigration. The movements of
rude masses of men, the first founders of states and cities, are
generally lost in obscurity, or misrepresented by patriotic zeal.
Several successive settlements of the Irish in Caledonia can be faintly
traced from the middle of the third till the beginning of the sixth
century. About the year 503, they had succeeded in establishing a
flourishing principality among the cliffs and glens of Argyle. The
limits of their first territory cannot be exactly laid down; but it
soon spread north into Rosshire, and east into the present county of
Perth. It was a land of stormy friths and fissured headlands, of deep
defiles and snowy summits. "'Tis a far cry to Lough Awe," is still a
lowland proverb, and Lough Awe was in the very heart of that old Irish
settlement.
The earliest emigrants to Argyle were Pagans, while the latter were
Christians, and were accompanied by priests, and a bishop, Kieran, the
son of the carpenter, whom, from his youthful piety and holy life, as
well as from the occupation followed by his father, is sometimes
fancifully compared to our Lord and Saviour himself. Parishes in
Cantyre, in Islay, and in Carrick, still bear the name of St. Kieran as
patron. But no systematic attempt—none at least of historic memory—was
made to convert the remoter Gael and the other races then inhabiting
Alba—the Picts, Britons, and Scandinavians, until the year of our era,
565, Columba or COLUMBKILL, a Bishop of the royal race of Nial,
undertook that task, on a scale commensurate with its magnitude. This
celebrated man has always ranked with Saint Patrick and Saint Bridget
as the most glorious triad of the Irish Calendar. He was, at the time
he left Ireland, in the prime of life—his 44th year. Twelve companions,
the apostolic number, accompanied him on his voyage. For thirty-four
years he was the legislator and captain of Christianity in those
northern regions. The King of the Picts received baptism at his hands;
the Kings of the Scottish colony, his kinsmen, received the crown from
him on their accession. The islet of I., or Iona, as presented to him
by one of these princes. Here he and his companions built with their
own hands their parent-house, and from this Hebridean rock in after
times was shaped the destinies, spiritual and temporal, of many tribes
and kingdoms.
The growth of Iona was as the growth of the grain of mustard seed
mentioned in the Gospel, even during the life of its founder. Formed by
his teaching and example, there went out from it apostles to Iceland,
to the Orkneys, to Northumbria, to Man, and to South Britain. A hundred
monasteries in Ireland looked to that exiled saint as their patriarch.
His rule of monastic life, adopted either from the far East, from the
recluses of the Thebaid, or from his great contemporary, Saint
Benedict, was sought for by Chiefs, Bards, and converted Druids.
Clients, seeking direction from his wisdom, or protection through his
power, were constantly arriving and departing from his sacred isle. His
days were divided between manual labour and the study and transcribing
of the Sacred Scriptures. He and his disciples, says the Venerable
Bede, in whose age Iona still flourished, "neither thought of nor loved
anything in _this_ world." Some writers have represented Columbkill's
_Culdees_, (which in English means simply "Servants of God,") as a
married clergy; so far is this from the truth, that we now know, no
woman was allowed to land on the island, nor even a cow to be kept
there, for, said the holy Bishop, "wherever there is a cow there will
be a woman, and wherever there is a woman there will be mischief."
In the reign of King Hugh, three domestic questions arose of great
importance; one was the refusal of the Prince of Ossory to pay tribute
to the Monarch; the other, the proposed extinction of the Bardic Order,
and the third, the attempt to tax the Argyle Colony. The question
between Ossory and Tara, we may pass over as of obsolete interest, but
the other two deserve fuller mention:
The Bards—who were the Editors, Professors, Registrars and
Record-keepers—the makers and masters of public opinion in those days,
had reached in this reign a number exceeding 1,200 in Meath and Ulster
alone. They claimed all the old privileges of free quarters on their
travels and freeholdings at home, which were freely granted to their
order when it was in its infancy. Those chieftains who refused them
anything, however extravagant, they lampooned and libelled, exciting
their own people and other princes against them. Such was their
audacity, that some of them are said to have demanded from King Hugh
the royal brooch, one of the most highly prized heirlooms of the
reigning family. Twice in the early part of this reign they had been
driven from the royal residence, and obliged to take refuge in the
little principality of Ulidia (or Down); the third time the monarch had
sworn to expel them utterly from the kingdom. In Columbkill, however,
they were destined to find a most powerful mediator, both from his
general sympathy with the Order, being himself no mean poet, and from
the fact that the then Arch-Poet, or chief of the order, Dallan
Forgaill, was one of his own pupils.
To settle this vexed question of the Bards, as well as to obtain the
sanction of the estates to the taxation of Argyle, King Hugh called a
General Assembly in the year 590. The place of meeting was no longer
the interdicted Tara, but for the monarch's convenience a site farther
north was chosen—the hill of Drom-Keth, in the present county of Derry.
Here came in rival state and splendour the Princes of the four
Provinces, and other principal chieftains. The dignitaries of the
Church also attended, and an occasional Druid was perhaps to be seen in
the train of some unconverted Prince. The pretensions of the
mother-country to impose a tax upon her Colony, were sustained by the
profound learning and venerable name of St. Colman, Bishop of Dromore,
one of the first men of his Order.
When Columbkill "heard of the calling together of that General
Assembly," and of the questions to be there decided, he resolved to
attend, notwithstanding the stern vow of his earlier life, never to
look on Irish soil again. Under a scruple of this kind, he is said to
have remained blindfold, from his arrival in his fatherland, till his
return to Iona. He was accompanied by an imposing train of attendants;
by Aidan, Prince of Argyle, so deeply interested in the issue, and a
suite of over one hundred persons, twenty of them Abbots or Bishops.
Columbkill spoke for his companions; for already, as in Bede's time,
the Abbots of Iona exercised over all the clergy north of the Humber,
but still more directly north of the Tweed, a species of supremacy
similar to that which the successors of St. Benedict and St. Bernard
exercised, in turn, over Prelates and Princes on the European
Continent.
When the Assembly was opened the holy Bishop of Dromore stated the
arguments in favour of Colonial taxation with learning and effect. Hugh
himself impeached the Bards for their licentious and lawless lives.
Columbkill defended both interests, and, by combining both, probably
strengthened the friends of each. It is certain that he carried the
Assembly with him, both against the monarch and those of the resident
clergy, who had selected Colman as their spokesman. The Bardic Order
was spared. The doctors, or master-singers among them, were prohibited
from wandering from place to place; they were assigned residence with
the chiefs and princes; their losel attendants were turned over to
honest pursuits, and thus a great danger was averted, and one of the
most essential of the Celtic institutions being reformed and regulated,
was preserved. Scotland and Ireland have good reason to be grateful to
the founder of Iona, for the interposition that preserved to us the
music, which is now admitted to be one of the most precious
inheritances of both countries.
The proposed taxation Columbkill strenuously and successfully resisted.
Up to this time, the colonists had been bound only to furnish a
contingent force, by land and sea, when the King of Ireland went to
war, and to make them an annual present called "chief-rent."
From the Book of Rights we learn that (at least at the time the
existing transcript was made) the Scottish Princes paid out of Alba,
seven shields, seven steeds, seven bondswomen, seven bondsmen, and
seven hounds all of the same breed. But the "chief-rent," or "eric for
kindly blood," did not suffice in the year 590 to satisfy King Hugh.
The colony had grown great, and, like some modern monarchs, he proposed
to make it pay for its success. Columbkill, though a native of Ireland,
and a prince of its reigning house, was by choice a resident of
Caledonia, and he stood true to his adopted country. The Irish King
refused to continue the connection on the old conditions, and declared
his intention to visit Alba himself to enforce the tribute due;
Columbkill, rising in the Assembly, declared the Albanians "for ever
free from the yoke," and this, adds an old historian, "turned out to be
the fact." From the whole controversy we may conclude that Scotland
never paid political tribute to Ireland; that their relation was that
rather of allies, than of sovereign and vassal; that it resembled more
the homage Carthage paid to Tyre, and Syracuse to Corinth, than any
modern form of colonial dependence; that a federal connection existed
by which, in time of war, the Scots of Argyle, and those of Hibernia,
were mutually bound to aid, assist, and defend each other. And this
natural and only connection, founded in the blood of both nations,
sanctioned by their early saints, confirmed by frequent intermarriage,
by a common language and literature, and by hostility to common
enemies, the Saxons, Danes, and Normans, grew into a political bond of
unusual strength, and was cherished with affection by both nations,
long ages after the magnates assembled at Drom-Keth had disappeared in
the tombs of their fathers.
The only unsettled question which remained after the Assembly at
Drom-Keth related to the Prince of Ossory. Five years afterwards (A.D.
595), King Hugh fell in an attempt to collect the special tribute from
all Leinster, of which we have already heard something, and shall, by
and by, hear more. He was an able and energetic ruler, and we may be
sure "did not let the sun rise on him in his bed at Tara," or anywhere
else. In his time great internal changes were taking place in the state
of society. The ecclesiastical order had become more powerful than any
other in the state. The Bardic Order, thrice proscribed, were finally
subjected to the laws, over which they had at one time insolently
domineered. Ireland's only colony—unless we except the immature
settlement in the Isle of Man, under Cormac Longbeard—was declared
independent of the parent country, through the moral influence of its
illustrious Apostle, whose name many of its kings and nobles were of
old proud to bear—_Mal-Colm_, meaning "servant of Columb," or
Columbkill. But the memory of the sainted statesman who decreed the
separation of the two populations, so far as claims to taxation could
be preferred, preserved, for ages, the better and far more profitable
alliance, of an ancient friendship, unbroken by a single national
quarrel during a thousand years.
A few words more on the death and character of this celebrated man,
whom we are now to part with at the close of the sixth, as we parted
from Patrick at the close of the fifth century. His day of departure
came in 596. Death found him at the ripe age of almost fourscore,
_stylus_ in hand, toiling cheerfully over the vellum page. It was the
last night of the week when the presentiment of his end came strongly
upon him. "This day," he said to his disciple and successor, Dermid,
"is called the day of rest, and such it will be for me, for it will
finish my labours." Laying down the manuscript, he added, "let Baithen
finish the rest." Just after Matins, on the Sunday morning, he
peacefully passed away from the midst of his brethren.
Of his tenderness, as well as energy of character, tradition, and his
biographers have recorded many instances. Among others, his habit of
ascending an eminence every evening at sunset, to look over towards the
coast of his native land. The spot is called by the islanders to this
day, "the place of the back turned upon Ireland." The fishermen of the
Hebrides long believed they could see their saint flitting over the
waves after every new storm, counting the islands to see if any of them
had foundered. It must have been a loveable character of which such
tales could be told and cherished from generation to generation.
Both Education and Nature had well fitted Columbkill to the great task
of adding another realm to the empire of Christendom. His princely
birth gave him power over his own proud kindred; his golden eloquence
and glowing verse—the fragments of which still move and delight the
Gaelic scholar—gave him fame and weight in the Christian schools which
had suddenly sprung up in every glen and island. As prince, he stood on
equal terms with princes; as poet, he was affiliated to that
all-powerful Bardic Order, before whose awful anger kings trembled, and
warriors succumbed in superstitious dread. A spotless soul, a
disciplined body, an indomitable energy, an industry that never
wearied, a courage that never blanched, a sweetness and courtesy that
won all hearts, a tenderness for others that contrasted strongly with
his rigour towards himself—these were the secrets of the success of
this eminent missionary—these were the miracles by which he
accomplished the conversion of so many barbarous tribes and Pagan
Princes.
CHAPTER VI.
KINGS OF THE SEVENTH CENTURY.
THE five years of the sixth century, which remained after the death of
Hugh II., were filled by Hugh III., son of Dermid, the semi-Pagan. Hugh
IV. succeeded (A.D. 599) and reigned for several years; two other
kings, of small account, reigned seven years; Donald II. (A.D. 624)
reigned sixteen years; Connall and Kellach, brothers, (A.D. 640)
reigned jointly sixteen years; they were succeeded (A.D. 656) by Dermid
and Blathmac, brothers, who reigned jointly seven years; Shanasagh, son
of the former, reigned six years; Kenfala, four; Finnacta, "the
hospitable," twenty years, and Loingsech (A.D. 693) eight years.
Throughout this century the power of the Church was constantly on the
increase, and is visible in many important changes. The last armed
struggle of Druidism, and the only invasion of Ireland by the
Anglo-Saxons, are also events of the civil history of the seventh
century.
The reign, of Donald II. is notable for the passing away of most of
those saintly men, the second generation of Irish abbots and bishops;
for the foundation of the celebrated school of Lismore on the Munster
Blackwater; and the battle of Moira, in the present county of Down. Of
the school and the saints we shall speak hereafter; the battle deserves
more immediate mention.
The cause of the battle was the pretension of the petty Prince of
Ulidia, which comprised little more than the present county of Down, to
be recognised as Prince of all Ulster. Now the Hy-Nial family, not only
had long given monarchs to all Ireland, but had also the lion's share
of their own Province, and King Donald as their head could not permit
their ascendency to be disputed. The ancestors of the present
pretender, Congal, surnamed "the squint-eyed," had twice received and
cherished the licentious Bards when under the ban of Tara, and his
popularity with that still powerful order was one prop of his ambition.
It is pretty clear also that the last rally of Druidism against
Christianity took place behind his banner, on the plain of Moira. It
was the year 637, and preparations had long gone on on both sides for a
final trial of strength. Congal had recruited numerous bands of Saxons,
Britons, Picts and Argyle Scots, who poured into the harbours of Down
for months, and were marshalled on the banks of the Lagan, to sustain
his cause. The Poets of succeeding ages have dwelt much in detail on
the occurrences of this memorable day. It was what might strictly be
called a pitched battle, time and place being fixed by mutual
agreement. King Donald was accompanied by his Bard, who described to
him, as they came in sight, the several standards of Congal's host, and
who served under them. Conspicuous above all, the ancient banner of the
Red Branch Knights-"a yellow lion wrought on green satin"—floated over
Congal's host. On the other side the monarch commanded in person,
accompanied by his kinsmen, the sons of Hugh III. The red hand of
Tirowen, the cross of Tirconnell, the eagle and lion of Innishowen, the
axes of Fanad, were in his ranks, ranged closely round his own
standard. The cause of the Constitution and the Church prevailed, and
Druidism mourned its last hope extinguished on the plains of Moira, in
the death of Congal, and the defeat of his vast army. King Donald
returned in triumph to celebrate his victory at Emania and to receive
the benediction of the Church at Armagh.
The sons of Hugh III., Dermid and Blathmac, zealous and pious Christian
princes, survived the field of Moira and other days of danger, and
finally attained the supreme power—A.D. 656. Like the two kings of
Sparta they reigned jointly, dividing between them the labours and
cares of State. In their reign, that terrible scourge, called in Irish,
"the yellow plague," after ravaging great part of Britain, broke out
with undiminished virulence in Erin (A.D. 664). To heighten the awful
sense of inevitable doom, an eclipse of the sun occurred concurrently
with the appearance of the pestilence on the first Sunday in May. It
was the season when the ancient sun-god had been accustomed to receive
his annual oblations, and we can well believe that those whose hearts
still trembled at the name of Bel, must have connected the eclipse and
the plague with the revolution in the national worship, and the
overthrow of the ancient gods on that "plain of prostration," where
they had so long received the homage of an entire people. Among the
victims of this fearful visitation—which, like the modern cholera,
swept through all ranks and classes of society, and returned in the
same track for several successive seasons—were very many of those
venerated men, the third and fourth generation of the Abbots and
Bishops. The Munster King, and many of the chieftain class shared the
common lot. Lastly, the royal brothers fell themselves victims to the
epidemic, which so sadly signalizes their reign.
The only conflicts that occurred on Irish soil with a Pictish or an
Anglo-Saxon force—if we except those who formed a contingent of
Congal's army at Moira—occurred in the time of the hospitable Finnacta.
The Pictish force, with their leaders, were totally defeated at
Rathmore, in Antrim (A.D. 680), but the Anglo-Saxon expedition (A.D.
684) seems not to have been either expected or guarded against. As
leading to the mention of other interesting events, we must set this
inroad clearly before the reader.
The Saxons had now been for four centuries in Britain, the older
inhabitants of which—Celts like the Gauls and Irish—they had cruelly
harassed, just as the Milesian Irish oppressed their Belgic
predecessors, and as the Normans, in turn, will be found oppressing
both Celt and Saxon in England and Ireland. Britain had been divided by
the Saxon leaders into eight separate kingdoms, the people and princes
of several of which were converted to Christianity in the fifth, sixth,
and seventh century, though some of them did not receive the Gospel
before the beginning of the eighth. The Saxons of Kent and the Southern
Kingdoms generally were converted by missionaries from France or Rome,
or native preachers of the first or second Christian generation; those
of Northumbria recognise as their Apostles St. Aidan and St. Cuthbert,
two Fathers from Iona. The Kingdom of Northumbria, as the name implies,
embraced nearly all the country from the Humber to the Pictish border.
York was its capital, and the seat of its ecclesiastical primacy,
where, at the time we speak of, the illustrious Wilfrid was
maintaining, with a wilful and unscrupulous king, a struggle not unlike
that which Becket maintained with Henry II. This Prince, Egfrid by
name, was constantly engaged in wars with his Saxon cotemporaries, or
the Picts and Scots. In the summer of 683 he sent an expedition under
the command of Beort, one of his earls, to ravage the coast of
Leinster. Beort landed probably in the Boyne, and swept over the rich
plain of Meath with fire and sword, burning churches, driving off herds
and flocks, and slaughtering the clergy and the husbandmen. The piety
of an after age saw in the retribution which overtook Egfrid the
following year, when he was slain by the Picts and Scots, the judgment
of Heaven, avenging the unprovoked wrongs of the Irish. His Scottish
conquerors, returning good for evil, carried his body to Iona, where it
was interred with all due honour.
Iona was now in the zenith of its glory. The barren rock, about three
miles in length, was covered with monastic buildings, and its cemetery
was already adorned with the tombs of saints and kings. Five successors
of Columbkill slept in peace around their holy Founder, and a sixth,
equal in learning and sanctity to any who preceded him, received the
remains of King Egfrid from the hands of his conquerors. This was Abbot
Adamnan, to whom Ireland and Scotland are equally indebted for his
admirable writings, and who might almost dispute with Bede himself, the
title of Father of British History. Adamnan regarded the fate of
Egfrid, we may be sure, in the light of a judgment on him for his
misdeeds, as Bede and British Christians very generally did. He
learned, too, that there were in Northumbria several Christian
captives, carried off in Beort's expedition and probably sold into
slavery. Now every missionary that ever went out from Iona, had taught
that to reduce Christians to slavery was wholly inconsistent with a
belief in the doctrines of the Gospel. St. Aidan, the Apostle of
Northumbria, had refused the late Egfrid's father absolution, on one
occasion, until he solemnly promised to restore their freedom to
certain captives of this description. In the same spirit Adamnan
voluntarily undertook a journey to York, where Aldfrid (a Prince
educated in Ireland, and whose "Itinerary" of Ireland we still have)
now reigned. The Abbot of Iona succeeded in his humane mission, and
crossing over to his native land, he restored sixty of the captives to
their homes and kindred. While the liberated exiles rejoiced on the
plain of Meath, the tent of the Abbot of Iona was pitched on the rath
of Tara—a fact which would seem to indicate that already, in little
more than a century since the interdict had fallen on it, the edifices
which made so fine a show in the days of Patrick were ruined and
uninhabitable. Either at Tara, or some other of the royal residences,
Adamnan on this visit procured the passing of a law, (A.D. 684,)
forbidding women to accompany an army to battle, or to engage
personally in the conflict. The mild maternal genius of Christianity is
faithfully exhibited in such a law, which consummates the glory of the
worthy successor of Columbkill. It is curious here to observe that it
was not until another hundred years had past—not till the beginning of
the ninth century—that the clergy were "exempt" from military service.
So slow and patient is the process by which Christianity infuses itself
into the social life of a converted people!
The long reign of FINNACTA, the hospitable, who may, for his many other
virtues, be called also the pious, was rendered farther remarkable in
the annals of the country by the formal abandonment of the special tax,
so long levied upon, and so long and desperately resisted by, the men
of Leinster. The all-powerful intercessor in this case was Saint
Moling, of the royal house of Leinster, and Bishop of Fernamore (now
Ferns). In the early part of his reign Finnacta seems not to have been
disposed to collect this invidious tax by force; but, yielding to other
motives, he afterwards took a different view of his duty, and marched
into Leinster to compel its payment. Here the holy Prelate of Ferns met
him, and related a Vision in which he had been instructed to demand the
abolition of the impost. The abolition, he contended, should not be
simply a suspension, but final and for ever. The tribute was, at this
period, enormous; 15,000 head of cattle annually. The decision must
have been made about the time that Abbot Adamnan was in Ireland, (A.D.
684,) and that illustrious personage is said to have been opposed to
the abolition. Abolished it was, and though its re-enactment was often
attempted, the authority of Saint Moling's solemn settlement, prevented
it from being re-enforced for any length of time, except as a political
or military infliction.
Finnacta fell in battle in the 20th year of his long and glorious
reign; and is commemorated as a saint in the Irish calendar. St. Moling
survived him three years, and St. Adamnan, so intimately connected with
his reign, ten years. The latter revisited Ireland in 697, under the
short reign of Loingsech, and concerned himself chiefly in endeavouring
to induce his countrymen to adopt the Roman rule, as to the tonsure,
and the celebration of Easter. On this occasion there was an important
Synod of the Clergy, under the presidency of Flan, Archbishop of
Armagh, held at Tara. Nothing could be more natural than such an
assembly in such a place, at such a period. In every recorded instance
the power of the clergy had been omnipotent in politics for above a
century. St. Patrick had expurgated the old constitution; St. Ruadan's
curse drove the kings from Tara; St. Columbkill had established the
independence of Alba, and preserved the Bardic Order; St. Moling had
abolished the Leinster tribute. If their power was irresistible in the
sixth and especially in the seventh centuries, we must do these
celebrated Abbots and Bishops the justice to remember that it was
always exercised against the oppression of the weak by the strong, to
mitigate the horrors of war, to uphold the right of sanctuary (the
_Habeus Corpus_ of that rude age), and for the maintenance and spread
of sound Christian principles.
CHAPTER VII.
KINGS OF THE EIGHTH CENTURY.
The kings of the eighth century are Congal II. (surnamed Kenmare), who
reigned seven years; Feargal, who reigned ten years; Forgartah,
Kenneth, Flaherty, respectively one, four, and seven years; Hugh V.
(surnamed Allan), nine years; Donald III., who reigned (A.D. 739-759)
twenty years; Nial II. (surnamed Nial of the Showers), seven years; and
Donogh I., who reigned thirty-one years, A.D. 766-797. The obituaries
of these kings show that we have fallen on a comparatively peaceful
age, since of the entire nine, but three perished in battle. One
retired to Armagh and one to Iona, where both departed in the monastic
habit; the others died either of sickness or old age.
Yet the peaceful character of this century is but comparative, for in
the first quarter (A.D. 722), we have the terrible battle of Almain,
between Leinster and the Monarch, in which 30,000 men were stated to
have engaged, and 7,000 to have fallen. The Monarch who had double the
number of the Leinster Prince, was routed and slain, _apropos_ of which
we have a Bardic tale told, which almost transports one to the far
East, the simple lives and awful privileges of the Hindoo Brahmins. It
seems that some of King FEARGAL's army, in foraging for their fellows,
drove off the only cow of a hermit, who lived in seclusion near a
solitary little chapel called Killin. The enraged recluse, at the very
moment the armies were about to engage, appeared between them,
regardless of personal danger, denouncing ruin and death to the
monarch's forces. And in this case, as in others, to be found in every
history, the prophecy, no doubt, helped to produce its own fulfilment.
The malediction of men dedicated to the service of God, has often
routed hosts as gallant as were marshalled on the field of Almain.
FEARGAL'S two immediate successors met a similar fate—death in the
field of battle—after very brief reigns, of which we have no great
events to record.
FLAHERTY, the next who succeeded, after a vigorous reign of seven
years, withdrew from the splendid cares of a crown, and passed the long
remainder of his life—thirty years—in the habit of a monk at Armagh.
The heavy burthen which he had cheerfully laid down, was taken up by a
Prince, who combined the twofold character of poet and hero. HUGH V.
(surnamed Allan), the son of FEARGAL, of whom we have just spoken, was
the very opposite of his father, in his veneration for the privileges
of holy persons and places. His first military achievement was
undertaken in vindication of the rights of those who were unable by
arms to vindicate their own. Hugh Roin, Prince of the troublesome
little principality of Ulidia (Down), though well stricken in years and
old enough to know better, in one of his excursions had forcibly
compelled the clergy of the country through which he passed to give him
free quarters, contrary to the law everywhere existing. Congus, the
Primate, jealous of the exemptions of his order, complained of this
sacrilege in a poetic message addressed to Hugh Allan, who, as a
Christian and a Prince, was bound to espouse his quarrels. He marched
into the territory of the offender, defeated him in battle, cut off his
head on the threshold of the Church of Faughard, and marched back
again, his host chanting a war song composed by their leader.
In this reign died Saint Gerald of Mayo, an Anglo-Saxon Bishop, and
apparently the head of a colony of his countrymen, from whom that
district is ever since called "Mayo of the Saxons." The name, however,
being a general one for strangers from Britain about that period, just
as Dane became for foreigners from the Baltic in the next century, is
supposed to be incorrectly applied: the colony being, it is said,
really from Wales, of old British stock, who had migrated rather than
live under the yoke of their victorious Anglo-Saxon Kings. The
descendants of these Welshmen are still to be traced, though intimately
intermingled with the original Belgic and later Milesian settlers in
Mayo, Sligo, and Galway—thus giving a peculiar character to that
section of the country, easily distinguishable from all the rest.
Although Hugh Allan did not imitate his father's conduct towards
ecclesiastics, he felt bound by all-ruling custom to avenge his
father's death. In all ancient countries the kinsmen of a murdered man
were both by law and custom the avengers of his blood. The members of
the Greek _phratry_, of the Roman _fatria_, or _gens_, of the Germanic
and Anglo-Saxon _guild_, and of the mediaeval sworn _commune_, were all
solemnly bound to avenge the blood of any of their brethren, unlawfully
slain. So that the repulsive repetition of reprisals, which so disgusts
the modern reader in our old annals, is by no means a phenomenon
peculiar to the Irish state of society. It was in the middle age and in
early times common to all Europe, to Britain and Germany, as well as to
Greece and Rome. It was, doubtless, under a sense of duty of this sort
that Hugh V. led into Leinster a large army (A.D. 733), and the day of
Ath-Senaid fully atoned for the day of Almain. Nine thousand of the men
of Leinster were left on the field, including most of their chiefs; the
victorious monarch losing a son, and other near kinsmen. Four years
later, he himself fell in an obscure contest near Kells, in the plain
of Meath. Some of his quartrains have come down to us, and they breathe
a spirit at once religious and heroic—such as must have greatly
endeared the Prince who possessed it to his companions in arms. We are
not surprised, therefore, to find his reign a favourite epoch with
subsequent Bards and Storytellers.
The long and prosperous reign of Donald III. succeeded (A.D. 739 to
759). He is almost the only one of this series of Kings of whom it can
be said that he commanded in no notable battle. The annals of his reign
are chiefly filled with ordinary accidents, and the obits of the
learned. But its literary and religious record abounds with bright
names and great achievements, as we shall find when we come to consider
the educational and missionary fruits of Christianity in the eighth
century. While on a pilgrimage to Durrow, a famous Columbian foundation
in Meath, and present King's County, Donald III. departed this life,
and in Durrow, by his own desire, his body was interred.
Nial II. (surnamed of the Showers), son to FEARGAL and brother of the
warrior-Bard, Hugh V., was next invested with the white wand of
sovereignty. He was a prince less warlike and more pious than his elder
brother. The _soubriquet_ attached to his name is accounted for by a
Bardic tale, which represents him as another Moses, at whose prayer
food fell from heaven in time of famine. Whatever "showers" fell or
wonders were wrought in his reign, it is certain that after enjoying
the kingly office for seven years, Nial resigned, and retired to Iona,
there to pass the remainder of his days in penance and meditation.
Eight years he led the life of a monk in that sacred Isle, where his
grave is one of those of "the three Irish Kings," still pointed out in
the cemetery of the Kings. He is but one among several Princes, his
cotemporaries, who had made the same election. We learn in this same
century, that Cellach, son of the King of Connaught, died in Holy
Orders, and that Bec, Prince of Ulidia, and Ardgall, son of a later
King of Connaught, had taken the "crostaff" of the pilgrim, either for
Iona or Armagh, or some more distant shrine. Pilgrimages to Rome and to
Jerusalem seem to have been begun even before this time, as we may
infer from St. Adamnan's work on the situation of the Holy Places, of
which Bede gives an abstract.
The reign of Donogh I. is the longest and the last among the Kings of
the eighth century (A.D. 776 to 797). The Kings of Ireland had now not
only abandoned Tara, but one by one, the other royal residences in
Meath as their usual place of abode. As a consequence a local
sovereignty sprung up in the family of O'Melaghlin, a minor branch of
the ruling race. This house developing its power so unexpectedly, and
almost always certain to have the national forces under the command of
a Patron Prince at their back, were soon involved in quarrels about
boundaries, both with Leinster and Munster. King Donogh, at the outset
of his reign, led his forces into both principalities, and without
battle received their hostages. Giving hostages—generally the sons of
the chiefs—was the usual form of ratifying any treaty. Generally also,
the Bishop of the district, or its most distinguished ecclesiastic, was
called in as witness of the terms, and both parties were solemnly sworn
on the relics of Saints—the Gospels of the Monasteries or Cathedrals—or
the croziers of their venerated founders. The breach of such a treaty
was considered "a violation of the relics of the saint," whose name had
been invoked, and awful penalties were expected to follow so heinous a
crime. The hostages were then carried to the residence of the King, to
whom they were entrusted, and while the peace lasted, enjoyed a parole
freedom, and every consideration due to their rank. If of tender age
they were educated with the same care as the children of the household.
But when war broke out their situation was always precarious, and
sometimes dangerous. In a few instances they had even been put to
death, but this was considered a violation of all the laws both of
hospitality and chivalry; usually they were removed to some strong
secluded fort, and carefully guarded as pledges to be employed,
according to the chances and changes of the war. That Donogh preferred
negotiation to war, we may infer by his course towards Leinster and
Munster, in the beginning of his reign, and his "kingly parlee" at a
later period (A.D. 783) with FIACHNA, of Ulidia, son of that
over-exacting Hugh Roin, whose head was taken from his shoulders at the
Church door of Faughard. This "kingly parlee" was held on an island off
the Methian shore, called afterwards "King's Island." But little good
came of it. Both parties still held their own views, so that the
satirical poets asked what was the use of the island, when one party
"would not come upon the land, nor the other upon the sea?" However, we
needs must agree with King Donogh, that war is the last resort, and is
only to be tried when all other means have failed.
Twice during this reign the whole island was stricken with panic, by
extraordinary signs in the heavens, of huge serpents coiling themselves
through the stars, of fiery bolts flying like shuttles from one side of
the horizon to the other, or shooting downward directly to the earth.
These atmospheric wonders were accompanied by thunder and lightning so
loud and so prolonged that men hid themselves for fear in the caverns
of the earth. The fairs and markets were deserted by buyers and
sellers; the fields were abandoned by the farmers; steeples were rent
by lightning, and fell to the ground; the shingled roofs of churches
caught fire and burned whole buildings. Shocks of earthquake were also
felt, and round towers and cyclopean masonry were strewn in fragments
upon the ground. These visitations first occurred in the second year of
Donogh, and returned again in 783. When, in the next decade, the first
Danish descent was made on the coast of Ulster (A.D. 794), these signs
and wonders were superstitiously supposed to have been the precursors
of that far more terrible and more protracted visitation.
The Danes at first attracted little notice, but in the last year of
Donogh (A.D. 797) they returned in greater force, and swept rapidly
along the coast of Meath; it was reserved for his successors of the
following centuries to face the full brunt of this new national danger.
But before encountering the fierce nations of the north, and the stormy
period they occupy, let us cast back a loving glance over the
world-famous schools and scholars of the last two centuries. Hitherto
we have only spoken of certain saints, in connection with high affairs
of state. We must now follow them to the college and the cloister, we
must consider them as founders at home, and as missionaries abroad;
otherwise how could we estimate all that is at stake for Erin and for
Christendom, in the approaching combat with the devotees of Odin,—the
deadly enemies of all Christian institutions?
CHAPTER VIII.
WHAT THE IRISH SCHOOLS AND SAINTS DID IN THE THREE FIRST CHRISTIAN
CENTURIES.
We have now arrived at the close of the third century, from the death
of Saint Patrick, and find ourselves on the eve of a protracted
struggle with the heathen warriors of Scandinavia; it is time,
therefore, to look back on the interval we have passed, and see what
changes have been wrought in the land, since its kings, instead of
waiting to be attacked at home, had made the surrounding sea "foam with
the oars" of their outgoing expeditions.
The most obvious change in the condition of the country is traceable in
its constitution and laws, into every part of which, as was its wont
from the beginning, the spirit of Christianity sought patiently to
infuse itself. We have already spoken of the expurgation of the
constitution, which prohibited the observance of Pagan rites to the
kings, and imposed on them instead, certain social obligations. This
was a first change suggested by Saint Patrick, and executed mainly by
his disciple, Saint Benignus. We have seen the legislative success
which attended the measures of Columbkill, Moling, and Adamnan; in
other reforms of minor importance the paramount influence of the
clerical order may be easily traced.
But it is in their relation as teachers of human and divine science
that the Irish Saints exercised their greatest power, not only over
their own countrymen, but over a considerable part of Europe. The
intellectual leadership of western Europe—the glorious ambition of the
greatest nations—has been in turn obtained by Italy, France, Britain
and Germany. From the middle of the sixth to the middle of the eighth
century, it will hardly be disputed that that leadership devolved on
Ireland. All the circumstances of the sixth century helped to confer it
upon the newly converted western isle; the number of her schools, and
the wisdom, energy, and zeal of her masters, retained for her the proud
distinction for two hundred years. And when it passed away from her
grasp, she might still console herself with the grateful reflection
that the power she had founded and exercised, was divided among British
and continental schools, which her own _alumni_ had largely contributed
to form and establish. In the northern Province, the schools most
frequented were those of Armagh, and of Bangor, on Belfast lough; in
Meath, the school of Clonard, and that of Clomnacnoise, (near Athlone);
in Leinster, the school of Taghmon (_Ta-mun_), and Beg-Erin, the former
near the banks of the Slaney, the latter in Wexford harbour; in
Munster, the school of Lismore on the Blackwater, and of Mungret (now
Limerick), on the Shannon; in Connaught, the school of "Mayo of the
Saxons," and the schools of the Isles of Arran. These seats of learning
were almost all erected on the banks of rivers, in situations easy of
access, to the native or foreign student; a circumstance which proved
most disastrous to them when the sea kings of the north began to find
their way to the shores of the island. They derived their
maintenance—not from taxing their pupils—but in the first instance from
public endowments. They were essentially free schools; not only free as
to the lessons given, but the venerable Bede tells us they supplied
free bed and board and books to those who resorted to them from abroad.
The Prince and the Clansmen of every principality in which a school was
situated, endowed it with a certain share—often an ample one—of the
common land of the clan. Exclusive rights of fishery, and exclusive
mill-privileges seem also to have been granted. As to timber for
building purposes and for fuel, it was to be had for carrying and
cutting. The right of quarry went with the soil, wherever building
stone was found. In addition to these means of sustenance, a portion of
the collegiate clergy appeared to have discharged missionary duty, and
received offerings of the produce of the land. We hear of periodical
_quests_ or collections made for the sustenance of these institutions,
wherein the learned Lectors and Doctors, no doubt, pleaded their claims
to popular favour, with irresistible eloquence. Individuals, anxious to
promote the spread of religion and of science, endowed particular
institutions out of their personal means; Princes, Bishops, and pious
ladies, contributed to enlarge the bounds and increase the income of
their favourite foundations, until a generous emulation seems to have
seized on all the great families as well as on the different Provinces,
as to which could boast the most largely attended schools, and the
greatest number of distinguished scholars. The love of the _alma
mater_—that college patriotism which is so sure a sign of the
noble-minded scholar—never received more striking illustration than
among the graduates of those schools. Columbkill, in his new home among
the Hebrides, invokes blessings on blessings, on "the angels" with whom
it was once his happiness to walk in Arran, and Columbanus, beyond the
Alps, remembers with pride the school of Bangor—the very name of which
inspires him with poetic rapture.
The buildings, in which so many scholars were housed and taught, must
have been extensive. Some of the schools we have mentioned were, when
most flourishing, frequented by one, two, three, and even, at some
periods, as many as seven thousand scholars. Such a population was
alone sufficient to form a large village; and if we add the requisite
number of teachers and attendants, we will have an addition of at least
one-third to the total. The buildings seem to have been separately of
no great size, but were formed into streets, and even into something
like wards. Armagh was divided into three parts—_trian-more_ (or the
town proper), _trian-Patrick_, the Cathedral close, and
_trian-Sassenagh_, the Latin quarter, the home of the foreign students.
A tall sculptured Cross, dedicated to some favourite saint, stood at
the bounds of these several wards, reminding the anxious student to
invoke their spiritual intercession as he passed by. Early hours and
vigilant night watches had to be exercised to prevent conflagrations in
such village-seminaries, built almost wholly of wood, and roofed with
reeds or shingles. A Cathedral, or an Abbey Church, a round tower, or a
cell of some of the ascetic masters, would probably be the only stone
structure within the limits. To the students, the evening star gave the
signal for retirement, and the morning sun for awaking. When, at the
sound of the early bell, two or three thousand of them poured into the
silent streets and made their way towards the lighted Church, to join
in the service of matins, mingling, as they went or returned, the
tongues of the Gael, the Cimbri, the Pict, the Saxon, and the Frank, or
hailing and answering each other in the universal language of the Roman
Church, the angels in Heaven must have loved to contemplate the union
of so much perseverance with so much piety.
The lives of the masters, not less than their lessons, were studied and
observed by their pupils. At that time, as we gather from every
authority, they were models of simplicity. One Bishop is found,
erecting with his own hands, the _cashel_ or stone enclosure which
surrounded his cell; another is labouring in the field, and gives his
blessing to his visitors, standing between the stilts of the plough.
Most ecclesiastics work occasionally either in wood, in bronze, in
leather, or as scribes. The decorations of the Church, if not the
entire structure, was the work of those who served at the altar. The
tabernacle, the rood-screen, the ornamental font; the vellum on which
the Psalms and Gospels were written; the ornamented case which
contained the precious volume, were often of their making. The music
which made the vale of Bangor resound as if inhabited by angels, was
their composition; the hymns that accompanied it were their own. "It is
a poor Church that has no music," is one of the oldest Irish proverbs;
and the _Antiphonarium_ of Bangor, as well as that of Armagh, remains
to show that such a want was not left unsupplied in the early Church.
All the contemporary schools were not of the same grade nor of equal
reputation. We constantly find a scholar, after passing years in one
place, transferring himself to another, and sometimes to a third and a
fourth. Some masters were, perhaps, more distinguished in human
Science; others in Divinity. Columbkill studied in two or three
different schools, and _visited_ others, perhaps as disputant or
lecturer—a common custom in later years. Nor should we associate the
idea of under-age with the students of whom we speak. Many of them,
whether as teachers or learners, or combining both characters together,
reached middle life before they ventured as instructors upon the world.
Forty years is no uncommon age for the graduate of those days, when as
yet the discovery was unmade, that all-sufficient wisdom comes with the
first trace of down upon the chin of youth.
The range of studies seems to have included the greater part of the
collegiate course of our own times. The language of the country, and
the language of the Roman Church; the languages of Scripture—Greek and
Hebrew; the logic of Aristotle, the writings of the Fathers, especially
of Pope Gregory the Great—who appears to have been a favourite author
with the Irish Church; the defective Physics of the period;
Mathematics, Music, and Poetical composition went to complete the
largest course. When we remember that all the books were manuscripts;
that even paper had not yet been invented; that the best parchment was
equal to so much beaten gold, and a perfect MS. was worth a king's
ransom, we may better estimate the difficulties in the way of the
scholar of the seventh century. Knowing these facts, we can very well
credit that part of the story of St. Columbkill's banishment into
Argyle, which turns on what might be called a copyright dispute, in
which the monarch took the side of St. Finian of Clonard, (whose
original MSS. his pupil seems to have copied without permission,) and
the Clan-Conal stood up, of course, for their kinsman. This dispute is
even said to have led to the affair of Culdrum, in Sligo, which is
sometimes mentioned as "the battle of the book." The same tendency of
the national character which overstocked the Bardic Order, becomes
again visible in its Christian schools; and if we could form anything
like an approximate census of the population, anterior to the northern
invasions, we would find that the proportion of ecclesiastics was
greater than has existed either before or since in any Christian
country. The vast designs of missionary zeal drew off large bodies of
those who had entered Holy Orders; still the numbers engaged as
teachers in the great schools, as well as of those who passed their
lives in solitude and contemplation, must have been out of all modern
proportion to the lay inhabitants of the Island.
The most eminent Irish Saints of the fifth century were St. Ibar, St.
Benignus and St. Kieran, of Ossory; in the sixth, St. Bendan, of
Clonfert; St. Brendan, of Birr; St. Maccartin, of Clogher; St. Finian,
of Moville; St. Finbar, St. Cannice, St. Finian, of Clonard; and St.
Jarlath, of Tuam; in the seventh century, St. Fursey, St. Laserian,
Bishop of Leighlin; St. Kieran, Abbot of Clonmacnoise; St. Comgall,
Abbot of Bangor; St. Carthage, Abbot of Lismore; St. Colman, Bishop of
Dromore; St. Moling, Bishop of Ferns; St. Colman Ela, Abbot; St.
Cummian, "the White;" St. Finian, Abbot; St. Gall, Apostle of
Switzerland; St. Fridolin, "the Traveller;" St. Columbanus, Apostle of
Burgundy and Lombardy; St. Killian, Apostle of Franconia; St.
Columbkill, Apostle of the Picts; St. Cormac, called "the Navigator;"
St. Cuthbert; and St. Aidan, Apostle of Northumbria. In the eighth
century the most illustrious names are St. Cataldus, Bishop of
Tarentum; St. Adamnan, Abbot of Iona; St. Rumold, Apostle of Brabant;
Clement and Albinus, "the Wisdom-seekers;" and St. Feargal or
Virgilius, Bishop of Saltzburgh. Of holy women in the same ages, we
have some account of St. Samthan, in the eighth century; of St. Bees,
St. Dympna and St. Syra, in the seventh century, and of St. Monina, St.
Ita of Desies, and St. Bride, or Bridget, of Kildare, in the sixth. The
number of conventual institutions for women established in those ages,
is less easily ascertained than the number of monastic houses for men;
but we may suppose them to have borne some proportion to each other,
and to have even counted by hundreds. The veneration in which St.
Bridget was held during her life, led many of her countrywomen to
embrace the religious state, and no less than fourteen _Saints_, her
namesakes, are recorded. It was the custom of those days to call all
holy persons who died in the odour of sanctity, _Saints_, hence
national or provincial tradition venerates very many names, which the
reader may look for in vain, in the Roman calendar.
The intellectual labours of the Irish schools, besides the task of
teaching such immense numbers of men of all nations on their own soil,
and the missionary conquests to which I have barely alluded, were
diversified by controversies, partly scientific and partly
theological—such as the "Easter Controversy," the "Tonsure
Controversy," and that maintained by "Feargal the Geometer," as to the
existence of the Antipodes.
The discussion, as to the proper time of observing Easter, which had
occupied the doctors of the Council of Nice in the fourth century, was
raised in Ireland and in Britain early in the sixth, and complete
uniformity was not established till far on in the eighth. It occupied
the thoughts of several generations of the chief men of the Irish
Church, and some of their arguments still fortunately survive, to
attest their learning and tolerance, as well as their zeal. St. Patrick
had introduced in the fifth century the computation of time then
observed in Gaul, and to this custom many of the Irish doctors rigidly
adhered, long after the rest of Christendom had agreed to adopt the
Alexandrian computation. Great names were found on both sides of the
controversy: Columbanus, Finian, and Aidan, for adhering exactly to the
rule of St. Patrick; Cummian, the White, Laserian and Adamnan, in
favour of strict agreement with Rome and the East. Monks of the same
Monastery and Bishops of the same Province maintained opposite opinions
with equal ardour and mutual charity. It was a question of discipline,
not a matter of faith; but it involved a still greater question,
whether national churches were to plead the inviolability of their
local usages, even on points of discipline, against the sense and
decision of the Universal Church.
In the year of our Lord 630, the Synod of Leighlin was held, under the
shelter of the ridge of Leinster, and the presidency of St. Laserian.
Both parties at length agreed to send deputies to Rome, as "children to
their mother," to learn her decision. Three years later, that decision
was made known, and the midland and southern dioceses at once adopted
it. The northern churches, however, still held out, under the lead of
Armagh and the influence of Iona, nor was it till a century later that
this scandal of celebrating Easter on two different days in the same
church was entirely removed. In justification of the Roman rule, St.
Cummian, about the middle of the seventh century, wrote his famous
epistle to Segenius, Abbot of Iona, of the ability and learning of
which all modern writers from Archbishop Usher to Thomas Moore, speak
in terms of the highest praise. It is one of the few remaining
documents of that controversy. A less vital question of discipline
arose about the tonsure. The Irish shaved the head in a semicircle from
temple to temple, while the Latin usage was to shave the crown, leaving
an external circle of hair to typify the crown of thorns. At the
conference of Whitby (A.D. 664) this was one of the subjects of
discussion between the clergy of Iona, and those who followed the Roman
method—but it never assumed the importance of the Easter controversy.
In the following century an Irish Missionary, Virgilius, of Saltzburgh,
(called by his countrymen "Feargal, the Geometer,") was maintaining in
Germany against no less an adversary than St. Boniface, the sphericity
of the earth and the existence of antipodes. His opponents endeavoured
to represent him, or really believed him to hold, that there were other
men, on our earth, for whom the Redeemer had not died; on this ground
they appealed to Pope Zachary against him; but so little effect had
this gross distortion of his true doctrine at Rome, when explanations
were given, that Feargal was soon afterwards raised to the See of
Saltzburgh, and subsequently canonized by Pope Gregory IX. In the ninth
century we find an Irish geographer and astronomer of something like
European reputation in Dicuil and Dungal, whose treatises and epistles
have been given to the press. Like their compatriot, Columbanus, these
accomplished men had passed their youth and early manhood in their own
country, and to its schools are to be transferred the compliments paid
to their acquirements by such competent judges as Muratori, Latronne,
and Alexander von Humboldt. The origin of the scholastic
philosophy—which pervaded Europe for nearly ten centuries—has been
traced by the learned Mosheim to the same insular source. Whatever may
now be thought of the defects or shortcomings of that system, it
certainly was not unfavourable either to wisdom or eloquence, since
among its professors may be reckoned the names of St. Thomas and St.
Bernard.
We must turn away our eyes from the contemplation of those days in
which were achieved for Ireland the title of the land of saints and
doctors. Another era opens before us, and we can already discern the
long ships of the north, their monstrous beaks turned towards the holy
Isle, their sides hung with glittering shields and their benches
thronged with fair-haired warriors, chanting as they advance the fierce
war songs of their race. Instead of the monk's familiar voice on the
river banks we are to hear the shouts of strange warriors from a
far-off country; and for matin hymn and vesper song, we are to be beset
through a long and stormy period, with sounds of strife and terror, and
deadly conflict.
BOOK II.
CHAPTER I.
THE DANISH INVASION.
Hugh VI., surnamed Ornie, succeeded to the throne vacant by the death
of Donogh I. (A.D. 797), and reigned twenty-two years; Conor II.
succeeded (A.D. 819), and reigned fourteen years; Nial III. (called
from the place of his death Nial of Callan), reigned thirteen years;
Malachy I. succeeded (A.D. 845), and reigned fifteen years; Hugh VII.
succeeded and reigned sixteen years (dying A.D. 877); Flan (surnamed
Flan of the Shannon) succeeded at the latter date, and reigned for
thirty-eight years, far into the tenth century. Of these six kings,
whose reigns average twenty years each, we may remark that not one died
by violence, if we except perhaps Nial of Callan, drowned in the river
of that name in a generous effort to save the life of one of his own
servants. Though no former princes had ever encountered dangers equal
to these—yet in no previous century was the person of the ruler so
religiously respected. If this was evident in one or two instances
only, it would be idle to lay much stress upon it; but when we find the
same truth holding good of several successive reigns, it is not too
much to attribute it to that wide diffusion of Christian morals, which
we have pointed out as the characteristic of the two preceding
centuries. The kings of this age owed their best protection to the
purer ethics which overflowed from Armagh and Bangor and Lismore; and
if we find hereafter the regicide habits of former times partially
revived, it will only be after the new Paganism—the Paganism of
interminable anti-Christian invasions—had recovered the land, and
extinguished the beacon lights of the three first Christian centuries.
The enemy, who were now to assault the religious and civil institutions
of the Irish, must be admitted to possess many great military
qualities. They certainly exhibit, in the very highest degree, the
first of all military virtues—unconquerable courage. Let us say
cheerfully, that history does not present in all its volumes a braver
race of men than the Scandinavians of the ninth century. In most
respects they closely resembled the Gothic tribes, who, whether
starting into historic life on the Euxine or the Danube, or faintly
heard of by the Latins from the far off Baltic, filled with constant
alarm the Roman statesmen of the fourth century; nor can the invasions
of what we may call the maritime Goths be better introduced to the
reader than by a rapid sketch of the previous triumphs of their kindred
tribes over the Roman Empire.
It was in the year of our Lord 378 that these long-dreaded barbarians
defeated the Emperor Valens in the plain of Adrianople, and as early as
404—twenty-six years after their first victory in Eastern Europe—they
had taken and burned great Rome herself. Again and again—in 410, in
455, and in 472—they captured and plundered the Imperial City. In the
same century they had established themselves in Burgundy, in Spain, and
in Northern Africa; in the next, another branch of the Gothic stock
twice took Rome; and yet another founded the Lombard Kingdom in
Northern Italy. With these Goths thus for a time masters of the Roman
Empire, whose genius and temper has entered so deeply into all
subsequent civilization, war was considered the only pursuit worthy of
men. According to their ideas of human freedom, that sacred principle
was supposed to exist only in force and by force; they had not the
faintest conception, and at first received with unbounded scorn the
Christian doctrine of the unity of the human race, the privileges and
duties annexed to Christian baptism, and the sublime ideal of the
Christian republic. But they were very far from being so cruel or so
faithless as their enemies represented them; they were even better than
they cared to represent themselves. And they had amongst them men of
the highest capacity and energy, well worthy to be the founders of new
nations. Alaric, Attila, and Genseric, were fierce and unmerciful it is
true; but their acts are not all written in blood; they had their
better moments and higher purposes in the intervals of battle; and the
genius for civil government of the Gothic race was in the very
beginning demonstrated by such rulers as Theodoric in Italy and Clovis
in Gaul. The rear guard of this irresistible barbaric invasion was now
about to break in upon Europe by a new route; instead of the long land
marches by which they had formerly concentrated from the distant Baltic
and from the tributaries of the Danube, on the capital of the Roman
empire; instead of the tedious expeditions striking across the
Continent, hewing their paths through dense forests, arrested by rapid
rivers and difficult mountains, the last northern invaders of Europe
had sufficiently advanced in the arts of shipbuilding and navigation to
strike boldly into the open sea and commence their new conquests among
the Christian islands of the West. The defenders of Roman power and
Christian civilization in the fifth and sixth centuries, were arrayed
against a warlike but pastoral people encumbered with their women and
children; the defenders of the same civilization, in the British
Islands in the ninth and tenth centuries, were contending with kindred
tribes, who had substituted maritime arts and habits for the pastoral
arts and habits of the companions of Attila and Theodoric. The Gothic
invasion of Roman territory in the earlier period was, with the single
exception of the naval expeditions of Genseric from his new African
Kingdom, a continental war; and notwithstanding the partiality of
Genseric for his fleet, as an arm of offence and defence, his
companions and successors abandoned the ocean as an uncongenial
element. The only parallel for the new invasion, of which we are now to
speak, is to be found in the history and fortunes of the Saxons of the
fifth century, first the allies and afterwards the conquerors of part
of Britain. But even their descendants in England had not kept pace,
either in the arts of navigation or in thirst for adventure, with their
distant relatives, who remained two centuries later among the friths
and rocks of Scandinavia.
The first appearance of these invaders on the Irish and British coasts
occurred in 794. Their first descent on Ireland was at Rathlin island,
which may be called the outpost of Erin, towards the north; their
second attempt (A.D. 797) was at a point much more likely to arouse
attention—at Skerries, off the coast of Meath (now Dublin); in 803, and
again in 806, they attacked and plundered the holy Iona; but it was not
until a dozen years later they became really formidable. In 818 they
landed at Howth; and the same year, and probably the same party, sacked
the sacred edifices in the estuary of the Slaney, by them afterwards
called Wexford; in 820 they plundered Cork, and in 824—most startling
blow of all—they sacked and burned the schools of Bangor. The same year
they revisited Iona; and put to death many of its inmates; destroyed
Moville; received a severe check in Lecale, near Strangford lough (one
of their favourite stations). Another party fared better in a land
foray into Ossory, where they defeated those who endeavoured to arrest
their progress, and carried off a rich booty. In 830 and 831, their
ravages were equally felt in Leinster, in Meath, and in Ulster, and
besides many prisoners of princely rank, they plundered the primatial
city of Armagh for the first time, in the year 832. The names of their
chief captains, at this period, are carefully preserved by those who
had so many reasons to remember them; and we now begin to hear of the
Ivars, Olafs, and Sitricks, strangely intermingled with the Hughs,
Nials, Connors, and Felims, who contended with them in battle or in
diplomacy. It was not till the middle of this century (A.D. 837) that
they undertook to fortify Dublin, Limerick, and some other harbours
which they had seized, to winter in Ireland, and declare their purpose
to be the complete conquest of the country.
The earliest of these expeditions seem to have been annual visitations;
and as the northern winter sets in about October, and the Baltic is
seldom navigable before May, the summer was the season of their
depredations. Awaiting the breaking up of the ice, the intrepid
adventurers assembled annually upon the islands in the Cattegat or on
the coast of Norway, awaiting the favourable moment of departure. Here
they beguiled their time between the heathen rites they rendered to
their gods, their wild bacchanal festivals, and the equipment of their
galleys. The largest ship built in Norway, and probably in the north,
before the eleventh century, had 34 banks of oars. The largest class of
vessel carried from 100 to 120 men. The great fleet which invaded
Ireland in 837 counted 120 vessels, which, if of average size for such
long voyages, would give a total force of some 6,000 men. As the whole
population of Denmark, in the reign of Canute who died in 1035, is
estimated at 800,000 souls, we may judge from their fleets how large a
portion of the men were engaged in these piratical pursuits. The ships
on which they prided themselves so highly were flat-bottomed craft,
with little or no keel, the sides of wicker work, covered with strong
hides. They were impelled either by sails or oars as the changes of the
weather allowed; with favourable winds they often made the voyage in
three days. As if to favour their designs, the north and north-west
blast blows for a hundred days of the year over the sea they had to
traverse. When land was made, in some safe estuary, their galleys were
drawn up on shore, a convenient distance beyond highwater mark, where
they formed a rude camp, watch-fires were lighted, sentinels set, and
the fearless adventurers slept as soundly as if under their own roofs,
in their own country. Their revels after victory, or on returning to
their homes, were as boisterous as their lives. In food they looked
more to quantity than quality, and one of their most determined
prejudices against Christianity was that it did not sanction the eating
of horse flesh. An exhilarating beer, made from heath, or from the
spruce tree, was their principal beverage, and the recital of their own
adventures, or the national songs of the Scalds, were their most
cherished amusement. Many of the Vikings were themselves Scalds, and
excelled, as might be expected, in the composition of war songs.
The Pagan belief of this formidable race was in harmony with all their
thoughts and habits, and the exact opposite of Christianity. In the
beginning of time, according to their tradition, there was neither
heaven nor earth, but only universal chaos and a bottomless abyss,
where dwelt Surtur in an element of unquenchable fire. The generation
of their gods proceeded amid the darkness and void, from the union of
heat and moisture, until Odin and the other children of Asa-Thor, or
the Earth, slew Ymer, or the Evil One, and created the material
universe out of his lifeless remains. These heroic conquerors also
collected the sparks of eternal fire flying about in the abyss, and
fixed them as stars in the firmament. In addition, they erected in the
far East, Asgard, the City of the Gods; on the extreme shore of the
ocean stood Utgard, the City of Nor and his giants, and the wars of
these two cities, of their gods and giants, fill the first and most
obscure ages of the Scandinavian legend. The human race had as yet no
existence until Odin created a man and woman, Ask and Embla, out of two
pieces of wood (ash and elm), thrown upon the beach by the waves of the
sea.
Of all the gods of Asgard, Odin was the first in place and power; from
his throne he saw everything that happened on the earth; and lest
anything should escape his knowledge, two ravens, Spirit and Memory,
sat on his shoulders, and whispered in his ears whatever they had seen
in their daily excursions round the world. Night was a divinity and the
father of Day, who travelled alternately throughout space, with two
celebrated steeds called Shining-mane and Frost-mane. Friga was the
daughter and wife of Odin; the mother of Thor, the Mars, and of the
beautiful Balder, the Apollo, of Asgard. The other gods were of
inferior rank to these, and answered to the lesser divinities of Greece
and Rome. Niord was the Neptune, and Frega, daughter of Niord, was the
Venus of the North. Heimdall, the watchman of Asgard, whose duty it was
to prevent the rebellious giants scaling by surprise the walls of the
celestial city, dwelt under the end of the rainbow; his vision was so
perfect he could discern objects 100 leagues distant, either by night
or day, and his ear was so fine he could hear the wool growing on the
sheep, and the grass springing in the meadows.
The hall of Odin, which had 540 gates, was the abode of heroes who had
fought bravest in battle. Here they were fed with the lard of a wild
boar, which became whole every night, though devoured every day, and
drank endless cups of hydromel, drawn from the udder of an
inexhaustible she-goat, and served out to them by the Nymphs, who had
counted the slain, in cups which were made of the skulls of their
enemies. When they were wearied of such enjoyments, the sprites of the
Brave exercised themselves in single combat, hacked each other to
pieces on the floor of Valhalla, resumed their former shape, and
returned to their lard and their hydromel.
Believing firmly in this system—looking forward with undoubting faith
to such an eternity—the Scandinavians were zealous to serve their gods
according to their creed. Their rude hill altars gave way as they
increased in numbers and wealth, to spacious temples at Upsala, Ledra,
Tronheim, and other towns and ports. They had three great festivals,
one at the beginning of February, in honour of Thor, one in Spring, in
honour of Odin, and one in Summer, in honour of the fruitful daughter
of Niord. The ordinary sacrifices were animals and birds; but every
ninth year there was a great festival at Upsala, at which the kings and
nobles were obliged to appear in person, and to make valuable
offerings. Wizards and sorcerers, male and female, haunted the temples,
and good and ill winds, length of life, and success in war, were
spiritual commodities bought and sold. Ninety-nine human victims were
offered at the great Upsala festival, and in all emergencies such
sacrifices were considered most acceptable to the gods. Captives and
slaves were at first selected; but, in many cases, princes did not
spare their subjects, nor fathers their own children. The power of a
Priesthood, who could always enforce such a system, must have been
unbounded and irresistible.
The active pursuits of such a population were necessarily maritime. In
their short summer, such crops as they planted ripened rapidly, but
their chief sustenance was animal food and the fish that abounded in
their waters. The artizans in highest repute among them were the
shipwrights and smiths. The hammer and anvil were held in the highest
honour; and of this class, the armorers held the first place. The kings
of the North had no standing armies, but their lieges were summoned to
war by an arrow in Pagan times, and a cross after their conversion.
Their chief dependence was in infantry, which they formed into
wedge-like columns, and so, clashing their shields and singing hymns to
Odin, they advanced against their enemies. Different divisions were
differently armed; some with a short two-edged sword and a heavy
battle-axe; others with the sling, the javelin, and the bow. The shield
was long and light, commonly of wood and leather, but for the chiefs,
ornamented with brass, with silver, and even with gold. Locking the
shields together formed a rampart which it was not easy to break; in
bad weather the concave shield seems to have served the purpose of our
umbrella; in sea-fights the vanquished often escaped by swimming ashore
on their shields. Armour many of them wore; the Berserkers, or
champions, were so called from always engaging, _bare_ of defensive
armour.
Such were the men, the arms, and the creed, against which the Irish of
the ninth age, after three centuries of exemption from foreign war,
were called upon to combat. A people, one-third of whose youth and
manhood had embraced the ecclesiastical state, and all whose tribes now
professed the religion of peace, mercy, and forgiveness, were called to
wrestle with a race whose religion was one of blood, and whose
beatitude was to be in proportion to the slaughter they made while on
earth. The Northman hated Christianity as a rival religion, and
despised it as an effeminate one. He was the soldier of Odin, the elect
of Valhalla; and he felt that the offering most acceptable to his
sanguinary gods was the blood of those religionists who denied their
existence and execrated their revelation. The points of attack,
therefore, were almost invariably the great seats of learning and
religion. There, too, was to be found the largest bulk of the portable
wealth of the country, in richly adorned altars, jewelled chalices, and
shrines of saints. The ecclesiastical map is the map of their campaigns
in Ireland. And it is to avenge or save these innumerable sacred
places—as countless as the Saints of the last three centuries—that the
Christian population have to rouse themselves year after year, hurrying
to a hundred points at the same time. To the better and nobler spirits
the war becomes a veritable crusade, and many of those slain in
single-hearted defence of their altars may well be accounted
martyrs—but a war so protracted and so devastating will be found, in
the sequel, to foster and strengthen many of the worst vices as well as
some of the best virtues of our humanity.
The early events are few and ill-known. During the reign of Hugh VI.,
who died in 819, their hostile visits were few and far between; his
successors, Conor II. and Nial III., were destined to be less fortunate
in this respect. During the reign of Conor, Cork, Lismore, Dundalk,
Bangor and Armagh, were all surprised, plundered, and abandoned by "the
Gentiles," as they are usually called in Irish annals; and with the
exception of two skirmishes in which they were worsted on the coasts of
Down and Wexford, they seem to have escaped with impunity. At Bangor
they shook the bones of the revered founder out of the costly shrine
before carrying it off; on their first visit to Kildare they contented
themselves with taking the gold and silver ornaments of the tomb of St.
Bridget, without desecrating the relics; their main attraction at
Armagh was the same, but there the relics seemed to have escaped. When,
in 830, the brotherhood of Iona apprehended their return, they carried
into Ireland, for greater safety, the relics of St. Columbkill. Hence
it came that most of the memorials of SS. Patrick, Bridget, and
Columbkill, were afterwards united at Downpatrick.
While these deplorable sacrileges, too rapidly executed perhaps to be
often either prevented or punished, were taking place, Conor the King
had on his hand a war of succession, waged by the ablest of his
contemporaries, Felim, King of Munster, who continued during this and
the subsequent reign to maintain a species of rival monarchy in
Munster. It seems clear enough that the abandonment of Tara, as the
seat of authority, greatly aggravated the internal weakness of the
Milesian constitution. While over-centralization is to be dreaded as
the worst tendency of imperial power, it is certain that the want of a
sufficient centralization has proved as fatal, on the other hand, to
the independence of many nations. And anarchical usages once admitted,
we see from the experience of the German Empire, and the Italian
republics, how almost impossible it is to apply a remedy. In the case
before us, when the Irish Kings abandoned the old mensal domain and
betook themselves to their own patrimony, it was inevitable that their
influence and authority over the southern tribes should diminish and
disappear. Aileach, in the far North, could never be to them what Tara
had been. The charm of conservatism, the halo of ancient glory, could
not be transferred. Whenever, therefore, ambitious and able Princes
arose in the South, they found the border tribes rife for backing their
pretensions against the Northern dynasty. The Bards, too, plied their
craft, reviving the memory of former times, when Heber the Fair divided
Erin equally with Heremon, and when Eugene More divided it a second
time with Con of the Hundred Battles. Felim, the son of Crimthan, the
contemporary of Conor II. and Nial III., during the whole term of their
rule, was the resolute assertor of these pretensions, and the Bards of
his own Province do not hesitate to confer on him the high title of
_Ard-Righ_. As a punishment for adhering to the Hy-Nial dynasty, or for
some other offence, this Christian king, in rivalry with "the
Gentiles," plundered Kildare, Burrow, and Clonmacnoise—the latter
perhaps for siding with Connaught in the dispute as to whether the
present county of Clare belonged to Connaught or Munster. Twice he met
in conference with the monarch at Birr and at Cloncurry—at another time
he swept the plain of Meath, and held temporary court in the royal rath
of Tara. With all his vices lie united an extraordinary energy, and
during his time, no Danish settlement was established on the Southern
rivers. Shortly before his decease (A.D. 846) he resigned his crown and
retired from the world, devoting the short remainder of his days to
penance and mortification. What we know of his ambition and ability
makes us regret that he ever appeared upon the scene, or that he had
not been born of that dominant family, who alone were accustomed to
give kings to the whole country.
King Conor died (A.D. 833), and was succeeded by Nial III., surnamed
Nial of Callan. The military events of this last reign are so
intimately bound up with the more brilliant career of the next
ruler—Melaghlin, or Malachy I.—that we must reserve them for the
introduction to the next chapter.
CHAPTER II.
KINGS OF THE NINTH CENTURY (CONTINUED)—NIAL III.—MALACHY I.—HUGH VII.
When, in the year 833, Nial III. received the usual homage and
hostages, which ratified his title of _Ard-Righ_, the northern invasion
had clearly become the greatest danger that ever yet had threatened the
institutions of Erin. Attacks at first predatory and provincial had so
encouraged the Gentile leaders of the second generation that they began
to concert measures and combine plans for conquest and colonization. To
the Vikings of Norway the fertile Island with which they were now so
familiar, whose woods were bent with the autumnal load of acorns, mast,
and nuts, and filled with numerous herds of swine—their favourite
food—whose pleasant meadows were well stored with beeves and oxen,
whose winter was often as mild as their northern summer, and whose
waters were as fruitful in fish as their own Lofoden friths; to these
men, this was a prize worth fighting for; and for it they fought long
and desperately.
King Nial inherited a disputed sovereignty from his predecessor, and
the Southern annalists say he did homage to Felim of Munster, while
those of the North—and with them the majority of historians—reject this
statement as exaggerated and untrue. He certainly experienced continual
difficulty in maintaining his supremacy, not only from the Prince of
Cashel, but from lords of lesser grade—like those of Ossory and Ulidia;
so that we may say, while he had the title of King of Ireland, he was,
in fact, King of no more than Leath-Con, or the Northern half. The
central Province, Meath, long deserted by the monarchs, had run wild
into independence, and was parcelled out between two or three chiefs,
descendants of the same common ancestor as the kings, but distinguished
from them by the tribe-name of "the _Southern_ Hy-Nial." Of these heads
of new houses, by far the ablest and most famous was Melaghlin, who
dwelt near Mullingar, and lorded it over western Meath; a name with
which we shall become better acquainted presently. It does not clearly
appear that Melaghlin was one of those who actively resisted the
prerogatives of this monarch, though others of the Southern Hy-Nial did
at first reject his authority, and were severely punished for their
insubordination, the year after his assumption of power.
In the fourth year of Nial III. (A.D. 837), arrived the great Norwegian
fleet of 120 sail, whose commanders first attempted, on a combined
plan, the conquest of Erin. Sixty of the ships entered the Boyne; the
other sixty the Liffey. This formidable force, according to all Irish
accounts, was soon after united under one leader, who is known in our
Annals as _Turgeis_ or _Turgesius_, but of whom no trace can be found,
under that name, in the chronicles of the Northmen. Every effort to
identify him in the records of his native land has hitherto failed—so
that we are forced to conclude that he must have been one of those
wandering sea-kings, whose fame was won abroad, and whose story, ending
in defeat, yet entailing no dynastic consequences on his native land,
possessed no national interest for the authors of the old Norse Sagas.
To do all the Scandinavian chroniclers justice, in cases which come
directly under their notice, they acknowledge defeat as frankly as they
claim victory proudly. Equal praise may be given to the Irish annalists
in recording the same events, whether at first or second-hand. In
relation to the campaigns and sway of Turgesius, the difficulty we
experience in separating what is true from what is exaggerated or
false, is not created for us by the annalists, but by the bards and
story-tellers, some of whose inventions, adopted by _Cambrensis_, have
been too readily received by subsequent writers. For all the acts of
national importance with which his name can be intelligibly associated,
we prefer to follow in this as in other cases, the same sober
historians who condense the events of years and generations into the
shortest space and the most matter of fact expression.
If we were to receive the chronology while rejecting the embellishments
of the Bards, Turgesius must have first come to Ireland with one of the
expeditions of the year 820, since they speak of him as having been
"the scourge of the country for seventeen years," before he assumed the
command of the forces landed from the fleet of 837. Nor is it
unreasonable to suppose that an accurate knowledge of the country,
acquired by years of previous warfare with its inhabitants, may have
been one of the grounds upon which the chief command was conferred on
Turgesius. This knowledge was soon put to account; Dublin was taken
possession of, and a strong fort, according to the Scandinavian method,
was erected on the hill where now stands the Castle. This fort and the
harbour beneath it were to be the _rendezvous_ and arsenal for all
future operations against Leinster, and the foundation of foreign power
then laid, continued in foreign hands, with two or three brief
intervals, until transferred to the Anglo-Norman chivalry, three
centuries and a half later. Similar lodgment was made at Waterford, and
a third was attempted at Limerick, but at this period without success;
the Danish fort at the latter point is not thought older than the year
855. But Turgesius—if, indeed, the independent acts of cotemporary and
even rival chiefs be not too often attributed to him—was not content
with fortifying the estuaries of some principal rivers; he established
inland centres of operation, of which the cardinal one was on Lough
Ree, the expansion of the Shannon, north of Athlone; another was at a
point called Lyndwachill, on Lough Neagh. On both these waters were
stationed fleets of boats, constructed for that service, and
communicating with the forts on shore. On the eastern border of Lough
Ree, in the midst of its meadows, stood Clonmacnoise, rich with the
offerings and endowments of successive generations. Here, three
centuries before, in the heart of the desert, St. Kieran had erected
with his own hands a rude sylvan cell, where, according to the allegory
of tradition, "the first monks who joined him," were the fox, the wolf,
and the bear; but time had wrought wonders on that hallowed ground, and
a group of churches—at one time, as many as ten in number—were gathered
within two or three acres, round its famous schools, and presiding
Cathedral. Here it was Turgesius made his usual home, and from the high
altar of the Cathedral his unbelieving Queen was accustomed to issue
her imperious mandates in his absence. Here, for nearly seven years,
this conqueror and his consort exercised their far-spread and terrible
power. According to the custom of their own country—a custom attributed
to Odin as its author—they exacted from every inhabitant subject to
their sway—a piece of money annually, the forfeit for the non-payment
of which was the loss of the nose, hence called "nose-money." Their
other exactions were a union of their own northern imposts, with those
levied by the chiefs whose authority they had superseded, but whose
prerogatives they asserted for themselves. Free quarters for their
soldiery, and a system of inspection extending to every private
relation of life, were the natural expedients of a tyranny so odious.
On the ecclesiastical order especially their yoke bore with peculiar
weight, since, although avowed Pagans, they permitted no religious
house to stand, unless under an Abbot, or at least an _Erenach_ (or
Treasurer) of their approval. Such is the complete scheme of oppression
presented to us, that it can only be likened to a monstrous spider-web
spread from the centre of the Island over its fairest and most populous
districts. Glendalough, Ferns, Castle-Dermid, and Kildare in the east;
Lismore, Cork, Clonfert, in the southern country; Dundalk, Bangor,
Derry, and Armagh in the north; all groaned under this triumphant
despot, or his colleagues. In the meanwhile King Nial seems to have
struggled resolutely with the difficulties of his lot, and in every
interval of insubordination to have struck boldly at the common enemy.
But the tide of success for the first few years after 837 ran strongly
against him. The joint hosts from the Liffey and the Boyne swept the
rich plains of Meath, and in an engagement at Invernabark (the present
Bray) gave such a complete defeat to the southern Hy-Nial clans as
prevented them making head again in the field, until some summers were
past and gone. In this campaign Saxolve, who is called "the chief of
the foreigners," was slain; and to him, therefore, if to any
commander-in-chief, Turgesius must have succeeded. The shores of all
the inland lakes were favourite sites for Raths and Churches, and the
beautiful country around Lough Erne shared the fiery ordeal which
blazed on Lough Ree and Lough Neagh. In 839 the men of Connaught also
suffered a defeat equal to that experienced by those of Meath in the
previous campaign; but more unfortunate than the Methians, they lost
their leader and other chiefs on the field. In 840, Ferns and Cork were
given to the flames, and the fort at Lyndwachill, or Magheralin, poured
out its ravages in every direction over the adjacent country, sweeping
off flocks, herds, and prisoners, laymen and ecclesiastics, to their
ships. The northern depredators counted among their captives "several
Bishops and learned men," of whom the Abbot of Clogher and the Lord of
Galtrim are mentioned by name. Their equally active colleagues of
Dublin and Waterford took captive, Hugh, Abbot of Clonenagh, and
Foranan, Archbishop of Armagh, who had fled southwards with many of the
relics of the Metropolitan Church, escaping from one danger only to
fall into another a little farther off. These prisoners were carried
into Munster, where Abbot Hugh suffered martyrdom at their hands, but
the Archbishop, after being carried to their fleet at Limerick, seems
to have been rescued or ransomed, as we find him dying in peace at
Armagh in the next reign. The martyrs of these melancholy times were
very numerous, but the exact particulars being so often unrecorded it
is impossible to present the reader with an intelligible account of
their persons and sufferings. When the Anglo-Normans taunted the Irish
that their Church had no martyrs to boast of, they must have forgotten
the exploits of their Norse kinsmen about the middle of this century.
But the hour of retribution was fast coming round, and the native
tribes, unbound, divided, confused, and long unused to foreign war,
were fast recovering their old martial experience, and something like a
politic sense of the folly of their border feuds. Nothing perhaps so
much tended to arouse and combine them together as the capture of the
successor of Saint Patrick, with all his relics, and his imprisonment
among a Pagan host, in Irish waters. National humiliation could not
much farther go, and as we read we pause, prepared for either
alternative—mute submission or a brave uprising. King Nial seems to
have been in this memorable year, 843, defending as well as he might
his ancestral province—Ulster—against the ravagers of Lough Neagh, and
still another party whose ships flocked into Lough Swilly. In the
ancient plain of Moynith, watered by the little river Finn, (the
present barony of Raphoe,) he encountered the enemy, and according to
the Annals, "a countless number fell"—victory being with Nial. In the
same year, or the next, Turgesius was captured by Melaghlin, Lord of
Westmeath, apparently by stratagem, and put to death by the rather
novel process of drowning. The Bardic tale told to _Cambrensis_, or
parodied by him from an old Greek legend, of the death by which
Turgesius died, is of no historical authority. According to this tale,
the tyrant of Lough Ree conceived a passion for the fair daughter of
Melaghlin, and demanded her of her father, who, fearing to refuse,
affected to grant the infamous request, but despatched in her stead, to
the place of assignation, twelve beardless youths, habited as maidens,
to represent his daughter and her attendants; by these maskers the
Norwegian and his boon companions were assassinated, after they had
drank to excess and laid aside their arms and armour. For all this
superstructure of romance there is neither ground-work nor license in
the facts themselves, beyond this, that Turgesius was evidently
captured by some clever stratagem. We hear of no battle in Meath or
elsewhere against him immediately preceding the event; nor, is it
likely that a secondary Prince, as Melaghlin then was, could have
hazarded an engagement with the powerful master of Lough Ree. If the
local traditions of Westmeath may be trusted, where _Cambrensis_ is
rejected, the Norwegian and Irish principals in the tragedy of Lough
Owel were on visiting terms just before the denouement, and many
curious particulars of their peaceful but suspicious intercourse used
to be related by the modern story-tellers around Castle-pollard. The
anecdote of the rookery, of which Melaghlin complained, and the remedy
for which his visitor suggested to be "to cut down the trees and the
rooks would fly," has a suspicious look of the "tall poppies" of the
Roman and Grecian legend; two things only do we know for certain about
the matter: _firstly_, that Turgesius was taken and drowned in Lough
Owel in the year 843 or 844; and _secondly_, that this catastrophe was
brought about by the agency and order of his neighbour, Melaghlin.
The victory of Moynith and the death of Turgesius were followed by some
local successes against other fleets and garrisons of the enemy. Those
of Lough Ree seem to have abandoned their fort, and fought their way
(gaining in their retreat the only military advantage of that year)
towards Sligo, where some of their vessels had collected to bear them
away. Their colleagues of Dublin, undeterred by recent reverses, made
their annual foray southward into Ossory, in 844, and immediately we
find King Nial moving up from the north to the same scene of action. In
that district he met his death in an effort to save the life of a
_gilla_, or common servant. The river of Callan being greatly swollen,
the _gilla_, in attempting to find a ford, was swept away in its turbid
torrent. The King entreated some one to go to his rescue, but as no one
obeyed he generously plunged in himself and sacrificed his own life in
endeavouring to preserve one of his humblest followers. He was in the
55th year of his age and the 13th of his reign, and in some traits of
character reminded men of his grandfather, the devout Nial "of the
Showers." The Bards have celebrated the justice of his judgments, the
goodness of his heart, and the comeliness of his "brunette-bright
face." He left a son of age to succeed him, (and who ultimately did
become _Ard-Righ_,) yet the present popularity of Melaghlin of Meath
triumphed over every other interest, and he was raised to the
monarchy—the first of his family who had yet attained that honour.
Hugh, the son of Nial, sank for a time into the rank of a Provincial
Prince, before the ascendant star of the captor of Turgesius, and is
usually spoken of during this reign as "Hugh of Aileach." He is found
towards its close, as if impatient of the succession, employing the
arms of the common enemy to ravage the ancient mensal land of the kings
of Erin, and otherwise harassing the last days of his successful rival.
Melaghlin, or Malachy I. (sometimes called "of the Shannon," from his
patrimony along that river), brought back again the sovereignty to the
centre, and in happier days might have become the second founder of
Tara. But it was plain enough then, and it is tolerably so still, that
this was not to be an age of restoration. The kings of Ireland after
this time, says the quaint old translator of the Annals of
Clonmacnoise, "had little good of it," down to the days of King Brian.
It was, in fact, a perpetual struggle for self-preservation—the first
duty of all governments, as well as the first law of all nature. The
powerful action of the Gentile forces, upon an originally
ill-centralized and recently much abused Constitution, seemed to render
it possible that every new Ard-Righ would prove the last. Under the
pressure of such a deluge all ancient institutions were shaken to their
foundations; and the venerable authority of Religion itself, like a
Hermit in a mountain torrent, was contending for the hope of escape or
existence. We must not, therefore, amid the din of the conflicts
through which we are to pass, condemn without stint or qualification
those Princes who were occasionally driven—as some of them _were_
driven—to that last resort, the employment of foreign mercenaries (and
those mercenaries often anti-Christians,) to preserve some show of
native government and kingly authority. Grant that in some of them the
use of such allies and agents cannot be justified on any plea or
pretext of state necessity; where base ends or unpatriotic motives are
clear or credible, such treason to country cannot be too heartily
condemned; but it is indeed far from certain that such were the motives
in _all_ cases, or that such ought to be our conclusion in any, in the
absence of sufficient evidence to that effect.
Though the Gentile power had experienced towards the close of the last
reign such severe reverses, yet it was not in the nature of the men of
Norway to abandon a prize which was once so nearly being their own. The
fugitives who escaped, as well as those who remained within the strong
ramparts of Waterford and Dublin, urged the fitting out of new
expeditions, to avenge their slaughtered countrymen and prosecute the
conquest. But defeat still followed on defeat; in the first year of
Malachy, they lost 1,200 men in a disastrous action near Castle Dermot,
with Olcobar the Prince-bishop of Cashel; and in the same or the next
season they were defeated with the loss of 700 men, by Malachy, at
Fore, in Meath. In the third year of Malachy, however, a new northern
expedition arrived in 140 vessels, which, according to the average
capacity of the long-ships of that age, must have carried with them
from 7,000 to 10,000 men. Fortunately for the assailed, this fleet was
composed of what they called _Black_-Gentiles, or Danes, as
distinguished from their predecessors, the _Fair_-Gentiles, or
Norwegians. A quarrel arose between the adventurers of the two nations
as to the possession of the few remaining fortresses, especially of
Dublin; and an engagement was fought along the Liffey, which "lasted
for three days;" the Danes finally prevailed, driving the Norwegians
from their stronghold, and cutting them off from their ships. The new
Northern leaders are named Anlaf, or Olaf, Sitrick (Sigurd?) and Ivar;
the first of the Danish Earls, who established themselves at Dublin,
Waterford and Limerick respectively. Though the immediate result of the
arrival of the great fleet of 847 relieved for the moment the worst
apprehensions of the invaded, and enabled them to rally their means of
defence, yet as Denmark had more than double the population of Norway,
it brought them into direct collision with a more formidable power than
that from which they had been so lately delivered. The tactics of both
nations were the same. No sooner had they established themselves on the
ruins of their predecessors in Dublin, than the Danish forces entered
East-Meath, under the guidance of Kenneth, a local lord, and overran
the ancient mensal, from the sea to the Shannon. One of their first
exploits was burning alive 260 prisoners in the tower of Treoit, in the
island of Lough Gower, near Dunshaughlin. The next year, his allies
having withdrawn from the neighbourhood, Kenneth was taken by King
Malachy's men, and the traitor himself drowned in a sack, in the little
river Nanny, which divides the two baronies of Duleek. This
death-penalty by drowning seems to have been one of the useful hints
which the Irish picked up from their invaders.
During the remainder of this reign the Gentile war resumed much of its
old local and guerrilla character, the Provincial chiefs, and the
Ard-Righ, occasionally employing bands of one nation of the invaders to
combat the other, and even to suppress their native rivals. The only
pitched battle of which we hear is that of "the Two Plains" (near
Coolestown, King's County), in the second last year of Malachy (A.D.
859), in which his usual good fortune attended the king. The greater
part of his reign was occupied, as always must be the case with the
founder of a new line, in coercing into obedience his former peers. On
this business he made two expeditions into Munster, and took hostages
from all the tribes of the Eugenian race. With the same object he held
a conference with all the chiefs of Ulster, Hugh of Aileach only being
absent, at Armagh, in the fourth year of his reign, and a General
_Feis_, or Assembly of all the Orders of Ireland, at Rathugh, in
West-Meath, in his thirteenth year (A.D. 857). He found,
notwithstanding his victories and his early popularity, that there are
always those ready to turn from the setting to the rising sun, and
towards the end of his reign he was obliged to defend his camp, near
Armagh, by force, from a night assault of the discontented Prince of
Aileach; who also ravaged his patrimony, almost at the moment he lay on
his death-bed. Malachy I. departed this life on the 13th day of
November, (A.D. 860), having reigned sixteen years. "Mournful is the
news to the Gael!" exclaims the elegiac Bard! "Red wine is spilled into
the valley! Erin's monarch has died!" And the lament contrasts his
stately form as "he rode the white stallion," with the striking reverse
when, "his only horse this day"—that is the bier on which his body was
borne to the churchyard—"is drawn behind two oxen."
The restless Prince of Aileach now succeeded as Hugh VII., and
possessed the perilous honour he so much coveted for sixteen years, the
same span that had been allotted to his predecessor. The beginning of
this reign was remarkable for the novel design of the Danes, who
marched out in great force, and set themselves busily to breaking open
the ancient mounds in the cemetery of the Pagan kings, beside the
Boyne, in hope of finding buried treasure. The three Earls, Olaf,
Sitrick, and Ivar, are said to have been present, while their
gold-hunters broke into in succession the mound-covered cave of the
wife of Goban, at Drogheda, the cave of "the Shepherd of Elcmar," at
Dowth, the cave of the field of Aldai, at New Grange, and the similar
cave at Knowth. What they found in these huge cairns of the old
_Tuatha_ is not related; but Roman coins of Valentinian and Theodosius,
and torques and armlets of gold, have been discovered by accident
within their precincts, and an enlightened modern curiosity has not
explored them in vain, in the higher interests of history and science.
In the first two years of his reign, Hugh VII. was occupied in securing
the hostages of his suffragans; in the third he swept the remaining
Danish and Norwegian garrisons out of Ulster, and defeated a newly
arrived force on the borders of Lough Foyle; the next the Danish Earls
went on a foray into Scotland, and no exploit is to be recorded; in his
sixth year, Hugh, with 1,000 chosen men of his own tribe and the aid of
the Sil-Murray (O'Conor's) of Connaught, attacked and defeated a force
of 5,000 Danes with their Leinster allies, near Dublin at a place
supposed to be identical with Killaderry. Earl Olaf lost his son, and
Erin her _Roydamna_, or heir-apparent, on this field, which was much
celebrated by the Bards of Ulster and of Connaught. Amongst those who
fell was Flan, son of Conaing, chief of the district which included the
plundered cemeteries, fighting on the side of the plunderers. The
mother of Flan was one of those who composed quatrains on the event of
the battle, and her lines are a natural and affecting alternation from
joy to grief—joy for the triumph of her brother and her country, and
grief for the loss of her self-willed, warlike son. Olaf, the Danish
leader, avenged in the next campaign the loss of his son, by a
successful descent on Armagh, once again rising from its ruins. He put
to the sword 1,000 persons, and left the primatial city lifeless,
charred, and desolate. In the next ensuing year the monarch chastised
the Leinster allies of the Danes, traversing their territory with fire
and sword from Dublin to the border town of Gowran. This seems to have
been the last of his notable exploits in arms. He died on the 20th of
November, 876, and is lamented by the Bards as "a generous, wise, staid
man." These praises belong—if at all deserved—to his old age.
Flan, son of Malachy I. (and surnamed like his father "of the
Shannon"), succeeded in the year 877, of the Annals of the Four
Masters, or more accurately the year 879 of our common era. He enjoyed
the very unusual reign of thirty-eight years. Some of the domestic
events of his time are of so unprecedented a character, and the period
embraced is so considerable, that we must devote to it a separate
chapter.
CHAPTER III.
REIGN OF FLAN "OF THE SHANNON" (A.D. 879 TO 916).
Midway in the reign we are called upon to contemplate, falls the
centenary of the first invasion of Ireland by the Northmen. Let us
admit that the scenes of that century are stirring and stimulating; two
gallant races of men, in all points strongly contrasted, contend for
the most part in the open field, for the possession of a beautiful and
fertile island. Let us admit that the Milesian-Irish, themselves
invaders and conquerors of an older date, may have had no right to
declare the era of colonization closed for their country, while its
best harbours were without ships, and leagues of its best land were
without inhabitants; yet what gives to the contest its lofty and
fearful interest, is, that the foreigners who come so far and fight so
bravely for the prize, are a Pagan people, drunk with the evil spirit
of one of the most anti-Christian forms of human error. And what is
still worse, and still more to be lamented, it is becoming, after the
experience of a century, plainer and plainer, that the Christian
natives, while defending with unfaltering courage their beloved
country, are yet descending more and more to the moral level of their
assailants, without the apology of their Paganism. Degenerate
civilisation may be a worse element for truth to work in than original
barbarism; and, therefore, as we enter on the second century of this
struggle, we begin to fear for the Christian Irish, _not_ from the arms
or the valour, but from the contact and example of the unbelievers.
This, it is necessary to premise, before presenting to the reader a
succession of Bishops who lead armies to battle, of Abbots whose voice
is still for war, of treacherous tactics and savage punishments; of the
almost total disruption of the last links of that federal bond, which,
"though light as air were strong as iron," before the charm of
inviolability had been taken away from the ancient constitution.
We begin to discern in this reign that royal marriages have much to do
with war and politics. Hugh, the late king, left a widow, named
Maelmara ("follower of Mary"), daughter to Kenneth M'Alpine, King of
the Caledonian Scots: this lady Flan married. The mother of Flan was
the daughter of Dungal, Prince of Ossory, so that to the cotemporary
lords of that borderland the monarch stood in the relation of cousin. A
compact seems to have been entered into in the past reign, that the
_Roydamna_, or successor, should be chosen alternately from the
Northern and Southern Hy-Nial; and, subsequently, when Nial, son of his
predecessor, assumed that onerous rank, Flan gave him his daughter
Gormley, celebrated for her beauty, her talents, and her heartlessness,
in marriage. From these several family ties, uniting him so closely
with Ossory, with the Scots, and with his successor, much of the wars
and politics of Flan Siona's reign take their cast and complexion. A
still more fruitful source of new complications was the co-equal power,
acquired through a long series of aggressions, by the kings of Cashel.
Their rivalry with the monarchy, from the beginning of the eighth till
the end of the tenth century, was a constant cause of intrigues,
coalitions, and wars, reminding us of the constant rivalry of Athens
with Sparta, of Genoa with Venice. This kingship of Cashel, according
to the Munster law of succession, "the will of Olild," ought to have
alternated regularly between the descendants of his sons, Eugene More
and Cormac Cas—the Eugenians and Dalcassians. But the families of the
former kindred were for many centuries the more powerful of the two,
and frequently set at nought the testamentary law of their common
ancestor, leaving the tribe of Cas but the border-land of Thomond, from
which they had sometimes to pay tribute to Cruachan, and at others to
Cashel. In the ninth century the competition among the Eugenian
houses—of which too many were of too nearly equal strength—seems to
have suggested a new expedient, with the view of permanently setting
aside the will of Olild. This was, to confer the kingship when vacant,
on whoever happened to be Bishop of Emly or of Cashel, or on some other
leading ecclesiastical dignitary, always provided that he was of
Eugenian descent; a qualification easily to be met with, since the
great sees and abbacies were now filled, for the most part, by the sons
of the neighbouring chiefs. In this way we find Cenfalad, Felim, and
Olcobar, in this century, styled Prince-Bishops or Prince-Abbots. The
principal domestic difficulty of Flan Siona's reign followed from the
elevation of Cormac, son of Cuillenan, from the see of Emly to the
throne of Cashel.
Cormac, a scholar, and, as became his calling, a man of peace, was
thus, by virtue of his accession, the representative of the old quarrel
between his predecessors and the dominant race of kings. All Munster
asserted that it was never the intention of their common ancestors to
subject the southern half of Erin to the sway of the north; that Eber
and Owen More had resisted such pretensions when advanced by Eremhon
and Conn of the Hundred Battles; that the _esker_ from Dublin to Galway
was the true division, and that, even admitting the title of the
Hy-Nial king as Ard-Righ, all the tribes south of the _esker_, whether
in Leinster or Connaught, still owed tribute by ancient right to
Cashel. Their antiquaries had their own version in of "the Book of
Rights," which countenanced these claims to co-equal dominion, and
their Bards drew inspiration from the same high pretensions. Party
spirit ran so high that tales and prophecies were invented to show how
St. Patrick had laid his curse on Tara, and promised dominion to Cashel
and to Dublin in its stead. All Leinster, except the lordship of
Ossory—identical with the present diocese of the same name-was held by
the _Brehons_ of Cashel to be tributary to their king; and this
_Borooa_ or tribute, abandoned by the monarchs at the intercession of
Saint Moling, was claimed for the Munster rulers as an inseparable
adjunct of their southern kingdom.
The first act of Flan Siona, on his accession, was to dash into
Munster, demanding hostages at the point of the sword, and sweeping
over both Thomond and Desmond with irresistible force, from Clare to
Cork. With equal promptitude he marched through every territory of
Ulster, securing, by the pledges of their heirs and _Tanists_, the
chiefs of the elder tribes of the Hy-Nial. So effectually did he
consider his power established over the provinces, that he is said to
have boasted to one of his hostages, that he would, with no other
attendants than his own servants, play a game of chess on Thurles
Green, without fear of interruption. Carrying out this foolish wager,
he accordingly went to his game at Thurles, and was very properly taken
prisoner for his temerity, and made to pay a smart ransom to his
captors. So runs the tale, which, whether true or fictitious, is not
without its moral. Flan experienced greater difficulty with the tribes
of Connaught, nor was it till the thirteenth year of his reign (892)
that Cathal, their Prince, "came into his house," in Meath, "under the
protection of the clergy" of Clonmacnoise, and made peace with him. A
brief interval of repose seems to have been vouchsafed to this Prince,
in the last years of the century; but a storm was gathering over
Cashel, and the high pretensions of the Eugenian line were again to be
put to the hazard of battle.
Cormac, the Prince-Bishop, began his rule over Munster in the year 900
of our common era, and passed some years in peace, after his accession.
If we believe his panegyrists, the land over which he bore sway, "was
filled with divine grace and worldly prosperity," and with order so
unbroken, "that the cattle needed no cowherd, and the flocks no
shepherd, so long as he was king." Himself an antiquary and a lover of
learning, it seems but natural that "many books were written, and many
schools opened," by his liberality. During this enviable interval,
councillors of less pacific mood than their studious master were not
wanting to stimulate his sense of kingly duty, by urging him to assert
the claim of Munster to the tribute of the southern half of Erin. As an
antiquary himself, Cormac must have been bred up in undoubting belief
in the justice of that claim, and must have given judgment in favour of
its antiquity and validity, before his accession. These _dicta_ of his
own were now quoted with emphasis, and he was besought to enforce, by
all the means within his reach, the learned judgments he himself had
delivered. The most active advocate of a recourse to arms was Flaherty,
Abbot of Scattery, in the Shannon, himself an Eugenian, and the kinsman
of Cormac. After many objections, the peaceful Prince-Bishop allowed
himself to be persuaded, and in the year 907 he took up his line of
march, "in the fortnight of the harvest," from Cashel toward Gowran, at
the head of all the armament of Munster. Lorcan, son of Lactna, and
grandfather of Brian, commanded the Dalcassians, under Cormac; and
Oliol, lord of Desies, and the warlike Abbot of Scattery, led on the
other divisions. The monarch marched southward to meet his assailants,
with his own proper troops, and the contingents of Connaught under
Cathel, Prince of that Province, and those of Leinster under the lead
of Kerball, their king. Both armies met at Ballaghmoon, in the southern
corner of Kildare, not far from the present town of Carlow, and both
fought with most heroic bravery. The Munster forces were utterly
defeated; the Lords of Desies, of Fermoy, of Kinalmeaky, and of Kerry,
the Abbots of Cork and Kennity, and Cormac himself, with 6,000 men,
fell on the ensanguined field. The losses of the victors are not
specified, but the 6,000, we may hope, included the total of the slain
on both sides. Flan at once improved the opportunity of victory by
advancing into Ossory, and establishing his cousin Dermid, son of
Kerball, over that territory. This Dermid, who appears to have been
banished by Munster intrigues, had long resided with his royal cousin,
previous to the battle, from which he was probably the only one that
derived any solid advantage. As to the Abbot Flaherty, the instigator
of this ill-fated expedition, he escaped from the conquerors, and, safe
in his island sanctuary, gave himself up for a while to penitential
rigours. The worldly spirit, however, was not dead in his breast, and
after the decease of Cormac's next successor, he emerged from his cell,
and was elevated to the kingship of Cashel.
In the earlier and middle years of this long reign, the invasions from
the Baltic had diminished both in force and in frequency. This is to be
accounted for from the fact, that during its entire length it was
contemporaneous with the reign of Harold, "the Fair-haired" King of
Norway, the scourge of the sea-kings. This more fortunate Charles XII.,
born in 853, died at the age of 81, after sixty years of almost
unbroken successes, over all his Danish, Swedish, and insular enemies.
It is easy to comprehend, by reference to his exploits upon the Baltic,
the absence of the usual northern force from the Irish waters, during
his lifetime, and that of his cotemporary, Flan of the Shannon. Yet the
race of the sea-kings was not extinguished by the fair-haired Harold's
victories over them, at home. Several of them permanently abandoned
their native coasts never to return, and recruited their colonies,
already so numerous, in the Orkneys, Scotland, England, Ireland, and
the Isle of Man. In 885, Flan was repulsed in an attack on Dublin, in
which repulse the Abbots of Kildare and Kildalkey were slain; in the
year 890, Aileach was surprised and plundered by Danes, for the first
time, and Armagh shared its fate; in 887, 888, and 891, three minor
victories were gained over separate hordes, in Mayo, at Waterford, and
in Ulidia (Down). In 897, Dublin was taken for the first time in sixty
years, its chiefs put to death, while its garrison fled in their ships
beyond sea. But in the first quarter of the tenth century, better
fortune begins to attend the Danish cause. A new generation enters on
the scene, who dread no more the long arm of the age-stricken Harold,
nor respect the treaties which bound their predecessors in Britain to
the great Alfred. In 912, Waterford received from sea a strong
reinforcement, and about the same date, or still earlier, Dublin, from
which they had been expelled in 897, was again in their possession. In
913, and for several subsequent years, the southern garrisons continued
their ravages in Munster, where the warlike Abbot of Scattery found a
more suitable object for the employment of his valour than that which
brought him, with the studious Cormac, to the fatal field of
Ballaghmoon.
The closing days of Flan of the Shannon were embittered and darkened by
the unnatural rebellion of his sons, Connor and Donogh, and his
successor, Nial, surnamed _Black-Knee_ (_Glundubh_), the husband of his
daughter, Gormley. These children were by his second marriage with
Gormley, daughter of that son of Conaing, whose name has already
appeared in connection with the plundered sepulchres upon the Boyne. At
the age of three score and upwards Flan is frequently obliged to
protect by recourse to arms his mensal lands in Meath—their favourite
point of attack—or to defend some faithful adherent whom these
unnatural Princes sought to oppress. The daughter of Flan, thus wedded
to a husband in arms against her father, seems to have been as little
dutiful as his sons. We have elegiac stanzas by her on the death of two
of her husbands and of one of her sons, but none on the death of her
father: although this form of tribute to the departed, by those skilled
in such compositions, seems to have been as usual as the ordinary
prayers for the dead.
At length, in the 37th year of his reign, and the 68th of his age, King
Flan was at the end of his sorrows. As became the prevailing character
of his life, he died peacefully, in a religious house at Kyneigh, in
Kildare, on the 8th of June, in the year 916, of the common era. The
Bards praise his "fine shape" and "august mien," as well as his
"pleasant and hospitable" private habits. Like all the kings of his
race he seems to have been brave enough: but he was no lover of war for
war's-sake, and the only great engagement in his long reign was brought
on by enemies who left him no option but to fight. His munificence
rebuilt the Cathedral of Clonmacnoise, with the co-operation of Colman,
the Abbot, the year after the battle of Ballaghmoon (908); for which
age, it was the largest and finest stone Church in Ireland. His charity
and chivalry both revolted at the cruel excesses of war, and when the
head of Cormac of Cashel was presented to him after his victory, he
rebuked those who rejoiced over his rival's fall, kissed reverently the
lips of the dead, and ordered the relics to be delivered, as Cormac had
himself willed it, to the Church of Castledermot, for Christian burial.
These traits of character, not less than his family afflictions, and
the generally peaceful tenor of his long life, have endeared to many
the memory of Flan of the Shannon.
CHAPTER IV.
KINGS OF THE TENTH CENTURY; NIAL IV.; DONOGH II.; CONGAL III.; DONALD
IV.
Nial IV. (surnamed _Black-Knee_) succeeded his father-in-law, Flan of
the Shannon (A.D. 916), and in the third year of his reign fell in an
assault on Dublin; Donogh II., son of Flan Siona, reigned for
twenty-five years; Congal III. succeeded, and was slain in an ambush by
the Dublin Danes, in the twelfth year of his reign (A.D. 956); Donald
IV., in the twenty-fourth year of his reign, died at Armagh, (A.D.
979); which four reigns bring us to the period of the accession of
Malachy II. as _Ard-Righ_, and the entrance of Brian Boru, on the
national stage, as King of Cashel, and competitor for the monarchy.
The reign of Nial _Black-Knee_ was too brief to be memorable for any
other event than his heroic death in battle. The Danes having recovered
Dublin, and strengthened its defences, Nial, it is stated, was incited
by his confessor, the Abbot of Bangor, to attempt their re-expulsion.
Accordingly, in October, 919, he marched towards Dublin, with a
numerous host; Conor, son of the late king and _Roydamna_; the lords of
Ulidia (Down), Oriel (Louth), Breagh (East-Meath), and other chiefs,
with their clans accompanying him. Sitrick and Ivar, sons of the first
Danish leaders in Ireland, marched out to meet them, and near
Rathfarnham, on the Dodder, a battle was fought, in which the Irish
were utterly defeated and their monarch slain. This Nial left a son
named Murkertach, who, according to the compact entered into between
the Northern and Southern Hy-Nial, became the _Roydamna_ of the next
reign, and the most successful leader against the Danes, since the time
of Malachy I. He was the step-son of the poetic Lady Gormley, whose lot
it was to have been married in succession to the King of Munster, the
King of Leinster, and the Monarch. Her first husband was Cormac, son of
Cuilenan, before he entered holy orders; her second, Kerball of
Leinster, and her third, Nial _Black-Knee_. She was an accomplished
poetess, besides being the daughter, wife, and mother of king's, yet
after the death of Nial she "begged from door to door," and no one had
pity on her fallen state. By what vices she had thus estranged from her
every kinsman, and every dependent, we are left to imagine; but that
such was her misfortune, at the time her brother was monarch, and her
step-son successor, we learn from the annals, which record her penance
and death, under the date of 948.
The defeat sustained near Rathfarnham, by the late king, was amply
avenged in the first year of the new _Ard-Righ_ (A.D. 920), when the
Dublin Danes, having marched out, taken and burned Kells, in Meath,
were on their return through the plain of Breagh, attacked and routed
with unprecedented slaughter. "There fell of the nobles of the Norsemen
here," say the old Annalists, "as many as fell of the nobles and
plebeians of the Irish, at Ath-Cliath" (Dublin). The Northern Hydra,
however, was not left headless. Godfrey, grandson of Ivar, and Tomar,
son of Algi, took command at Dublin, and Limerick, infusing new life
into the remnant of their race. The youthful son of the late king, soon
after at the head of a strong force (A.D. 921), compelled Godfrey to
retreat from Ulster, to his ships, and to return by sea to Dublin. This
was Murkertach, fondly called by the elegiac Bards, "the Hector of the
West," and for his heroic achievements, not undeserving to be named
after the gallant defender of Troy. Murkertach first appears in our
annals at the year 921, and disappears in the thick of the battle in
938. His whole career covers seventeen years; his position throughout
was subordinate and expectant—for King Donogh outlived his heir: but
there are few names in any age of the history of his country more
worthy of historical honour than his. While Donogh was king in name,
Murkertach was king in fact; on him devolved the burden of every
negotiation, and the brunt of every battle. Unlike his ancestor, Hugh
of Aileach, in his opposition to Donogh's ancestor, Malachy I., he
never attempts to counteract the king, or to harass him in his
patrimony. He rather does what is right and needful himself, leaving
Donogh to claim the credit, if he be so minded. True, a coolness and a
quarrel arises between them, and even "a challenge of battle" is
exchanged, but better councils prevail, peace is restored, and the king
and the _Roydamna_ march as one man against the common enemy. It has
been said of another but not wholly dissimilar form of government, that
Crown-Princes are always in opposition; if this saying holds good of
father and son, as occupant and expectant of a throne, how much more
likely is it to be true of a successor and a principal, chosen from
different dynasties, with a view to combine, or at worst to balance,
conflicting hereditary interests? In the conduct of Murkertach, we
admire, in turn, his many shining personal qualities, which even
tasteless panegyric cannot hide, and the prudence, self-denial,
patience, and preservance with which he awaits his day of power.
Unhappily, for one every way so worthy of it, that day never arrived!
At no former period,—not even at the height of the tyranny of
Turgesius,—was a capable Prince more needed in Erin. The new generation
of Northmen were again upon all the estuaries and inland waters of the
Island. In the years 923-4 and 5, their light armed vessels swarmed on
Lough Erne, Lough Ree, and other lakes, spreading flame and terror on
every side. Clonmacnoise and Kildare, slowly recovering from former
pillage, were again left empty and in ruins. Murkertach, the base of
whose early operations was his own patrimony in Ulster, attacked near
Newry a Northern division under the command of the son of Godfrey (A.D.
926), and left 800 dead on the field. The escape of the remnant was
only secured by Godfrey marching rapidly to their relief and covering
the retreat. His son lay with the dead. In the years 933, at Slieve
Behma, in his own Province, Murkertach won a third victory; and in 936,
taking political advantage of the result of the great English battle of
Brunanburgh, which had so seriously diminished the Danish strength, the
Roydamna, in company with the King, assaulted Dublin, expelled its
garrison, levelled its fortress, and left the dwellings of the Northmen
in ashes. From Dublin they proceeded southward, through Leinster and
Munster, and after taking hostages of every tribe, Donogh returned to
his Methian home and Murkertach to Aileach. While resting in his own
fort (A.D. 939), he was surprised by a party of Danes, and carried off
to their ships, but, says the old translator of the Annals of
Clonmacnoise, "he made a good escape from them, as it was God's will."
The following season he redoubled his efforts against the enemy.
Attacking them on their own element, he ravaged their settlements on
the Scottish coasts and among the isles of Insi-Gall (the Hebrides),
returned laden with spoils, and hailed with acclamations as the
liberator of his people.
Of the same age with Murkertach, the reigning Prince at Cashel was
Kellachan, one of the heroes of the latter Bards and Story-tellers of
the South. The romantic tales of his capture by the Danes, and
captivity in their fleet at Dundalk, of the love which Sitrick's wife
bore him, and of his gallant rescue by the Dalcassians and Eugenians,
have no historical sanction. He was often both at war and at peace with
the foreigners of Cork and Limerick, and did not hesitate more than
once to employ their arms for the maintenance of his own supremacy; but
his only authentic captivity was, as a hostage, in the hands of
Murkertach. While the latter was absent, on his expedition to
Insi-Gall, Kellachan fell upon the Deisi and Ossorians, and inflicted
severe chastisement upon them-alleging, as his provocation, that they
had given hostages to Murkertach, and acknowledged him as _Roydamna_ of
all Erin, in contempt of the co-equal rights of Cashel. When Murkertach
returned from his Scotch expedition, and heard what had occurred, and
on what pretext Kellachan had acted, he assembled at Aileach all the
branches of the Northern Hy-Nial, for whom this was cause, indeed. Out
of these he selected 1000 chosen men, whom he provided, among other
equipments, with those "leathern coats," which lent a _soubriquet_ to
his name; and with these "ten hundred heroes," he set out—strong in his
popularity and his alliances—to make a circuit of the entire island
(A.D. 940). He departed from Aileach, says his Bard, whose Itinerary we
have, "keeping his left hand to the sea;" Dublin, once more rebuilt,
acknowledged his title, and Sitrick, one of its lords, went with him as
hostage for Earl Blacair and his countrymen; Leinster surrendered him
Lorcan, its King; Kellachan, of Cashel, overawed by his superior
fortune, advised his own people not to resist by force, and consented
to become himself the hostage for all Munster. In Connaught, Conor,
(from whom the O'Conors take their family name), son of the Prince,
came voluntarily to his camp, and was received with open arms.
Kellachan alone was submitted to the indignity of wearing a fetter.
With these distinguished hostages, Murkertach and his leather-cloaked
"ten hundred" returned to Aileach, where, for five months, they spent a
season of unbounded rejoicing. In the following year, the _Roydamna_
transferred the hostages to King Donogh, as his _suzerain_, thus
setting the highest example of obedience from the highest place. He
might now look abroad over all the tribes of Erin, and feel himself
without a rival among his countrymen. He stood at the very summit of
his good fortune, when the Danes of Dublin, reinforced from abroad,
after his "Circuit," renewed their old plundering practices. They
marched north, at the close of winter, under Earl Blacair, their
destination evidently being Armagh. Murkertach, with some troops
hastily collected, disputed their passage at the ford of Ardee. An
engagement ensued on Saturday, the 4th of March, 943, in which the
noble _Roydamna_ fell. King Donogh, to whose reign his vigorous spirit
has given its main historical importance, survived him but a
twelvemonth; the Monarch died in the bed of repose; his destined
successor in the thick of battle.
The death of the brave and beloved Murkertach filled all Erin with
grief and rage, and as King Donogh was too old to avenge his destined
successor, that duty devolved on Congal, the new _Roydamna_. In the
year after the fatal action at Ardee, Congal, with Brann, King of
Leinster, and Kellach, heir of Leinster, assaulted and took Dublin, and
wreaked a terrible revenge for the nation's loss. The "women, children,
and plebeians," were carried off captive; the greater part of the
garrison were put to the sword; but a portion escaped in their vessels
to their fortress on Dalkey, an island in the bay of Dublin. This was
the third time within a century that Dublin had been rid of its foreign
yoke, and yet as the Gaelic-Irish would not themselves dwell in
fortified towns, the site remained open and unoccupied, to be rebuilt
as often as it might be retaken. The gallant Congal, the same year,
succeeded on the death of Donogh to the sovereignty, and, so soon as he
had secured his seat, and surrounded it with sufficient hostages, he
showed that he could not only avenge the death, but imitate the
glorious life of him whose place he held. Two considerable victories in
his third and fourth years increased his fame, and rejoiced the hearts
of his countrymen: the first was won at Slane, aided by the Lord of
Breffni (O'Ruarc), and by Olaf the Crooked, a northern chief. The
second was fought at Dublin (947), in which Blacair, the victor at
Ardee, and 1,600 of his men were slain. Thus was the death of
Murkertach finally avenged.
It is very remarkable that the first conversions to Christianity among
the Danes of Dublin should have taken place immediately after these
successive defeats—in 948. Nor, although quite willing to impute the
best and most disinterested motives to these first neophytes, can we
shut our eyes to the fact that no change of life, such as we might
reasonably look for, accompanied their change of religion. Godfrid, son
of Sitrick, and successor of Blacair, who professed himself a Christian
in 948, plundered and destroyed the churches of East-Meath in 949,
burnt 150 persons in the oratory of Drumree, and carried off as
captives 3,000 persons. If the tree is to be judged by its fruits, this
first year's growth of the new faith is rather alarming. It compels us
to disbelieve the sincerity of Godfrid, at least, and the fighting men
who wrought these outrages and sacrileges. It forces us to rank them
with the incorrigible heathens who boasted that they had twenty times
received the Sacrament of Baptism, and valued it for the twenty white
robes which had been presented to them on those occasions. Still, we
must endeavour hereafter, when we can, to distinguish Christian from
Pagan Danes, and those of Irish birth, sons of the first comers, from
the foreign-born kinsmen of their ancestors. Between these two classes
there grew a gulf of feeling and experience, which a common language
and common dangers only partially bridged over. Not seldom the
interests and inclinations of the Irish-born Dane, especially if a true
Christian, were at open variance with the interests and designs of the
new arrivals from Denmark, and it is generally, if not invariably, with
the former, that the Leinster and other Irish Princes enter into
coalitions for common political purposes. The remainder of the reign of
Congal is one vigorous battle. The Lord of Breffni, who had fought
beside him on the hill of Slane, advanced his claim to be recognised
_Roydamna_, and this being denied, broke out into rebellion and
harassed his patrimony. Donald, son of Murkertach, and grandson of
Nial, (the first who took the name of _Uai-Nial_, or O'Neill), disputed
these pretensions of the Lord of Breffni; carried his boats overland
from Aileach to Lough Erne in Fermanagh, and Lough Oughter in Cavan;
attacked the lake-islands, where the treasure and hostages of Breffni
were kept, and carried them off to his own fortress. The warlike and
indefatigable king was in the field summer and winter enforcing his
authority on Munster and Connaught, and battling with the foreign
garrisons between times. No former Ard-Righ had a severer struggle with
the insubordinate elements which beset him from first to last. His end
was sudden, but not inglorious. In returning from the chariot-races at
the Curragh of Kildare, he was surprised and slain in an ambuscade laid
for him by Godfrid at a place on the banks of the Liffey called Tyraris
or Teeraris house. By his side, fighting bravely, fell the lords of
Teffia and Ferrard, two of his nephews, and others of his personal
attendants and companions. The Dublin Danes had in their turn a day of
rejoicing and of revenge for the defeats they had suffered at Congal's
hands.
This reign is not only notable for the imputed first conversion of the
Danes to Christianity, but also for the general adoption of family
names. Hitherto, we have been enabled to distinguish clansmen only by
tribe-names formed by prefixing _Hy_, _Kinnel_, _Sil_, _Muintir_,
_Dal_, or some synonymous term, meaning race, kindred, sept, district,
or part, to the proper name of a remote common ancestor, as Hy-Nial,
Kinnel-Connel, Sil-Murray, Muintir-Eolais, Dal-g Cais, and Dal-Riada.
But the great tribes now begin to break into families, and we are
hereafter to know particular houses, by distinct hereditary surnames,
as O'Neill, O'Conor, MacMurrough, and McCarthy. Yet, the whole body of
relatives are often spoken of by the old tribal title, which, unless
exceptions are named, is supposed to embrace all the descendants of the
old connection to whom it was once common. At first this alternate use
of tribe and family names may confuse the reader—for it _is_ rather
puzzling to find a MacLoughlin with the same paternal ancestor as an
O'Neill, and a McMahon of Thomond as an O'Brien, but the difficulty
disappears with use and familiarity, and though the number and variety
of newly-coined names cannot be at once committed to memory, the story
itself gains in distinctness by the change.
In the year 955, Donald O'Neill, son of the brave and beloved
Murkertach, was recognised as Ard-Righ, by the required number of
Provinces, without recourse to coercion. But it was _not_ to be
expected that any Ard-Righ should, at this period of his country's
fortunes, reign long in peace. War was then the business of the King;
the first art he had to learn, and the first to practise. Warfare in
Ireland had not been a stationary science since the arrival of the
Norwegians and their successors, the Danes. Something they may have
acquired from the natives, and in turn the natives were not slow to
copy whatever seemed most effective in their tactics. Donald IV. was
the first to imitate their habit of employing armed boats on the inland
lakes. He even improved on their example, by carrying these boats with
him overland, and launching them wherever he needed their co-operation;
as we have already seen him do in his expedition against Breffni, while
_Roydamna_, and as we find him doing again, in the seventh year of his
reign, when he carried his boats overland from Armagh to West-Meath in
order to employ them on Loch Ennell, near Mullingar. He was at this
time engaged in making his first royal visitation of the Provinces,
upon which he spent two months in Leinster, with all his forces,
coerced the Munster chiefs by fire and sword into obedience, and
severely punished the insubordination of Fergal O'Ruarc, King of
Connaught. His fleet upon Loch Ennell, and his severities generally
while in their patrimony, so exasperated the powerful families of the
Southern Hy-Nial (the elder of which was now known as O'Melaghlin),
that on the first opportunity they leagued with the Dublin Danes, under
their leader, Olaf "the Crooked" (A.D. 966), and drove King Donald out
of Leinster and Meath, pursuing him across Slieve-Fuaid, almost to the
walls of Aileach. But the brave tribes of Tyrconnell and Tyrowen
rallied to his support, and he pressed south upon the insurgents of
Meath and Dublin; West-Meath he rapidly overran, and "planted a
garrison in every cantred from the Shannon to Kells," In the campaigns
which now succeeded each other, without truce or pause, for nearly a
dozen years, the Leinster people generally sympathised with and
assisted those of West-Meath, and Olaf, of Dublin, who recruited his
ranks by the junction of the Lagmans, a warlike tribe, from Insi-Gall
(the Hebrides). Ossory, on the other hand, acted with the monarch, and
the son of its Tanist (A.D. 974) was slain before Dublin, by Olaf and
his Leinster allies, with 2,600 men, of Ossory and Ulster. The campaign
of 978 was still more eventful: the Leinster men quarrelled with their
Danish allies, who had taken their king captive, and in an engagement
at Belan, near Athy, defeated their forces, with the loss of the heir
of Leinster, the lords of Kinsellagh, Lea and Morett, and other chiefs.
King Donald had no better fortune at Killmoon, in Meath, the same
season, where he was utterly routed by the same force, with the loss of
Ardgal, heir of Ulidia, and Kenneth, lord of Tyrconnell. But for the
victories gained about the same period in Munster, by Mahon and Brian,
the sons of Kennedy, over the Danes of Limerick, of which we shall
speak more fully hereafter, the balance of victory would have strongly
inclined towards the Northmen at this stage of the contest.
A leader, second in fame and in services only to Brian, was now putting
forth his energies against the common enemy, in Meath. This was
Melaghlin, better known afterwards as Malachy II., son of Donald, son
of King Donogh, and, therefore, great-grandson to his namesake, Malachy
I. He had lately attained to the command of his tribe—and he resolved
to earn the honours which were in store for him, as successor to the
sovereignty. In the year 979, the Danes of Dublin and the Isles marched
in unusual strength into Meath, under the command of Rannall, son of
Olaf the Crooked, and Connail, "the Orator of Ath-Cliath," (Dublin).
Malachy, with his allies, gave them battle near Tara, and achieved a
complete victory. Earl Rannall and the Orator were left dead on the
field, with, it is reported, 5,000 of the foreigners. On the Irish side
fell the heir of Leinster, the lord of Morgallion and his son; the
lords of Fertullagh and Cremorne, and a host of their followers. The
engagement, in true Homeric spirit, had been suspended on three
successive nights, and renewed three successive days. It was a genuine
pitched battle—a trial of main strength, each party being equally
confident of victory. The results were most important, and most
gratifying to the national pride. Malachy, accompanied by his friend,
the lord of Ulidia (Down), moved rapidly on Dublin, which, in its
panic, yielded to all his demands. The King of Leinster and 2,000 other
prisoners were given up to him without ransom. The Danish Earls
solemnly renounced all claims to tribute or fine from any of the
dwellers without their own walls. Malachy remained in the city three
days, dismantled its fortresses, and carried off its hostages and
treasure. The unfortunate Olaf the Crooked fled beyond seas, and died
at Iona, in exile, and a Christian. In the same year, and in the midst
of universal rejoicing, Donald IV. died peacefully and piously at
Armagh, in the 24th year of his reign. He was succeeded by Malachy, who
was his sister's son, and in whom all the promise of the lamented
Murkertach seemed to revive.
The story of Malachy II. is so interwoven with the still-more
illustrious career of Brian _Borooa_, that it will not lose in interest
by being presented in detail. But before entering on the rivalry of
these great men, we must again remark on the altered position which the
Northmen of this age hold to the Irish from that which existed
formerly. A century and a half had now elapsed since their first
settlement in the seaports, especially of the eastern and southern
Provinces. More than one generation of their descendants had been born
on the banks of the Liffey, the Shannon, and the Suir. Many of them had
married into Irish families, had learned the language of the country,
and embraced its religion. When Limerick was taken by Brian, Ivar, its
Danish lord, fled for sanctuary to Scattery Island, and when Dublin was
taken by Malachy II., Olaf the Crooked fled to Iona. Inter-marriages
with the highest Gaelic families became frequent, after their
conversion to Christianity. The mother of Malachy, after his father's
death, had married Olaf of Dublin, by whom she had a son, named
_Gluniarran (Iron-Knee_, from his armour), who was thus half-brother to
the King. It is natural enough to find him the ally of Malachy, a few
years later, against Ivar of Waterford; and curious enough to find
Ivar's son called Gilla-Patrick—servant of Patrick. Kellachan of Cashel
had married a Danish, and Sitrick "of the Silken beard," an Irish lady.
That all the Northmen were not, even in Ireland, converted in one
generation, is evident. Those of Insi-Gall were still, perhaps, Pagans;
those of the Orkneys and of Denmark, who came to the battle of Clontarf
in the beginning of the next century, chose to fight on Good Friday
under the advice of their heathen Oracles. The first half of the
eleventh century, the age of Saint Olaf and of Canute, is the era of
the establishment of Christianity among the Scandinavians, and hence
the necessity for distinguishing between those who came to Ireland,
direct from the Baltic, from those who, born in Ireland and bred up in
the Christian faith, had as much to apprehend from such an invasion, as
the Celts themselves.
CHAPTER V.
REIGN OF MALACHY II. AND RIVALRY OF BRIAN.
Melaghlin, or Malachy II., fifth in direct descent from Malachy I. (the
founder of the Southern Hy-Nial dynasty), was in his thirtieth year
when (A.D. 980) he succeeded to the monarchy. He had just achieved the
mighty victory of Tara when the death of his predecessor opened his way
to the throne; and seldom did more brilliant dawn usher in a more
eventful day than that which Fate held in store for this victor-king.
None of his predecessors, not even his ancestor and namesake, had ever
been able to use the high language of his "noble Proclamation," when he
announced on his accession—"Let all the Irish who are suffering
servitude in the land of the stranger return home to their respective
houses and enjoy themselves in gladness and in peace." In obedience to
this edict, and the power to enforce it established by the victory at
Tara, 2,000 captives, including the King of Leinster and the Prince of
Aileach, were returned to their homes.
The hardest task of every Ard-Righ of this and the previous century had
been to circumscribe the ambition of the kings of Cashel within
Provincial bounds. Whoever ascended the southern throne—whether the
warlike Felim or the learned Cormac—we have seen the same policy
adopted by them all. The descendants of Heber had tired of the long
ascendancy of the race of Heremon, and the desertion of Tara, by making
that ascendancy still more strikingly Provincial, had increased their
antipathy. It was a struggle for supremacy between north and south; a
contest of two geographical parties; an effort to efface the real or
fancied dependency of one-half the island on the will of the other. The
Southern Hy-Nial dynasty, springing up as a third power upon the
Methian bank of the Shannon, and balancing itself between the
contending parties, might perhaps have given a new centre to the whole
system; Malachy II. was in the most favourable position possible to
have done so, had he not had to contend with a rival, his equal in
battle and superior in council, in the person of Brian, the son of
Kennedy, of Kincorra.
The rise to sovereign rank of the house of Kincorra (the O'Briens), is
one of the most striking episodes of the tenth century. Descending,
like most of the leading families of the South, from Olild, the Clan
Dalgais had long been excluded from the throne of Cashel, by successive
coalitions of their elder brethren, the Eugenians. Lactna and Lorcan,
the grandfather and father of Kennedy, intrepid and able men, had
strengthened their tribe by wise and vigorous measures, so that the
former was able to claim the succession, apparently with success.
Kennedy had himself been a claimant for the same honour, the alternate
provision in the will of Olild, against Kellachan Cashel (A.D. 940-2),
but at the Convention held at Glanworth, on the river Funcheon, for the
selection of king, the aged mother of Kellachan addressed his rival in
a quatrain, beginning—
"Kennedi Cas revere the law!"
which induced him to abandon his pretensions. This Prince, usually
spoken of by the Bards as "the chaste Kennedy," died in the year 950,
leaving behind him four or five out of twelve sons, with whom he had
been blessed. Most of the others had fallen in Danish battles—three in
the same campaign (943), and probably in the same field. There appear
in after scenes, Mahon, who became King of Cashel; Echtierna, who was
chief of Thomond, under Mahon; Marcan, an ecclesiastic, and Brian, born
in 941, the Benjamin of the household. Mahon proved himself, as Prince
and Captain, every way worthy of his inheritance. He advanced from
victory to victory over his enemies, foreign and domestic. In 960 he
claimed the throne of Munster, which claim he enforced by royal
visitation five years later. In the latter year, he rescued
Clonmacnoise from the Danes, and in 968 defeated the same enemy, with a
loss of several thousand men at Sulchoid. This great blow he followed
up by the sack of Limerick, from which "he bore off a large quantity of
gold, and silver, and jewels." In these, and all his expeditions, from
a very early age, he was attended by Brian, to whom he acted not only
as a brother and prince, but as a tutor in arms. Fortune had
accompanied him in all his undertakings. He had expelled his most
intractable rival—Molloy, son of Bran, lord of Desmond; his rule was
acknowledged by the Northmen of Dublin and Cork, who opened their
fortresses to him, and served under his banner; he carried "all the
hostages of Munster to his house," which had never before worn so
triumphant an aspect. But family greatness begets family pride, and
pride begets envy and hatred. The Eugenian families who now found
themselves overshadowed by the brilliant career of the sons of Kennedy,
conspired against the life of Mahon, who, from his too confiding
nature, fell easily into their trap. Molloy, son of Bran, by the advice
of Ivar, the Danish lord of Limerick, proposed to meet Mahon in
friendly conference at the house of Donovan, an Eugenian chief, whose
rath was at Bruree, on the river Maigue. The safety of each person was
guaranteed by the Bishop of Cork, the mediator on the occasion. Mahon
proceeded unsuspiciously to the conference, where he was suddenly
seized by order of his treacherous host, and carried into the
neighbouring mountains of Knocinreorin. Here a small force, placed for
the purpose by the conspirators, had orders promptly to despatch their
victim. But the foul deed was not done unwitnessed. Two priests of the
Bishop of Cork followed the Prince, who, when arrested, snatched up
"the Gospel of St. Barry," on which Molloy was to have sworn his
fealty. As the swords of the assassins were aimed at his heart, he held
up the Gospel for a protection, and his blood spouting out, stained the
Sacred Scriptures. The priests, taking up the blood-stained volume,
fled to their Bishop, spreading the horrid story as they went. The
venerable successor of St. Barry "wept bitterly, and uttered a prophecy
concerning the future fate of the murderers;" a prophecy which was very
speedily fulfilled.
This was in the year 976, three or four years before the battle of Tara
and the accession of Malachy. When the news of his noble-hearted
brother's murder was brought to Brian, at Kinkora, he was seized with
the most violent grief. His favourite harp was taken down, and he sang
the death-song of Mahon, recounting all the glorious actions of his
life. His anger flashed out through his tears, as he wildly chanted
"My heart shall burst within my breast,
Unless I avenge this great king;
They shall forfeit life for this foul deed
Or I must perish by a violent death."
But the climax of his lament was, that Mahon "had not fallen in battle
behind the shelter of his shield, rather than trust in the treacherous
words of Donovan." Brian was now in his thirty-fifth year, was married,
and had several children. Morrogh, his eldest, was able to bear arms,
and shared in his ardour and ambition. "His first effort," says an old
Chronicle, "was directed against Donovan's allies, the Danes of
Limerick, and he slew Ivar their king, and two of his sons." These
conspirators, foreseeing their fate, had retired into the holy isle of
Scattery, but Brian slew them between "the horns of the altar." For
this violation of the sanctuary, considering his provocation, he was
little blamed. He next turned his rage against Donovan, who had called
to his aid the Danish townsmen of Desmond. "Brian," says the Annalist
of Innisfallen, "gave them battle where Auliffe and his Danes, and
Donovan and his Irish forces, were all cut off." After that battle,
Brian sent a challenge to Molloy, of Desmond, according to the custom
of that age, to meet him in arms near Macroom, where the usual
coalition, Danes and Irish, were against him. He completely routed the
enemy, and his son Morrogh, then but a lad, "killed the murderer of his
uncle Mahon with his own hand." Molloy was buried on the north side of
the mountain where Mahon was murdered and interred; on Mahon the
southward sun shone full and fair; but on the grave of his assassin,
the black shadow of the northern sky rested always. Such was the
tradition which all Munster piously believed. After this victory over
Molloy, son of Bran (A.D. 978), Brian was universally acknowledged King
of Munster, and until Malachy had won the battle of Tara, was justly
considered the first Irish captain of his age.
Malachy, in the first year of his reign, having received the hostages
of the Danes of Dublin, having liberated the Irish prisoners and
secured the unity of his own territory, had his attention drawn,
naturally enough, towards Brian's movements. Whether Brian had refused
him homage, or that his revival of the old claim to the half-kingdom
was his offence, or from whatever immediate cause, Malachy marched
southwards, enforcing homage as he went. Entering Thomond he plundered
the Dalcassians, and marching to the mound at Adair, where, under an
old oak, the kings of Thomond had long been inaugurated, he caused it
to be "dug from the earth with its roots," and cut into pieces. This
act of Malachy's certainly bespeaks an embittered and aggressive
spirit, and the provocation must, indeed, have been grievous to
palliate so barbarous an action. But we are not informed what the
provocation was. At the time Brian was in Ossory enforcing his tribute;
the next year we find him seizing the person of Gilla-Patrick, Lord of
Ossory, and soon after he burst into Meath, avenging with fire and
sword the wanton destruction of his ancestral oak.
Thus were these two powerful Princes openly embroiled with each other.
We have no desire to dwell on all the details of their struggle, which
continued for fully twenty years. About the year 987, Brian was
practically king of half Ireland, and having the power, (though not the
title,) he did not suffer any part of it to lie waste. His activity was
incapable of exhaustion; in Ossory, in Leinster, in Connaught, his
voice and his arm were felt everywhere. But a divided authority was of
necessity so favourable to invasion, that the Danish power began to
loom up to its old proportions. Sitrick, "with the silken beard," one
of the ablest of Danish leaders, was then at Dublin, and his occasional
incursions were so formidable, that they produced (what probably
nothing else could have done) an alliance between Brian and Malachy,
which lasted for three years, and was productive of the best
consequences. Thus, in 997, they imposed their yoke on Dublin, taking
"hostages and jewels" from the foreigners. Reinforcements arriving from
the North, the indomitable Danes proceeded to plunder Leinster, but
were routed by Brian and Malachy at Glen-Mama, in Wicklow, with the
loss of 6,000 men and all their chief captains. Immediately after this
victory the two kings, according to the Annals, "entered into Dublin,
and the fort thereof, and there remained seven nights, and at their
departure took all the gold, silver, hangings, and other precious
things that were there with them, burnt the town, broke down the fort,
and banished Sitrick from thence" (A.D. 999).
The next three years of Brian's life are the most complex in his
career. After resting a night in Meath, with Malachy, he proceeded with
his forces towards Armagh, nominally on a pilgrimage, but really, as it
would seem, to extend his party. He remained in the sacred city a week,
and presented ten ounces of gold, at the Cathedral altar. The
Archbishop Marian received him with the distinction due to so eminent a
guest, and a record of his visit, in which he is styled "Imperator of
the Irish," was entered in the book of St. Patrick. He, however, got no
hostages in the North, but on his march southward, he learned that the
Danes had returned to Dublin, were rebuilding the City and Fort, and
were ready to offer submission and hostages to him, while refusing both
to Malachy. Here Brian's eagerness for supremacy misled him. He
accepted the hostages, joined the foreign forces to his own, and even
gave his daughter in marriage to Sitrick of "the silken beard."
Immediately he broke with Malachy, and with his new allies and
son-in-law, marched into Meath in hostile array. Malachy, however,
stood to his defence; attacked and defeated Brian's advance guard of
Danish horse, and the latter, unwilling apparently to push matters to
extremities, retired as he came, without "battle, or hostage, or spoil
of any kind."
But his design of securing the monarchy was not for an instant
abandoned, and, by combined diplomacy and force, he effected his end.
His whole career would have been incomplete without that last and
highest conquest over every rival. Patiently but surely he had gathered
influence and authority, by arms, by gifts, by connections on all
sides. He had propitiated the chief families of Connaught by his first
marriage with More, daughter of O'Heyne, and his second marriage with
Duvchalvay, daughter of O'Conor. He had obtained one of the daughters
of Godwin, the powerful Earl of Kent, for his second son; had given a
daughter to the Prince of Scots, and another to the Danish King of
Dublin.
Malachy, in diplomatic skill, in foresight, and in tenacity of purpose,
was greatly inferior to Brian, though in personal gallantry and other
princely qualities, every way his equal. He was of a hospitable,
out-spoken, enjoying disposition, as we gather from many characteristic
anecdotes. He is spoken of as "being generally computed the best
horseman in those parts of Europe;" and as one who "delighted to ride a
horse that was never broken, handled, or ridden, until the age of seven
years." From an ancient story, which represents him as giving his
revenues for a year to one of the Court Poets and then fighting him
with a "headless staff" to compel the Poet to return them, it would
appear that his good humour and profusion were equal to his
horsemanship. Finding Brian's influence still on the increase west of
the Shannon, Malachy, in the year of our Lord 1000, threw two bridges
across the Shannon, one at Athlone, the other at the present
Lanesborough. This he did with the consent and assistance of O'Conor,
but the issue was as usual—he made the bridges, and Brian profited by
them. While Malachy was at Athlone superintending the work, Brian
arrived with a great force recruited from all quarters (except Ulster),
including Danish men-in-armour. At Athlone was held the conference so
memorable in our annals, in which Brian gave his rival the alternative
of a pitched battle, within a stated time, or abdication. According to
the Southern Annalists, first a month, and afterwards a year, were
allowed the Monarch to make his choice. At the expiration of the time
Brian marched into Meath, and encamped at Tara, where Malachy, having
vainly endeavoured to secure the alliance of the Northern Hy-Nial in
the interval, came and submitted to Brian without safeguard or surety.
The unmade monarch was accompanied by a guard "of twelve score
horsemen," and on his arrival, proceeded straight to the tent of his
successor. Here the rivals contended in courtesy, as they had often
done in arms, and when they separated, Brian, as Lord Paramount,
presented Malachy as many horses as he had horsemen in his train when
he came to visit him. This event happened in the year 1001, when Brian
was in his 60th and Malachy in his 53rd year. There were present at the
Assembly all the princes and chiefs of the Irish, except the Prince of
Aileach, and the Lords of Oriel, Ulidia, Tyrowen and Tyrconnell, who
were equally unwilling to assist Malachy or to acknowledge Brian. What
is still more remarkable is, the presence in this national assembly of
the Danish Lords of Dublin, Carmen (Wexford), Waterford and Cork, whom
Brian, at this time, was trying hard to conciliate by gifts and
alliances.
CHAPTER VI.
BRIAN, ARD-RIGH—BATTLE OF CLONTARF.
By the deposition of Malachy II., and the transfer of supreme power to
the long-excluded line of Heber, Brian completed the revolution which
Time had wrought in the ancient Celtic constitution. He threw open the
sovereignty to every great family as a prize to be won by policy or
force, and no longer an inheritance to be determined by usage and law.
The consequences were what might have been expected. After his death
the O'Conors of the west competed with both O'Neills and O'Briens for
supremacy, and a chronic civil war prepared the path for Strongbow and
the Normans. The term "Kings with Opposition" is applied to nearly all
who reigned between Brian's time and Roderick O'Conor's, meaning,
thereby, kings who were unable to secure general obedience to their
administration of affairs.
During the remainder of his life, Brian wielded with accustomed vigour
the supreme power. The Hy-Nials were, of course, his chief difficulty.
In the year 1002, we find him at Ballysadare, in Sligo, challenging
their obedience; in 1004, we find him at Armagh "offering twenty ounces
of gold on Patrick's altar," staying a week there and receiving
hostages; in 1005, he marched through Connaught, crossed the river Erne
at Ballyshannon, proceeded through Tyrconnell and Tyrowen, crossed the
Bann into Antrim, and returned through Down and Dundalk, "about
Lammas," to Tara. In this and the two succeeding years, by taking
similar "circuits," he subdued Ulster, without any pitched battle, and
caused his authority to be feared and obeyed nearly as much at the
Giant's Causeway as at the bridge of Athlone. In his own house of
Kinkora, Brian entertained at Christmas 3,000 guests, including the
Danish Lords of Dublin and Man, the fugitive Earl of Kent, the young
King of Scots, certain Welsh Princes, and those of Munster, Ulster,
Leinster and Connaught, beside his hostages. At the same time Malachy,
with the shadow, of independence, kept his unfrequented court in
West-Meath, amusing himself with wine and chess and the taming of
unmanageable horses, in which last pursuit, after his abdication, we
hear of his breaking a limb. To support the hospitalities of Kinkora,
the tributes of every province were rendered in kind at his gate, on
the first day of November. Connaught sent 800 cows and 800 hogs; Ulster
alone 500 cows, and as many hogs, and "sixty loads of iron;" Leinster
300 bullocks, 300 hogs, and 300 loads of iron; Ossory, Desmond, and the
smaller territories, in proportion; the Danes of Dublin 150 pipes of
wine, and the Danes of Limerick 365 of red wine. The Dalcassians, his
own people, were exempt from all tribute and taxation—while the rest of
Ireland was thus catering for Kinkora.
The lyric Poets, in their nature courtiers and given to enjoyment,
flocked, of course, to this bountiful palace. The harp was seldom
silent night or day, the strains of panegyric were as prodigal and
incessant as the falling of the Shannon over Killaloe. Among these
eulogiums none is better known than that beautiful allegory of the poet
McLaig, who sung that "a young lady of great beauty, adorned with
jewels and costly dress, might perform unmolested a journey on foot
through the Island, carrying a straight wand, on the top of which might
be a ring of great value." The name of Brian was thus celebrated as in
itself a sufficient protection of life, chastity, and property, in
every corner of the Island. Not only the Poets, but the more exact and
simple Annalists applaud Brian's administration of the laws, and his
personal virtues. He laboured hard to restore the Christian
civilization, so much defaced by two centuries of Pagan warfare. To
facilitate the execution of the laws he enacted the general use of
surnames, obliging the clans to take the name of a common ancestor,
with the addition of "Mac," or "O"—words which signify "of," or "son
of," a forefather. Thus, the Northern Hy-Nials divided into O'Neils,
O'Donnells, McLaughlins, &c.; the Sil-Murray took the name of O'Conor,
and Brian's own posterity became known as O'Briens. To justice he added
munificence, and of this the Churches and Schools of the entire Island
were the recipients. Many a desolate shrine he adorned, many a bleak
chancel he hung with lamps, many a long silent tower had its bells
restored. Monasteries were rebuilt, and the praise of God was kept up
perpetually by a devoted brotherhood. Roads and bridges were repaired
and several strong stone fortresses were erected, to command the passes
of lakes and rivers. The vulnerable points along the Shannon, and the
Suir, and the lakes, as far north as the Foyle, were secured by forts
of clay and stone. Thirteen "royal houses" in Munster alone are said to
have been by him restored to their original uses. What increases our
respect for the wisdom and energy thus displayed, is the fact, that the
author of so many improvements, enjoyed but five short years of peace,
after his accession to the Monarchy. His administrative genius must
have been great when, after a long life of warfare, he could apply
himself to so many works of internal improvement and external defence.
In the five years of peace just spoken of (from 1005 to 1010), Brian
lost by death his second wife, a son called Donald, and his brother
Marcan, called in the annals "head of the clergy of Munster;" Hugh, the
son of Mahon, also died about the same period. His favourite son and
heir, Morrogh, was left, and Morrogh had, at this time, several
children. Other sons and daughters were also left him, by each of his
wives, so that there was every prospect that the posterity for whom he
had so long sought the sovereignty of Ireland, would continue to
possess it for countless generations. But God disposes of what man only
proposes!
The Northmen had never yet abandoned any soil on which they had once
set foot, and the policy of conciliation which the veteran King adopted
in his old age, was not likely to disarm men of their stamp. Every
intelligence of the achievements of their race in other realms
stimulated them to new exertions and shamed them out of peaceful
submission. Rollo and his successors had, within Brian's lifetime,
founded in France the great dukedom of Normandy; while Sweyn had swept
irresistibly over England and Wales, and prepared the way for a Danish
dynasty. Pride and shame alike appealed to their warlike compatriots
not to allow the fertile Hibernia to slip from their grasp, and the
great age of its long-dreaded king seemed to promise them an easier
victory than heretofore was possible. In 1012 we find Brian at Lough
Foyle repelling a new Danish invasion, and giving "freedom to Patrick's
Churches;" the same year, an army under Morrogh and another under
Malachy was similarly engaged in Leinster and Meath; the former
carrying his arms to Kilmainham, on the south side of Dublin, the other
to Howth, on the north; in this year also "the Gentiles," or Pagan
Northmen, made a descent on Cork, and burned the city, but were driven
off by the neighbouring chiefs.
The great event, however, of the long war which had now been waged for
full two hundred years between the men of Erin and the men of
Scandinavia was approaching. What may fairly be called the last field
day of Christianity and Paganism on Irish soil, was near at hand. A
taunt thrown out over a game of chess, at Kinkora, is said to have
hastened this memorable day. Maelmurra, Prince of Leinster, playing or
advising on the game, made, or recommended, a false move, upon which
Morrogh, son of Brian, observed, it was no wonder his friends, the
Danes, (to whom he owed his elevation,) were beaten at Glen-Mama, if he
gave them advice like that. Maelmurra, highly incensed by this
allusion—all the more severe for its bitter truth—arose, ordered his
horse, and rode away in haste. Brian, when he heard it, despatched a
messenger after the indignant guest, begging him to return, but
Maelmurra was not to be pacified, and refused. We next hear of him as
concerting with certain Danish agents, always open to such
negotiations, those measures which led to the great invasion of the
year 1014, in which the whole Scanian race, from Anglesea and Man,
north to Norway, bore an active share.
These agents passing over to England and Man, among the Scottish isles,
and even to the Baltic, followed up the design of an invasion on a
gigantic scale. Suibne, Earl of Man, entered warmly into the
conspiracy, and sent the "war arrow" through all those "out-islands"
which obeyed him as Lord. A yet more formidable potentate, Sigurd, of
the Orkneys, next joined the league. He was the fourteenth Earl of
Orkney of Norse origin, and his power was, at this period, a balance to
that of his nearest neighbour, the King of Scots. He had ruled since
the year 996, not only over the Orkneys, Shetland, and Northern
Hebrides, but the coasts of Caithness and Sutherland, and even Ross and
Moray rendered him homage and tribute. Eight years before the battle of
Clontarf, Malcolm II., of Scotland, had been feign to purchase his
alliance, by giving him his daughter in marriage, and the Kings of
Denmark and Norway treated with him on equal terms. The hundred
inhabited isles which lie between Yell and Man,—isles which after their
conversion contained "three hundred churches and chapels"—sent in their
contingents, to swell the following of the renowned Earl Sigurd. As his
fleet bore southward from Kirkwall it swept the subject coast of
Scotland, and gathered from every lough its galleys and its fighting
men. The rendezvous was the Isle of Man, where Suibne had placed his
own forces under the command of Brodar or Broderick, a famous leader
against the Britons of Wales and Cornwall. In conjunction with Sigurd,
the Manxmen sailed over to Ireland, where they were joined, in the
Liffey, by Carl Canuteson, Prince of Denmark, at the head of 1400
champions clad in armour. Sitrick of Dublin stood, or affected to
stand, neutral in these preparations, but Maelmurra of Leinster had
mustered all the forces he could command for such an expedition. He was
himself the head of the powerful family of O'Byrne, and was followed in
his alliances by others of the descendants of Cahir More. O'Nolan and
O'More, with a truer sense of duty, fought on the patriotic side.
Brian had not been ignorant of the exertions which were made during the
summer and winter of the year 1013, to combine an overwhelming force
against him. In his exertions to meet force with force, it is
gratifying to every believer in human excellence to find him actively
supported by the Prince whom he had so recently deposed. Malachy,
during the summer of 1013, had, indeed, lost two sons in skirmishes
with Sitrick and Maelmurra, and had, therefore, his own personal wrongs
to avenge; but he cordially co-operated with Brian before those
occurrences, and now loyally seconded all his movements. The Lords of
the southern half-kingdom—the Lords of Desies, Fermoy, Inchiquin,
Corca-Baskin, Kinalmeaky, Kerry, and the Lords of Hy-Many and
Hy-Fiachra, in Connaught, hastened to his standard. O'More and O'Nolan
of Leinster, and Donald, Steward of Marr, in Scotland, were the other
chieftains who joined him before Clontarf, besides those of his own
kindred. None of the Northern Hy-Nial took part in the battle—they had
submitted to Brian, but they never cordially supported him.
Clontarf, the lawn or meadow of bulls, stretches along the
crescent-shaped north strand of Dublin harbour, from the ancient
salmon-weir at Ballyboght bridge, towards the promontory of Howth. Both
horns of the crescent were held by the enemy, and communicated with his
ships: the inland point terminating in the roofs of Dublin, and the
seaward marked by the lion-like head of Howth. The meadow land between
sloped gently upward and inward from the beach, and for the myriad
duels which formed the ancient battle, no field could present less
positive vantage-ground to combatants on either side. The invading
force had possession of both wings, so that Brian's army, which had
first encamped at Kilmainham, must have crossed the Liffey higher up,
and marched round by the present Drumcondra in order to reach the
appointed field. The day seems to have been decided on by formal
challenge, for we are told Brian did not wish to fight in the last week
of Lent, but a Pagan oracle having assured victory to Brodar, one of
the northern leaders, if he engaged on a Friday, the invaders insisted
on being led to battle on that day. And it so happened that, of all
Fridays in the year, it fell on the Friday before Easter: that awful
anniversary when the altars of the Church are veiled throughout
Christendom, and the dark stone is rolled to the door of the mystic
sepulchre.
The forces on both sides could not have fallen short of twenty thousand
men. Under Carl Canuteson fought "the ten hundred in armour," as they
are called in the Irish annals, or "the fourteen hundred," as they are
called in northern chronicles; under Brodar, the Manxmen and the Danes
of Anglesea and Wales; under Sigurd, the men of Orkney and its
dependencies; under Maelmurra, of Leinster, his own tribe, and their
kinsmen of Offally and Cullen—the modern Kildare and Wicklow; under
Brian's son, Morrogh, were the tribes of Munster; under the command of
Malachy, those of Meath; under the Lord of Hy-Many, the men of
Connaught; and the Stewart of Marr had also his command. The engagement
was to commence with the morning, so that, as soon as it was day,
Brian, Crucifix in hand, harangued his army. "On this day Christ died
for _you_!" was the spirit-stirring appeal of the venerable Christian
King. At the entreaty of his friends, after this review, he retired to
his tent, which stood at some distance, and was guarded by three of his
aids. Here, he alternately prostrated himself before the Crucifix, or
looked out from the tent door upon the dreadful scene that lay beyond.
The sun rose to the zenith and took his way towards the west, but still
the roar of the battle did not abate. Sometimes as their right hands
swelled with the sword-hilts, well-known warriors might be seen falling
back to bathe them, in a neighbouring spring, and then rushing again
into the melee. The line of the engagement extended from the
salmon-weir towards Howth, not less than a couple of miles, so that it
was impossible to take in at a glance the probabilities of victory.
Once during the heat of the day one of his servants said to Brian, "A
vast multitude are moving towards us." "What sort of people are they?"
inquired Brian. "They are green-naked people." said the attendant.
"Oh!" replied the king, "they are the Danes in armour!" The utmost fury
was displayed on all sides. Sigurd, Earl of Orkney, fell by Thurlogh,
grandson of Brian; and Anrud, one of the captains of the men in armour,
by the hand of his father, Morrogh; but both father and son perished in
the dreadful conflict; Maelmurra of Leinster, with his lords, fell on
one side, and Conaing, nephew of Brian, O'Kelly, O'Heyne, and the
Stewart of Marr, on the other. Hardly a nobly-born man escaped, or
sought to escape. The ten hundred in armour, and three thousand others
of the enemy, with about an equal number of the men of Ireland, lay
dead upon the field. One division of the enemy were, towards sunset,
retreating to their ships, when Brodar, the Viking, perceiving the tent
of Brian, standing apart, without a guard, and the aged king on his
knees before the Crucifix, rushed in, cut him down with a single blow,
and then continued his flight. But he was overtaken by the guard, and
despatched by the most cruel death they could devise. Thus, on the
field of battle, in the act of prayer, on the day of our Lord's
Crucifixion, fell the Christian King in the cause of native land and
Holy Cross. Many elegies have been dedicated to his memory, and not the
least noble of these strains belong to his enemies. In death as in life
he was still Brian "of the tributes."
The deceased hero took his place at once in history, national and
foreign. On hearing of his death, Maelmurra, Archbishop of Armagh, came
with his clergy to Swords, in Meath, and conducted the body to Armagh,
where, with his son and nephew and the Lord of Desies, he was solemnly
interred "in a new tomb." The fame of the event went out through all
nations. The chronicles of Wales, of Scotland, and of Man; the annals
of Ademar and Marianus; the Sagas of Denmark and the Isles all record
the event. In "the Orcades" of Thormodus Torfaeus, a wail over the
defeat of the Islesmen is heard, which they call
"Orkney's woe and Randver's bane."
The Norse settlers in Caithness saw terrific visions of Valhalla "the
day after the battle." In the NIALA SAGA a Norwegian prince is
introduced as asking after his men, and the answer is, "they were all
killed." Malcolm of Scotland rejoiced in the defeat and death of his
dangerous and implacable neighbour. "Brian's battle," as it is called
in the Sagas, was, in short, such a defeat as prevented any general
northern combination for the subsequent invasion of Ireland. Not that
the country was entirely free from their attacks till the end of the
eleventh century, but from the day of Clontarf forward, the long
cherished Northern idea of a conquest of Ireland, seems to have been
gloomily abandoned by that indomitable people.
CHAPTER VII.
EFFECTS OF THE RIVALRY OF BRIAN AND MALACHY ON THE ANCIENT
CONSTITUTION.
If a great battle is to be accounted lost or won, as it affects
principles rather than reputations, then Brian lost at Clontarf. The
leading ideas of his long and political life were, evidently,
centralization and an hereditary monarchy. To beat back foreign
invasion, to conciliate and to enlist the Irish-born Danes under his
standard, were preliminary steps. For Morrogh, his first-born, and for
Morrogh's descendants, he hoped to found an hereditary kinship after
the type universally copied throughout Christendom. He was not ignorant
of what Alfred had done for England, Harold for Norway, Charlemagne for
France, and Otho for Germany; and it was inseparable from his imperial
genius to desire to reign in his posterity, long after his own brief
term of sway should be for ever ended. A new centre of royal authority
should be established on the banks of the great middle river of the
island—itself the best bond of union, as it was the best highway of
intercourse; the Dalgais dynasty should there flourish for ages, and
the descendants of Brian of the Tributes, through after centuries,
eclipse the glory of the descendants of Nial of the Hostages. It is
idle enough to call the projector of such a change an usurper and a
revolutionist. Usurper he clearly was not, since he was elevated to
power by the action of the old legitimate electoral principle;
revolutionist he was not, because his design was defeated at Clontarf,
in the death of his eldest son and grandson. Not often have three
generations of Princes of the same family been cut off on the same
field; yet at Clontarf it so happened. Hence, when Brian fell, and his
heir with him, and his heir's heir, the projected Dalgais dynasty, like
the Royal Oak at Adair, was cut down and its very roots destroyed. For
a new dynasty to be left suddenly without indisputable heirs is ruinous
to its pretensions and partizans. And in this the event of the battle
proved destructive to the Celtic Constitution. Not from the
Anglo-Norman invasion, but from the day of Clontarf we may date the
ruin of the old electoral monarchy. The spell of ancient authority was
effectually broken and a new one was to be established. Time, which was
indispensable, was not given. No Prince of the blood of Brian succeeded
immediately to himself. On Clontarf Morrogh, and Morrogh's heir fell,
in the same day and hour. The other sons of Brian had no direct title
to the succession, and, naturally enough, the deposed Malachy resumed
the rank of monarch, without the consent of Munster, but _with_ the
approval of all the Princes, who had witnessed with ill-concealed envy
the sudden ascendancy of the sons of Kennedy. While McLaig was
lamenting for Brian, by the cascade of Killaloe, the Laureat of Tara,
in an elegy over a lord of Breffni, was singing—
"Joyful are the race of Conn after Brian's
Fall, in the battle of Clontarf."
A new dynasty is rarely the work of one able man. Designed by genius,
it must be built up by a succession of politic Princes, before it
becomes an essential part of the framework of the State. So all history
teaches—and Irish history, after the death of Brian, very clearly
illustrates that truth. Equally true is it that when a nation breaks up
of itself, or from external forces, and is not soon consolidated by a
conqueror, the most natural result is the aggrandizement of a few great
families. Thus it was in Rome when Julius was assassinated, and in
Italy, when the empire of the west fell to pieces of its own weight.
The kindred of the late sovereign will be sure to have a party, the
chief innovators will have a party, and there is likely to grow up a
third or moderate party. So it fell out in Ireland. The Hy-Nials of the
north, deprived of the succession, rallied about the Princes of Aileach
as their head. Meath, left crownless, gave room to the ambition of the
sons of Malachy, who, under the name of O'Melaghlin, took provincial
rank. Ossory, like Issachar, long groaning beneath the burdens of Tara
and of Cashel, cruelly revenged on the Dalgais, returning from
Clontarf, the subjection to which Mahon and Brian had forcibly reduced
that borderland. The Eugenians of Desmond withdrew in disgust from the
banner of Donogh O'Brien, because he had openly proclaimed his
hostility to the alternate succession, and left his surviving clansmen
an easy prey to the enraged Ossorians. Leinster soon afterwards passed
from the house of O'Byrne to that of McMurrogh. The O'Briens maintained
their dominant interest in the south; as, after many local struggles,
the O'Conors did in the west. For a hundred and fifty years, after the
death of Malachy II., the history of Ireland is mainly the history of
these five families, O'Neils, O'Melaghlins, McMurroghs, O'Briens and
O'Conors. And for ages after the Normans enter on the scene, the same
provincialized spirit, the same family ambitions, feuds, hates, and
coalitions, with some exceptional passages, characterize the whole
history. Not that there will be found any want of heroism, or piety, or
self-sacrifice, or of any virtue or faculty, necessary to constitute a
state, save and except the _power of combination_, alone. Thus, judged
by what came after him, and what was happening in the world abroad,
Brian's design to re-centralize the island, seems the highest dictate
of political wisdom, in the condition to which the Norwegian and Danish
wars had reduced it, previous to his elevation to the monarchy. Malachy
II.—of the events of whose second reign some mention will be made
hereafter—held the sovereignty after Brian's death, until the year
1023, when he died an edifying death in one of the islands of Lough
Ennel, near the present Mullingar. He is called, in the annals of
Clonmacnoise, "the last king of Ireland, of Irish blood, that had the
crown." An ancient quatrain, quoted by Geoffrey Keating, is thus
literally translated:
"After the happy Melaghlin
Son of Donald, son of Donogh,
Each noble king ruled his own tribe
But Erin owned no sovereign Lord."
The annals of the eleventh and twelfth centuries curiously illustrate
the workings of this "anarchical constitution"—to employ a phrase first
applied to the Germanic Confederation. "After Malachy's death," says
the quaint old Annalist of Clonmacnoise, "this kingdom was without a
king 20 years, during which time the realm was governed by two learned
men; the one called Con O'Lochan, a well learned temporal man, and
chief poet of Ireland; the other Corcran Claireach, a devout and holy
man that was anchorite of all Ireland, whose most abiding was at
Lismore. The land was governed like a free state, and not like a
monarchy by them." Nothing can show the headlessness of the Irish
Constitution in the eleventh century clearer than this interregnum. No
one Prince could rally strength enough to be elected, so that two
Arbitrators, an illustrious Poet and a holy Priest, were appointed to
take cognizance of national causes. The associating together of a
Priest and a layman, a southerner and a northerner, is conclusive proof
that the bond of Celtic unity, frittered away during the Danish period,
was never afterwards entirely restored. Con O'Lochan having been killed
in Teffia, after a short jurisdiction, the holy Corcran exercised his
singular jurisdiction, until his decease, which happened at Lismore,
(A.D. 1040.) His death produced a new paroxysm of anarchy, out of which
a new organizer arose among the tribes of Leinster. This was Dermid,
son of Donogh, who died (A.D. 1005), when Dermid must have been a mere
infant, as he does not figure in the annals till the year 1032, and the
acts of young Princes are seldom overlooked in Gaelic Chronicles. He
was the first McMurrogh who became King of Leinster, that royalty
having been in the O'Byrne family, until the son of Maelmurra, of
Clontarf, was deposed by O'Neil in 1035, and retired to a monastery in
Cologne, where he died in 1052. In 1036 or 1037 Dermid captured Dublin
and Waterford, married the grand-daughter of Brian, and by '41 was
strong enough to assume the rank of ruler of the southern half-kingdom.
This dignity he held with a strong and warlike hand thirty years, when
he fell in battle, at Ova, in Meath. He must have been at that time
full threescore years and ten. He is described by the elegiac Bards as
of "ruddy complexion," "with teeth laughing in danger," and possessing
all the virtues of a warrior-king; "whose death," adds the lamentation,
"brought scarcity of peace" with it, so that "there will not be peace,"
"there will not be armistice," between Meath and Leinster. It may well
be imagined that every new resort to the two-third test, in the
election of Ard-Righ, should bring "scarcity of peace" to Ireland. We
can easily understand the ferment of hope, fear, intrigue, and passion,
which such an occasion caused among the great rival families. What
canvassing there was in Kinkora and Cashel, at Cruachan and Aileach,
and at Fernamore! What piecing and patching of interests, what libels
on opposing candidates, what exultation in the successful, what
discontent in the defeated camp!
The successful candidate for the southern half-kingdom after Dermid's
death was Thorlogh, grandson of Brian, and foster-son of the late
ruler. In his reign, which lasted thirty-three years, the political
fortunes of his house revived. He died in peace at Kinkora (A.D. 1087),
and the war of succession again broke out. The rival candidates at this
period were Murrogh O'Brien, son of the late king, whose ambition was
to complete the design of Brian, and Donald, Prince of Aileach, the
leader of the Northern Hy-Nials. Two abler men seldom divided a country
by their equal ambition. Both are entered in the annals as "Kings of
Ireland," but it is hard to discover that, during all the years of
their contest, either of them submitted to the other. To chronicle all
the incidents of the struggle would take too much space here; and, as
was to be expected, a third party profited most by it; the West came
in, in the person of O'Conor, to lord it over both North and South, and
to add another element to the dynastic confusion.
This brief abstract of our civil affairs after the death of Brian,
presents us with the extraordinary spectacle of a country without a
constitution working out the problem of its stormy destiny in despite
of all internal and external dangers. Everything now depended on
individual genius and energy; nothing on system, usage, or
prescription. Each leading family and each province became, in turn,
the head of the State. The supreme title seems to have been fatal for a
generation to the family that obtained it, for in no case is there a
lineal descent of the crown. The prince of Aileach or Kinkora naturally
preferred his permanent patrimony to an uncertain tenure of Tara; an
office not attached to a locality became, of course, little more than
an arbitrary title. Hence, the titular King of Ireland might for one
lifetime reign by the Shannon, in the next by the Bann, in a third, by
Lough Corrib. The supremacy, thus came to be considered a merely
personal appurtenance, was carried about in the old King's tent, or on
the young King's crupper, deteriorating and decaying by every
transposition it underwent. Herein, we have the origin of Irish
disunion with all its consequences, good, bad, and indifferent.
Are we to blame Brian for this train of events against which he would
have provided a sharp remedy in the hereditary principle? Or, on the
other hand, are we to condemn Malachy, the possessor of legitimate
power, if he saw in that remedy only the ambition of an aspiring family
already grown too great? Theirs was in fact the universal struggle of
reform and conservatism; the reformer and the heirs of his work were
cut off on Clontarf; the abuses of the elective principle continued
unrestrained by ancient salutary usage and prejudice, and the land
remained a tempting prey to such Adventurers, foreign or native, as
dare undertake to mould power out of its chaotic materials.
CHAPTER VIII.
LATTER DAYS OF THE NORTHMEN IN IRELAND.
Though Ireland dates the decay of Scandinavian power from Good Friday,
1014, yet the North did not wholly cease to send forth its warriors,
nor were the shores of the Western Island less tempting to them than
before. The second year after the battle of Clontarf, Canute founded
his Danish dynasty in England, which existed in no little splendour
during thirty-seven years. The Saxon line was restored by Edward "the
Confessor;" in the forty-third year of the century, only to be
extinguished for ever by the Norman conquest twenty-three years later.
Scotland, during the same years was more than once subject to invasion
from the same ancient enemy. Malcolm II., and the brave usurper
Macbeth, fought several engagements with the northern leaders, and
generally with brilliant success. By a remarkable coincidence, the
Scottish chronicles also date the decadence of Danish power on their
coasts from 1014, though several engagements were fought in Scotland
after that year.
Malachy II. had promptly followed up the victory of Clontarf by the
capture of Dublin, the destruction of its fort, and the exemplary
chastisement of the tribes of Leinster, who had joined Maelmurra as
allies of the Danes. Sitrick himself seems to have eluded the
suspicions and vengeance of the conquerors by a temporary exile, as we
find in the succession of the Dublin Vikings, "one Hyman, an usurper,"
entered as ruling "part of a year while Sitrick was in banishment." His
family interest, however, was strong among the native Princes, and
whatever his secret sympathies may have been, he had taken no active
part against them in the battle of Clontarf. By his mother, the Lady
Gormley of Offally, he was a half O'Conor; by marriage he was
son-in-law of Brian, and uterine brother of Malachy. After his return
to Dublin, when, in 1018, Brian, son of Maelmurra, fell prisoner into
his hands, as if to clear himself of any lingering suspicion of an
understanding with that family, he caused his eyes to be put out—a
cruel but customary punishment in that age. This act procured for him
the deadly enmity of the warlike mountaineers of Wicklow, who, in the
year 1022, gave him a severe defeat at Delgany. Even this he outlived,
and died seven years later, the acknowledged lord of his town and
fortress, forty years after his first accession to that title. He was
succeeded by his son, grandson, and great-grandson during the remaining
half century.
The kingdom of Leinster, in consequence of the defeat of Maelmurra, the
incapacity of Brian, and the destruction of other claimants of the same
family, passed to the family of McMurrogh, another branch of the same
ancestry. Dermid, the first and most distinguished King of Leinster of
this house, took Waterford (A.D. 1037), and so reduced its strength,
that we find its hosts no longer formidable in the field. Those of
Limerick continued their homage to the house of Kinkora, while the
descendants of Sitrick recognised Dermid of Leinster as their
sovereign. In short, all the Dano-Irish from thenceforward began to
knit themselves kindly to the soil, to obey the neighbouring Princes,
to march with them to battle, and to pursue the peaceful calling of
merchants, upon sea. The only peculiarly _Danish_ undertaking we hear
of again, in our Annals, was the attempt of a united fleet, equipped by
Dublin, Wexford, and Waterford, in the year 1088, to retake Cork from
the men of Desmond, when they were driven with severe loss to their
ships. Their few subsequent expeditions were led abroad, into the
Hebrides, the Isle of Man, or Wales, where they generally figure as
auxiliaries or mercenaries in the service of local Princes. They appear
in Irish battles only as contingents to the native armies—led by their
own leaders and recognized as a separate, but subordinate force. In the
year 1073, the Dublin Danes did homage to the monarch Thorlogh, and
from 1095, until his death (A.D. 1119), they recognized no other lord
but Murkertach More O'Brien; this king, at their own request, had also
nominated one of his family as Lord of the Danes and Welsh of the Isle
of Man.
The wealth of these Irish-Danes, before and after the time of Brian,
may be estimated by the annual tribute which Limerick paid to that
Prince—a pipe of red wine for every day in the year. In the year 1029,
Olaf, son of Sitrick, of Dublin, being taken prisoner by O'Regan, the
Lord of East-Meath, paid for his ransom—"twelve hundred cows, seven
score British horses, three score ounces of gold!" sixty ounces of
white silver as his "fetter-ounce;" the sword of Carlus, besides the
usual legal fees, for recording these profitable formalities.
Being now Christians, they also began to found and endow churches, with
the same liberality with which their Pagan fathers had once enriched
the temples of Upsala and Trondheim. The oldest religious foundations
in the seaports they possessed owe their origin to them; but even as
Christians, they did not lose sight of their nationality. They
contended for, and obtained Dano-Irish Bishops, men of their own race,
speaking their own speech, to preside over the sees of Dublin,
Waterford, and Limerick. When the Irish Synods or Primates asserted
over them any supervision which they were unwilling to admit—except in
the case of St. Malachy—they usually invoked the protection of the See
of Canterbury, which, after the Norman conquest of England, became by
far the most powerful Archbishopric in either island.
In the third quarter of this century there arose in the Isle of Man a
fortunate leader, who may almost be called the last of the sea kings.
This was Godard _Crovan_ (the white-handed), son of an Icelandic
Prince, and one of the followers of Harald Harfagar and Earl Tosti, in
their invasion of Northumbria (A.D. 1066). Returning from the defeat of
his chiefs, Godard saw and seized upon Man as the centre of future
expeditions of his own, in the course of which he subdued the Hebrides,
divided them with the gallant Somerled (ancestor of the MacDonalds of
the Isles), and established his son Lagman (afterwards put to death by
King Magnus _Barefoot_) as his viceroy in the Orkneys and Shetlands.
The weakened condition of the Danish settlement at Dublin attracted his
ambition, and where he entered as a mediator he remained as a master.
In the succession of the Dublin Vikings he is assigned a reign of ten
years, and his whole course of conquest seems to have occupied some
twenty years (A.D. 1077 to 1098). At length the star of this Viking of
the Irish sea paled before the mightier name of a King of Norway, whose
more brilliant ambition had a still shorter span. The story of this
_Magnus_ (called, it is said, from his adoption of the Scottish kilt,
Magnus _Barefoot_) forms the eleventh Saga in "the Chronicles of the
Kings of Norway." He began to reign in the year 1093, and soon after
undertook an expedition to the south, "with many fine men, and good
shipping." Taking the Orkneys on his way, he sent their Earls prisoners
to Norway, and placed his own son, Sigurd, in their stead. He overran
the Hebrides, putting Lagman, son of Godard Crovan, to death. He spared
only "the holy Island," as Iona was now called, even by the Northmen,
and there, in after years, his own bones were buried. The Isles of Man
and Anglesea, and the coast of Wales, shared the same fate, and thence
he retraced his course to Scotland, where, borne in his galley across
the Isthmus of Cantyre, to fulfil an old prophecy, he claimed
possession of the land on both sides of Loch Awe. It was while he
wintered in the Southern Hebrides, according to the Saga, that he
contracted his son Sigurd with the daughter of Murkertach O'Brien,
called by the Northmen "Biadmynia." In summer he sailed homeward, and
did not return southward till the ninth year of his reign (A.D. 1102),
when his son, Sigurd, had come of age, and bore the title of "King of
the Orkneys and Hebrides." "He sailed into the west sea," says the
Saga, "with the finest men who could be got in Norway. All the powerful
men of the country followed him, such as Sigurd Hranesson, and his
brother Ulf, Vidkunner Johnsson, Dag Eliffsson, Sorker of Sogn, Eyvind
Olboge, the king's marshal, and many other great men." On the
intelligence of this fleet having arrived in Irish waters, according to
the annals, Murkertach and his allies marched in force to Dublin,
where, however, Magnus "made peace with them for one year," and
Murkertach "gave his daughter to Sigurd, with many jewels and gifts."
That winter Magnus spent with Murkertach at Kinkora, and "towards
spring both kings went westward with their army all the way to Ulster."
This was one of those annual visitations which kings, whose authority
was not yet established, were accustomed to make. The circuit, as
usual, was performed in about six weeks, after which the Irish monarch
returned home, and Magnus went on board his fleet at Dublin, to return
to Norway. According to the Norse account he landed again on the coast
of Ulidia (Down), where he expected "cattle for ship-provision," which
Murkertach had promised to send him, but the Irish version would seem
to imply that he went on shore to seize the cattle perforce. It
certainly seems incredible that Murkertach should send cattle to the
shore of Strangford Lough, from the pastures of Thomond, when they
might be more easily driven to Dublin, or the mouth of the Boyne. "The
cattle had not made their appearance on the eve of Bartholomew's Mass"
(August 23rd, A.D. 1103), says the Saga, so "when the sun rose in the
sky, King Magnus himself went on shore with the greater part of his
men. King Magnus," continues the scald, "had a helmet on his head; a
red shield, in which was inlaid a gilded lion; and was girt with the
sword Legbiter, of which the hilt was of ivory, and the hand grip wound
about with gold thread; and the sword was extremely sharp. In his hand
he had a short spear, and a red silk short cloak over his coat, on
which both before and behind was embroidered a lion, in yellow silk;
and all men acknowledged that they had never seen a brisker, statelier
man." A dust cloud was seen far inland, and the Northmen fell into
order of battle. It proved, however, by their own account to be the
messengers with the promised supply of cattle; but, after they came up,
and while returning to the shore, they were violently assailed on all
sides by the men of Down. The battle is described, with true Homeric
vigour, by Sturleson. "The Irish," he says, "shot boldly; and although
they fell in crowds, there came always two in place of one." Magnus,
with most of his nobles, were slain on the spot, but Vidkunner Johnsson
escaped to the shipping, "with the King's banner and the sword
Legbiter." And the Saga of Magnus Barefoot concludes thus: "Now when
King Sigurd heard that his father had fallen, he set off immediately,
leaving the Irish King's daughter behind, and proceeded in autumn, with
the whole fleet directly to Norway." The annalists of Ulster barely
record the fact, that "Magnus, King of Lochlan and the Isles, was slain
by the Ulidians, with a slaughter of his people about him, while on a
predatory excursion." They place the event in the year 1104.
Our account with the Northmen may here be closed. Borne along by the
living current of events, we leave them behind, high up on the remoter
channels of the stream. Their terrible ravens shall flit across our
prospect no more. They have taken wing to their native north, where
they may croak yet a little while over the cold and crumbling altars of
Odin and Asa Thor. The bright light of the Gospel has penetrated even
to those last haunts of Paganism, and the fierce but not ungenerous
race, with which we have been so long familiar, begin to change their
natures under its benign influence.
Although both the scalds and chroniclers of the North frequently refer
to Ireland as a favourite theatre of their heroes, we derive little
light from those of their works which have yet been made public. All
connection between the two races had long ceased, before the first
scholars of the North began to investigate the earlier annals of their
own country, and then they were content with a very vague and general
knowledge of the western Island, for which their ancestors had so
fiercely contended throughout so many generations. The oldest maps,
known in Scandinavia, exhibit a mere outline of the Irish coast, with a
few points in the interior; fiords, with Norse names, are shown,
answering to Loughs Foyle, Swilly, Larne, Strang_ford_, and
Carling_ford_; the Provincial lines of Ulster and of Connaught are
rudely traced; and the situation of Enniskillen, Tara, Dublin,
Glendaloch, Water_ford_, Limer_ick_, and Swer_wick_, accurately laid
down. It is thought that all those places ending in _wick_ or _ford_,
on the Irish map, are of Scandinavian origin; as well as the names of
the islets, Skerries, Lambey, and Saltees. Many noble families, as the
Plunkets, McIvers, Archbolds, Harolds, Stacks, Skiddies, Cruises, and
McAuliffes, are derived from the same origin.
During the contest we have endeavoured to describe, three hundred and
ten years had passed since the warriors of Lochlin first landed on the
shores of Erin. Ten generations, according to the measured span of
adult life, were born, and trained to arms and marshalled in battle,
since the enemy, "powerful on sea," first burst upon the shield-shaped
Isle of Saints. At the close of the eighth century we cast back a
grateful retrospect on the Christian ages of Ireland. Can we do so now,
at the close of the eleventh? Alas! far from it. Bravely and in the
main successfully as the Irish have borne themselves, they come out of
that cruel, treacherous, interminable war with many rents and stains in
that vesture of innocence in which we saw them arrayed at the close of
their third Christian century. Odin has not conquered, but all the
worst vices of warfare—its violence, its impiety, discontent,
self-indulgence, and contempt for the sweet paths of peace and mild
counsels of religion—these must and did remain, long after Dane and
Norwegian have for ever disappeared!
BOOK III.
WAR OF SUCCESSION.
CHAPTER I.
THE FORTUNES OF THE FAMILY OF BRIAN.
The last scene of the Irish monarchy, before it entered on the
anarchical period, was not destitute of an appropriate grandeur. It was
the death-bed scene of the second Malachy, the rival, ally, and
successor of the great Brian. After the eventful day of Clontarf he
resumed the monarchy, without opposition, and for eight years he
continued in its undisturbed enjoyment. The fruitful land of Meath
again gave forth its abundance, unscourged by the spoiler, and beside
its lakes and streams the hospitable Ard-Righ had erected, or restored,
three hundred fortified houses, where, as his poets sung, shelter was
freely given to guests from the king of the elements. His own favourite
residence was at Dunnasciath ("the fort of shields"), in the north-west
angle of Lough Ennel, in the present parish of Dysart. In the eighth
year after Clontarf—the summer of 1022—the Dublin Danes once again
ventured on a foray into East-Meath, and the aged monarch marched to
meet them. At Athboy he encountered the enemy, and drove them, routed
and broken, out of the ancient mensal land of the Irish kings.
Thirty days after that victory he was called on to confront the
conqueror of all men, even Death. He had reached the age of
seventy-three, and he prepared to meet his last hour with the zeal and
humility of a true Christian. To Dunnasciath repaired Amalgaid,
Archbishop of Armagh, the Abbots of Clonmacnoise and of Durrow, with a
numerous train of the clergy. For greater solitude, the dying king was
conveyed into an island of the lake opposite his fort—then called
Inis-Cro, now Cormorant Island—and there, "after intense penance," on
the fourth of the Nones of September precisely, died Malachy, son of
Donald, son of Donogh, in the fond language of the bards, "the pillar
of the dignity and nobility of the western world:" and "the seniors of
all Ireland sung masses, hymns, psalms, and canticles for the welfare
of his soul."
"This," says the old Translator of the Clonmacnoise Annals, "was the
last king of Ireland of Irish blood, that had the crown; yet there were
seven kings after without crown, before the coming in of the English."
Of these seven subsequent kings we are to write under the general title
of "the War of Succession." They are called Ard-Righ _go Fresabra_,
that is, kings opposed, or unrecognised, by certain tribes, or
Provinces. For it was essential to the completion of the title, as we
have before seen, that when the claimant was of Ulster, he should have
Connaught and Munster, or Leinster and Munster, in his obedience: in
other words, he should be able to command the allegiance of two-thirds
of his suffragans. If of Munster, he should be equally potent in the
other Provinces, in order to rank among the recognised kings of Erin.
Whether some of the seven kings subsequent to Malachy II., who assumed
the title, were not fairly entitled to it, we do not presume to say; it
is our simpler task to narrate the incidents of that brilliant war of
succession, which occupies almost all the interval between the Danish
and Anglo-Norman invasions. The chaunt of the funeral Mass of Malachy
was hardly heard upon Lough Ennel, when Donogh O'Brien despatched his
agents, claiming the crown from the Provincial Princes. He was the
eldest son of Brian by his second marriage, and his mother was an
O'Conor, an additional source of strength to him, in the western
Province. It had fallen to the lot of Donogh, and his elder brother,
Teigue or Thaddeus, to conduct the remnant of the Dalcassians from
Clontarf to their home. Marching through Ossory, by the great southern
road, they were attacked in their enfeebled state by the lord of that
brave little border territory, on whom Brian's hand had fallen with
heavy displeasure. Wounded as many of them were, they fought their way
desperately towards Cashel, leaving 150 men dead in one of their
skirmishes. Of all who had left the Shannon side to combat with the
enemy, but 850 men lived to return to their homes.
No sooner had they reached Kinkora, than a fierce dispute arose,
between the friends of Teigue and Donogh, as to which should reign over
Munster. A battle ensued, with doubtful result, but by the intercession
of the Clergy this unnatural feud was healed, and the brothers reigned
conjointly for nine years afterwards, until Teigue fell in an
engagement in Ely (Queen's County), as was charged and believed, by the
machinations of his colleague and brother. Thorlogh, son of Teigue, was
the foster-son, and at this time the guest or hostage of Dermid of
Leinster, the founder of the McMurrogh family, which had now risen into
the rank justly forfeited by the traitor Maelmurra. When he reached
man's age he married the daughter of Dermid, and we shall soon hear of
him again asserting in Munster the pretensions of the eldest surviving
branch of the O'Brien family.
The death of his brother and of Malachy within the same year, proved
favourable to the ambition of Donogh O'Brien. All Munster submitted to
his sway; Connaught was among the first to recognise his title as
Ard-Righ. Ossory and Leinster, though unwillingly, gave in their
adhesion. But Meath refused to recognise him, and placed its government
in commission, in the hands of Con O'Lochan, the arch-poet, and
Corcran, the priest, already more than once mentioned. The country,
north of Meath, obeyed Flaherty O'Neil, of Aileach, whose ambition, as
well as that of all his house, was to restore the northern supremacy,
which had continued unbroken, from the fourth to the ninth century.
This Flaherty was a vigorous, able, and pious Prince, who held stoutly
on to the northern half-kingdom. In the year 1030 he made the frequent
but adventurous pilgrimage to Rome, from which he is called, in the
pedigree of his house, _an Trostain_, or the cross-bearer.
The greatest obstacle, however, to the complete ascendency of Donogh,
arose in the person of his nephew, now advanced to manhood. Thorlogh
O'Brien possessed much of the courage and ability of his grandfather,
and he had at his side, a faithful and powerful ally in his
foster-father, Dermid, of Leinster. Rightly or wrongly, on proof or on
suspicion, he regarded his uncle as his father's murderer, and he
pursued his vengeance with a skill and constancy worthy of _Hamlet_. At
the time of his father's death, he was a mere lad—in his fourteenth
year. But, as he grew older, he accompanied his foster-father in all
his expeditions, and rapidly acquired a soldier's fame. By marriage
with Dervorgoil, daughter of the Lord of Ossory, he strengthened his
influence at the most necessary point; and what, with so good a cause
and such fast friends as he made in exile, his success against his
uncle is little to be wondered at. Leinster and Ossory, which had
temporarily submitted to Donogh's claim, soon found good pretexts for
refusing him tribute, and a border war, marked by all the usual
atrocities, raged for several successive seasons. The contest, is
relieved, however, of its purely civil character, by the capture of
Waterford, still Danish, in 1037, and of Dublin, in 1051. On this
occasion, Dermid, of Leinster, bestowed the city on his son Morrogh
(grandfather of Strongbow's ally), to whom the remnant of its
inhabitants, as well as their kinsmen in Man, submitted for the time
with what grace they could.
The position of Donogh O'Brien became yearly weaker. His rival had
youth, energy, and fortune on his side. The Prince of Connaught finally
joined him, and thus, a league was formed, which overcame all
opposition. In the year 1058, Donogh received a severe defeat at the
base of the Galtees; and although he went into the house of O'Conor the
same year, and humbly submitted to him, it only postponed his day of
reckoning. Three years after O'Conor took Kinkora, and Dermid, of
Leinster, burned Limerick, and took hostages as far southward as Saint
Brendan's hill (Tralee). The next year Donogh O'Brien, then fully
fourscore years of age, weary of life and of the world, took the
cross-staff, and departed on a pilgrimage to Rome, where he died soon
after, in the monastery of St. Stephen. It is said by some writers that
Donogh brought with him to Rome and presented to the Pope, Alexander
II., the crown of his father—and from this tradition many theories and
controversies have sprung. It is not unlikely that a deposed monarch
should have carried into exile whatever portable wealth he still
retained, nor that he should have presented his crown to the Sovereign
Pontiff before finally quitting the world. But as to conferring with
the crown, the sovereignty of which it was once an emblem, neither
reason nor religion obliges us to believe any such hypothesis.
Dermid of Leinster, upon the banishment of Donogh, son of Brian (A.D.
1063), became actual ruler of the southern half-kingdom and nominal
Ard-Righ, "with opposition." The two-fold antagonism to this Prince,
came, as might be expected from Conor, son of Malachy, the head of the
southern Hy-Nial dynasty, and from the chiefs of the elder dynasty of
the North. Thorlogh O'Brien, now King of Cashel, loyally repaid, by his
devoted adherence, the deep debt he owed in his struggles and his early
youth to Dermid. There are few instances in our Annals of a more
devoted friendship than existed between these brave and able Princes
through all the changes of half a century. No one act seems to have
broken the life-long intimacy of Dermid and Thorlogh; no cloud ever
came between them; no mistrust, no distrust. Rare and precious felicity
of human experience! How many myriads of men have sighed out their
souls in vain desire for that best blessing which Heaven can bestow, a
true, unchanging, unsuspecting friend!
To return: Conor O'Melaghlin could not see, without deep-seated
discontent, a Prince of Leinster assume the rank which his father and
several of his ancestors had held. A border strife between Meath and
Leinster arose not unlike that which had been waged a few years before
for the deposition of Donogh, between Leinster and Ossory on the one
part, and Munster on the other. Various were the encounters, whose
obscure details are seldom preserved to us. But the good fortune of
Dermid prevailed in all, until, in the year 1070, he lost Morrogh, his
heir, by a natural death at Dublin, and Gluniarn, another son, fell in
battle with the men of Meath. Two years later, in the battle of Ova, in
the same territory, and against the same enemy, Dermid himself fell,
with the lord of Forth, and a great host of Dublin Danes and Leinster
men. The triumph of the son of Malachy, and the sorrow and anger of
Leinster, were equally great. The bards have sung the praise of Dermid
in strains which history accepts: they praise his ruddy aspect and
laughing teeth; they remember how he upheld the standard of war, and
none dared contend with him in battle; they denounce vengeance on Meath
as soon as his death-feast is over—a vengeance too truly pursued.
As a picture of the manners and habits of thought in those tunes, the
fate of Conor, son of Melaghlin, and its connection with the last
illness and death of Thorlogh O'Brien, are worthy of mention. Conor was
treacherously slain, the year after the battle of Ova, in a parley with
his own nephew, though the parley was held under the protection of the
_Bachall-Isa_, or Staff, of Christ, the most revered relic of the Irish
Church. After his death, his body was buried in the great Church of
Clonmacnoise, in his own patrimony. But Thorlogh O'Brien perhaps, from
his friendship for Dermid, carried off his head, as the head of an
enemy, to Kinkora. When it was placed in his presence in his palace, a
mouse ran out from the dead man's head, and under the king's mantle,
which occasioned him such a fright that he grew suddenly sick, his hair
fell off, and his life was despaired of. It was on Good Friday that the
buried head was carried away, and on Easter Sunday, it was tremblingly
restored again, with two rings of gold as a peace offering to the
Church. Thus were God and Saint Kieran vindicated. Thorlogh O'Brien
slowly regained his strength, though Keating, and the authors he
followed, think he was never the same man again, after the fright he
received from the head of Conor O'Melaghlin. He died peaceably and full
of penitence, at Kinkora, on the eve of the Ides of July, A.D. 1086,
after severe physical suffering. He was in the 77th year of his age,
the 32nd of his rule over Munster, and the 13th—since the death of
Dermid of Leinster—in his actual sovereignty of the southern half, and
nominal rule of the whole kingdom. He was succeeded by his son
Murkertach, or Murtogh, afterwards called _More_, or the great.
We have thus traced to the third generation the political fortunes of
the family of Brian, which includes so much of the history of those
times. That family had become, and was long destined to remain, the
first in rank and influence in the southern half-kingdom. But internal
discord in a great house, as in a great state, is fatal to the
peaceable transmission of power. That "acknowledged right of birth" to
which a famous historian attributes "the peaceful successions" of
modern Europe, was too little respected in those ages, in many
countries of Christendom—and had no settled prescription in its favour
among the Irish. Primogeniture and the whole scheme of feudal
dependence seems to have been an essential preparative for modern
civilization: but as Ireland had escaped the legions of Rome, so she
existed without the circle of feudal organization. When that system did
at length appear upon her soil it was embodied in an invading host, and
patriot zeal could discern nothing good, nothing imitable in the laws
and customs of an enemy, whose armed presence in the land was an insult
to its inhabitants. Thus did our Island twice lose the discipline which
elsewhere laid the foundation of great states: once in the Roman, and
again in the Feudal era.
CHAPTER II.
THE CONTEST BETWEEN THE NORTH AND SOUTH—RISE OF THE FAMILY OF O'CONOR.
Four years before the death of Thorlogh O'Brien, a Prince destined to
be the life-long rival of his great son, had succeeded to the kingship
of the northern tribes. This was Donald, son of Ardgall, Prince of
Aileach, sometimes called "O" and sometimes "Mac" Laughlin. Donald had
reached the mature age of forty when he succeeded in the course of
nature to his father, Ardgall, and was admitted the first man of the
North, not only in station but for personal graces and accomplishments;
for wisdom, wealth, liberality, and love of military adventure.
Murkertach, or Murtogh O'Brien, was of nearly the same age as his
rival, and his equal, if not superior in talents, both for peace and
war. During the last years of his father's reign and illness, he had
been the real ruler of the south, and had enforced the claims of Cashel
on all the tribes of Leath Mogha, from Dublin to Galway. In the year
1094, by mutual compact, brought about through the intercession of the
Archbishop of Armagh and the great body of the clergy, north and
south—and still more perhaps by the pestilence and famine which raged
at intervals during the last years of the eleventh century—this ancient
division of the midland _asker_, running east and west, was solemnly
restored by consent of both parties, and Leath Mogha and Leath Conn
became for the moment independent territories. So thoroughly did the
Church enter into the arrangement, that, at the Synod of Rath-Brazil,
held a few years later, the seats of the twelve Bishops of the southern
half were grouped round the Archbishop of Cashel, while the twelve of
the northern half were ranged round the Archbishop of Armagh. The
Bishops of Meath, the ancient mensal of the monarchy, seem to have
occupied a middle station between the benches of the north and south.
Notwithstanding the solemn compact of 1094, Murtogh did not long cease
to claim the title, nor to seek the hostages of all Ireland. As soon as
the fearful visitations with which the century had closed were passed
over, he resumed his warlike forays, and found Donald of Aileach
nothing loath to try again the issue of arms. Each prince, however,
seems to have been more anxious to coerce or interest the secondary
chiefs in his own behalf than to meet his rival in the old-style
pitched battle. Murtogh's annual march was usually along the Shannon,
into Leitrim, thence north by Sligo, and across the Erne and Finn into
Donegal and Derry. Donald's annual excursion led commonly along the
Bann, into Dalriada and Ulidia, Whence by way of Newry, across the
Boyne, into Meath, and from West-Meath into Munster. In one of these
forays, at the very opening of the twelfth century, Donald surprised
Kinkora in the absence of its lord, razed the fort and levelled the
buildings to the earth. But the next season the southern king paid him
back in kind, when he attacked and demolished Aileach, and caused each
of his soldiers to carry off a stone of the ruin in his knapsack. "I
never heard of the billeting of grit stones," exclaims a bard of those
days, "though I have heard of the billeting of soldiers: but now we see
the stones of Aileach billeted on the horses of the King of the West!"
Such circuits of the Irish kings, especially in days of opposition,
were repeated with much regularity. They seem to have set out commonly
in May—or soon after the festival of Easter—and when the tour of the
island was made, they occupied about six weeks in duration. The precise
number of men who took part in these visitations is nowhere stated, but
in critical times no prince, claiming the perilous honour of
_Ard-Righ_, would be likely to march with less than from five to ten
thousand men. The movements of such a multitude must have been attended
with many oppressions and inconveniences; their encampment for even a
week in any territory must have been a serious burthen to the resident
inhabitants, whether hostile or hospitable. Yet this was one inevitable
consequence of the breaking up of the federal centre at Tara. In
earlier days, the _Ard-Righ_, on his election, or in an emergency, made
an armed procession through the island. Ordinarily, however, his
suffragans visited him, and not he them; all Ireland went up to Tara to
the _Feis_, or to the festivals of Baaltine and Samhain. Now that there
was no Tara to go to, the monarch, or would-be monarch, found it
indispensable to show himself often, and to exercise his authority in
person, among every considerable tribe in the island. To do justice to
Murtogh O'Brien, he does not appear to have sought occasions of
employing force when on these expeditions, but rather to have acted the
part of an armed negotiator. On his return from the demolition of
Aileach (A.D. 1101), among other acts of munificence, he, in an
assembly of the clergy of Leath Mogha, made a solemn gift of the city
of Cashel, free of all rents and dues, to the Archbishop and the
Clergy, for ever. His munificence to churches, and his patronage of
holy men, were eminent traits in this Prince's character. And the
clergy of that age were eminently worthy of the favours of such
Princes. Their interposition frequently brought about a truce between
the northern and southern kings. In the year 1103, the hostages of both
were placed in custody with Donald, Archbishop of Armagh, to guarantee
a twelvemonth's peace. But the next season the contest was renewed.
Murtogh besieged Armagh for a week, which Donald of Aileach
successfully defended, until the siege was abandoned. In a subsequent
battle the northern force defeated one division of Murtogh's allies in
Iveagh, under the Prince of Leinster, who fell on the field, with the
lords of Idrone, Ossory, Desies, Kerry, and the Dublin Danes. Murtogh
himself, with another division of his troops, was on an incursion into
Antrim when he heard of this defeat. The northern visitors carried off
among other spoils the royal tent and standard, a trophy which gave new
bitterness on the one side, and new confidence on the other. Donald,
the good Archbishop, the following year (A.D. 1105) proceeded to
Dublin, where Murtogh was, or was soon expected, to renew the previous
peace between North and South, but he fell suddenly ill soon after his
arrival, and caused himself to be carried homewards in haste. At a
church by the wayside, not far from Dublin, he was anointed and
received the viaticum. He survived, however, to reach Armagh, where he
expired on the 12th day of August. Kellach, latinized Celsus, his
saintly successor, was promoted to the Primacy, and solemnly
consecrated on Saint Adamnan's day following—the 23rd of September,
1105.
Archbishop Celsus, whose accession was equally well received in Munster
as in Ulster, followed in the footsteps of his pious predecessor, in
taking a decided part with neither Leath Mogha nor Leath Conn. When, in
the year 1110, both parties marched to Slieve-Fuaid, with a view to a
challenge of battle, Celsus interposed between them the
_Bachall-Isa_—and a solemn truce followed; again, three years later,
when they confronted each other in Iveagh, in Down, similar success
attended a similar interposition. Three years later Murtogh O'Brien was
seized with so severe an illness, that he became like to a living
skeleton, and though he recovered sufficiently to resume the exercise
of authority he never regained his full health. He died in a spiritual
retreat, at Lismore, on the 4th of the Ides of March, A.D. 1119, and
was buried at Killaloe. His great rival, Donald of Leath Conn, did not
long survive him: he died at Derry, also in a religious house, on the
5th of the Ides of February, A.D. 1121.
While these two able men were thus for more than a quarter of a century
struggling for the supremacy, a third power was gradually strengthening
itself west of the Shannon, destined to profit by the contest, more
than either of the principals. This was the family of O'Conor, of
Roscommon, who derived their pedigree from the same stock as the
O'Neils, and their name from Conor, an ancestor, who ruled over
Connaught, towards the end of the ninth century. Two or three of their
line before Conor had possessed the same rank and title, but it was by
no means regarded as an adjunct of the house of Rathcrogan, before the
time at which we have arrived. Their co-relatives, sometimes their
rivals, but oftener their allies, were the O'Ruarcs of Breffny,
McDermots of Moylurg, the O'Flahertys of _Iar_ or West Connaught, the
O'Shaughnessys, O'Heynes, and O'Dowdas. The great neighbouring family
of O'Kelly had sprung from a different branch of the far-spreading
Gaelic tree. At the opening of the twelfth century, Thorlogh More
O'Conor, son of Ruari of the Yellow Hound, son of Hugh of the Broken
Spear, was the recognised head of his race, both for valour and
discretion. By some historians he is called the half-brother of Murtogh
O'Brien, and it is certain that he was the faithful ally of that
powerful prince. In the early stages of the recent contest between
North and South, Donald of Aileach had presented himself at Rathcrogan,
the residence of O'Conor, who entertained him for a fortnight, and gave
him hostages; but Connaught finally sided with Munster, and thus, by a
decided policy, escaped being ground to powder, as corn is ground
between the mill-stones. But the nephew and successor of Murtogh was
not prepared to reciprocate to Connaught the support it had rendered to
Munster, but rather looked for its continuance to himself. Conor
O'Brien, who became King of Munster in 1120, resisted all his life the
pretensions of any house but his own to the southern half-kingdom, and
against a less powerful or less politic antagonist, his energy and
capacity would have been certain to prevail. The posterity of Malachy
in Meath, as well as the Princes of Aileach, were equally hostile to
the designs of the new aspirant. One line had given three, another
seven, another twenty kings to Erin—but who had ever heard of an
_Ard-Righ_ coming out of Connaught? 'Twas so they reasoned in those
days of fierce family pride, and so they acted. Yet Thorlogh, son of
Ruari, son of Hugh, proved himself in the fifteen years' war, previous
to his accession (1021 to 1136), more than a match for all his enemies.
He had been chief of his tribe since the year 1106, and from the first
had begun to lay his far forecasting plans for the sovereignty. He had
espoused the cause of the house of O'Brien, and had profited by that
alliance. Nor were all his thoughts given to war. He had bridged the
river Suca at Ballinasloe, and the Shannon at Athlone and Shannon
harbour, and the same year these works were finished (1120 or '21) he
celebrated the ancient games at Tailtean, in assertion of his claim to
the monarchy. His main difficulty was the stubborn pride of Munster,
and the valour and enterprise of Conor O'Brien, surnamed Conor "of the
fortresses." Of the years following his assertion of his title, few
passed without war between those Provinces. In 1121 and 1127, Thorlogh
triumphed in the south, took hostages from Lismore to Tralee, and
returned home exultingly; a few years later the tide turned, and Conor
O'Brien was equally victorious against him, in the heart of his own
country. Thorlogh played off in the south the ancient jealousy of the
Eugenian houses against the Dalcassians, and thus weakened both, to his
own advantage. In the year 1126 he took Dublin and raised his son to
the lordship, as Dermid of Leinster, and Thorlogh O'Brien had done
formerly: marching southward he encamped in Ormond, from Lammas to St.
Bridget's day, and overran Munster with his troops in all directions,
taking Cork, Cashel, Ardfinnan, and Tralee. Celsus, the holy Primate of
Armagh, deploring the evils of this protracted year, left his peaceful
city, and spent thirteen months in the south and west, endeavouring to
reconcile, and bind over to the peace, the contending kings. In these
days the Irish hierarchy performed, perhaps, their highest part—that of
peacemakers and preachers of good will to men. When in 1132 and '33 the
tide had temporarily turned against Thorlogh, and Conor O'Brien had
united Munster, Leinster, and Meath, against him, the Archbishop of
Tuam performed effectually the office of mediator, preserving not only
his own Province, but the whole country from the most sanguinary
consequences. In the year 1130, the holy Celsus had rested from his
labours, and Malachy, the illustrious friend of St. Bernard, was
nominated as his successor. At the time he was absent in Munster, as
the Vicar of the aged Primate, engaged in a mission of peace, when the
crozier and the dying message of his predecessor were delivered to him.
He returned to Armagh, where he found that Maurice, son of Donald, had
been intruded as Archbishop in the _interim_, to this city peace,
order, and unity, were not even partially restored, until two years
later—A.D., 1132.
The reign of Thorlogh O'Conor over Leath Mogha, or as Ard-Righ "with
opposition," is dated by the best authorities from the year 1136. He
was then in his forty-eighth year, and had been chief of his tribe from
the early age of eighteen. He afterwards reigned for twenty years, and
as those years, and the early career of his son Roderick are full of
instruction, in reference to the events which follow, we must relate
them somewhat in detail. We again beg the reader to observe the
consequences of the destruction of the federal bond among the Irish;
how every province has found an ambitious dynasty of its own, which
each contends shall be supreme; how the ambition of the great families
grows insatiable as the ancient rights and customs decay; how the law
of Patrick enacted in the fifth century is no longer quoted or
regarded; how the law of the strong hand alone decides the quarrel of
these proud, unyielding Princes.
CHAPTER III.
THORLOGH MORE O'CONOR—MURKERTACH OF AILEACH—ACCESSION OF RODERICK
O'CONOR.
The successful ambition of Thorlogh O'Conor had thus added, as we have
seen in the last chapter, a fifth dynasty to the number of competitors
for the sovereignty. And if great energy and various talents could
alone entitle a chief to rule over his country, this Prince well
merited the obedience of his cotemporaries. He is the first of the
latter kings who maintained a regular fleet at sea; at one time we find
these Connaught galleys doing service on the coast of Cork, at another
co-operating with his land forces, in the harbour of Derry. The year of
his greatest power was the fifteenth of his reign (A.D. 1151), when his
most signal success was obtained over his most formidable antagonists.
Thorlogh O'Brien, King of Munster, successor to Conor of the
fortresses, had on foot, in that year, an army of three battalions (or
_caths_), each battalion consisting of 3,000 men, with which force he
overawed some, and compelled others of the southern chiefs to withdraw
their homage from his western namesake. The latter, uniting to his own
the forces of Meath, and those of Leinster, recently reconciled to his
supremacy, marched southward, and, encamping at Glanmire, received the
adhesion of such Eugenian families as still struggled with desperation
against the ascendency of the O'Briens. With these forces he
encountered, at Moanmore, the army of the south, and defeated them,
with the enormous loss of 7,000 men—a slaughter unparalleled throughout
the war of succession. Every leading house in North Munster mourned the
loss of either its chief or its tanist; some great families lost three,
five, or seven brothers on that sanguinary day. The household of
Kinkora was left without an heir, and many a near kinsman's seat was
vacant in its hospitable hall. The O'Brien himself was banished into
Ulster, where, from Murkertach, Prince of Aileach, he received the
hospitality due to his rank and his misfortunes, not without an
ulterior politic view on the part of the Ulster Prince. In this battle
of Moanmore, Dermid McMurrogh, King of Leinster, of whom we shall hear
hereafter, fought gallantly on the side of the victor. In the same
year—but whether before or after the Munster campaign is uncertain—an
Ulster force having marched into Sligo, Thorlogh met them near the
Curlew mountains, and made peace with their king. A still more
important interview took place the next year in the plain, or _Moy_,
between the rivers Erne and Drowse, near the present Ballyshannon. On
the _Bachall-Isa_ and the relics of Columbkill, Thorlogh and Murkertach
made a solemn peace, which is thought to have included the recognition
of O'Conor's supremacy. A third meeting was had during the summer in
Meath, where were present, beside the Ard-Righ, the Prince of Aileach,
Dermid of Leinster, and other chiefs and nobles. At this conference
they divided Meath into east and west, between two branches of the
family of Melaghlin. Part of Longford and South Leitrim were taken from
Tiernan O'Ruarc, lord of Breffni, and an angle of Meath, including
Athboy and the hill of Ward, was given him instead. Earlier in the same
year, King Thorlogh had divided Munster into three parts, giving
Desmond to MacCarthy, Ormond to Thaddeus O'Brien, who had fought under
him at Moanmore, and leaving the remainder to the O'Brien, who had only
two short years before competed with him for the sovereignty. By these
subdivisions the politic monarch expected to weaken to a great degree
the power of the rival families of Meath and Munster. It was an
arbitrary policy which could originate only on the field of battle, and
could be enforced only by the sanction of victory. Thorlogh O'Brien,
once King of all Munster, refused to accept a mere third, and carrying
away his jewels and valuables, including the drinking horn of the great
Brian, he threw himself again on the protection of Murkertach of
Aileach. The elder branch of the family of O'Melaghlin were equally
indisposed to accept half of Meath, where they had claimed the whole
from the Shannon to the sea. To complicate still more this tangled web,
Dermid, King of Leinster, about the same time (A.D. 1153), eloped with
Dervorgoil, wife of O'Ruarc of Breffni, and daughter of O'Melaghlin,
who both appealed to the monarch for vengeance on the ravager. Up to
this date Dermid had acted as a steadfast ally of O'Conor, but when
compelled by the presence of a powerful force on his borders to restore
the captive, or partner of his guilt, he conceived an enmity for the
aged king, which he extended, with increased virulence, to his son and
successor.
What degree of personal criminality to attach to this elopement it is
hard to say. The cavalier in the case was on the wintry side of fifty,
while the lady had reached the mature age of forty-four. Such examples
have been, where the passions of youth, surviving the period most
subject to their influence, have broken out with renewed frenzy on the
confines of old age. Whether the flight of Dermid and Dervorgoil arose
from a mere criminal passion, is not laid down with certainty in the
old Annals, though national and local tradition strongly point to that
conclusion. The Four Masters indeed state that after the restoration of
the lady she "returned to O'Ruarc," another point wanting confirmation.
We know that she soon afterwards retired to the shelter of Mellifont
Abbey, where she ended her days towards the close of the century, in
penitence and alms-deeds.
Murtogh of Aileach now became master of the situation. Thorlogh was old
and could not last long; Dermid of Leinster was for ever estranged from
him; the new arbitrary divisions, though made with the general consent,
satisfied no one. With a powerful force he marched southward, restored
to the elder branch of the O'Melaghlins the whole of Meath, defeated
Thaddeus O'Brien, obliterated Ormond from the map, restored the old
bounds of Thomond and Desmond, and placed his guest, the banished
O'Brien, on the throne of Cashel. A hostile force, under Roderick
O'Conor, was routed, and retreated to their own territory. The next
year (A.D. 1154) was signalized by a fierce naval engagement between
the galleys of King Thorlogh and those of Murtogh, on the coast of
Innishowen. The latter, recruited by vessels hired from the Gael and
Galls of Cantire, the Arran Isles, and Man, were under the command of
MacScellig; the Connaught fleet was led by O'Malley and O'Dowda. The
engagement, which lasted from the morning till the evening, ended in
the repulse of the Connaught fleet, and the death of O'Dowda. The
occurrence is remarkable as the first general sea-fight between vessels
in the service of native Princes, and as reminding us forcibly of the
lessons acquired by the Irish during the Danish period.
During the two years of life—which remained to King Thorlogh O'Conor,
he had the affliction of seeing the fabric of power, which had taken
him nearly half a century to construct, abridged at many points, by his
more vigorous northern rival. Murtogh gave law to territories far south
of the ancient _esker_. He took hostages from the Danes of Dublin, and
interposed in the affairs of Munster. In the year 1156, the closing
incidents which signalized the life of Thorlogh More, was a new peace
which he made between the people of Breffni, Meath, and Connaught, and
the reception of hostages from his old opponent, the restored O'Brien.
While this new light of prosperity was shining on his house, he passed
away from this life, on the 13th of the Kalends of June, in the 68th
year of his age, and the 50th of his government. By his last will he
bequeathed to the clergy numerous legacies, which are thus enumerated
by Geoffrey Keating: "namely, four hundred and forty ounces of gold,
and forty marks of silver; and all the other valuable treasures he
possessed, both cups and precious stones, both steeds and cattle and
robes, chess-boards, bows, quivers, arrows, equipments, weapons,
armour, and utensils." He was interred beside the high altar of the
Cathedral of Clonmacnoise, to which he had been in life and in death a
munificent benefactor.
The Prince of Aileach now assumed the title of Monarch, and after some
short-lived opposition from Roderick O'Conor, his sovereignty was
universally acknowledged. From the year 1161 until his death, he might
fairly be called Ard-Righ, without opposition, since the hostages of
all Ireland were in those last five years in his hands. These hostages
were retained at the chief seat of power of the northern dynasty, the
fortress of Aileach, which crowns a hill nearly a thousand feet high,
at the head of Lough Swilly. To this stronghold the ancestor of Murtogh
had removed early in the Danish period, from the more exposed and more
ancient Emania, beside Armagh. On that hill-summit the ruins of Aileach
may still be traced, with its inner wall twelve feet thick, and its
three concentric ramparts, the first enclosing one acre, the second
four, and the last five acres. By what remains we can still judge of
the strength of the stronghold which watched over the waters of Lough
Swilly like a sentinel on an outpost. No Prince of the Northern Hy-Nial
had for two centuries entered Aileach in such triumph or with so many
nobles in his train, as did Murtogh in the year 1161, But whether the
supreme power wrought a change for the worse in his early character, or
that the lords of Ulster had begun to consider the line of Conn as
equals rather than sovereigns, he was soon involved in quarrels with
his own Provincial suffragans which ended in his defeat and death. Most
other kings of whom we have read found their difficulties in rival
dynasties and provincial prejudices; but this ruler, when most freely
acknowledged abroad, was disobeyed and defeated at home. Having taken
prisoner the lord of Ulidia (Down), with whom he had previously made a
solemn peace, he ordered his eyes to be put out, and three of his
principal relatives to be executed. This and other arbitrary acts so
roused the lords of Leath Conn, that they formed a league against him,
at the head of which stood Donogh O'Carroll, lord of Oriel, the next
neighbour to the cruelly ill-treated chief of Ulidia. In the year 1166,
this chief, with certain tribes of Tyrone and North Leitrim, to the
number of three battalions (9,000 men), attacked the patrimony of the
monarch—that last menace and disgrace to an Irish king. Murtogh with
his usual valour, but not his usual fortune, encountered them in the
district of the Fews, with an Inferior force, chiefly his own
tribesmen. Even these deserted him on the eve of the battle, so that he
was easily surprised and slain, only thirteen men falling in the
affray. This action, of course, is unworthy the name of a battle, but
resulting in the death of the monarch, it became of high political
importance.
Roderick O'Conor, son of Thorlogh More, was at this period in the tenth
year of his reign over Connaught, and the fiftieth year of his age.
Rathcrogan, the chief seat of his jurisdiction, had just attained to
the summit of its glory. The site of this now almost forgotten palace
is traceable in the parish of Elphin, within three miles of the modern
village of Tulsk. Many objects contributed to its interest and
importance in Milesian times. There were the _Naasteaghna_, or place of
assembly of the clans of Connaught, "the Sacred Cave," which in the
Druidic era was supposed to be the residence of a god, and the _Relig
na Righ_—the venerable cemetery of the Pagan kings of the West, where
still the red pillar stone stood over the grave of Dathy, and many
another ancient tomb could be as clearly distinguished. The relative
importance of Rathcrogan we may estimate by the more detailed
descriptions of the extent and income of its rivals—Kinkora and
Aileach. In an age when Roscommon alone contained 470 fortified _duns_,
over all which the royal rath presided; when half the tributes of the
island were counted at its gate, it must have been the frequent
_rendezvous_ of armies, the home of many guests, the busy focus of
intrigue, and the very elysium of bards, story-tellers, and mendicants.
In an after generation, Cathal, the red-handed O'Conor, from some
motive of policy or pleasure, transferred the seat of government to the
newly-founded Ballintober: in the lifetime of Thorlogh More, and the
first years of Roderick, when the fortunes of the O'Conors were at
their full, Rathcrogan was the co-equal in strength and in splendour of
Aileach and Kinkora.
Advancing directly from this family seat, on the first tidings of
Murtogh's death, Roderick presented himself before the walls of Dublin,
which opened its gates, accepted his stipend of four thousand head of
cattle, and placed hostages for its fidelity in his hands. He next
marched rapidly to Drogheda, with an auxiliary force of Dublin Danes,
and there O'Carroll, lord of Oriel (Louth), came into his camp, and
rendered him homage. Retracing his steps he entered Leinster, with an
augmented force, and demanded hostages from Dermid McMurrogh. Thirteen
years had passed since his father had taken up arms to avenge the rape
of Dervorgoil, and had earned the deadly hatred of the abductor. That
hatred, in the interim, had suffered no decrease, and sooner than
submit to Roderick, the ravager burned his own city of Ferns to the
ground, and retreated into his fastnesses. Roderick proceeded
southward, obtained the adhesion of Ossory and Munster; confirming
Desmond to McCarthy, and Thomond to O'Brien. Returning to Leinster, he
found that Tiernan O'Ruarc had entered the province, at the head of an
auxiliary army, and Dermid, thus surrounded, deserted by most of his
own followers, outwitted and overmatched, was feign to seek safety in
flight beyond seas (A.D. 1168). A solemn sentence of banishment was
publicly pronounced against him by the assembled Princes, and Morrogh,
his cousin, commonly called Morrogh _na Gael_, or "of the Irish," to
distinguish him from Dermid _na Gall_, or "of the Stranger," was
inaugurated in his stead. From Morrogh _na Gael_ they took seventeen
hostages, and so Roderick returned rejoicing to Rathcrogan, and O'Ruarc
to Breffni, each vainly imagining that he had heard the last of the
dissolute and detested King of Leinster.
CHAPTER IV.
STATE OF RELIGION AND LEARNING AMONG THE IRISH, PREVIOUS TO THE
ANGLO-NORMAN INVASION.
At the end of the eighth century, before entering on the Norwegian and
Danish wars, we cast a backward glance on the Christian ages over which
we had passed; and now again we have arrived at the close of an era,
when a rapid retrospect of the religious and social condition of the
country requires to be taken.
The disorganization of the ancient Celtic constitution has already been
sufficiently described. The rise of the great families, and their
struggles for supremacy, have also been briefly sketched. The
substitution of the clan for the race, of pedigree for patriotism, has
been exhibited to the reader. We have now to turn to the inner life of
the people, and to ascertain what substitutes they found in their
religious and social condition, for the absence of a fixed
constitutional system, and the strength and stability which such a
system confers.
The followers of Odin, though they made no proselytes to their horrid
creed among the children of St. Patrick, succeeded in inflicting many
fatal wounds on the Irish Church. The schools, monasteries, and
nunneries, situated on harbours or rivers, or within a convenient march
of the coast, were their first objects of attack; teachers and pupils
were dispersed, or, if taken, put to death, or, escaping, were driven
to resort to arms in self-defence. Bishops could no longer reside in
their sees, nor anchorites in their cells, unless they invited
martyrdom; a fact which may, perhaps, in some degree account for the
large number of Irish ecclesiastics, many of them in episcopal orders,
who are found, in the ninth century, in Gaul and Germany, at Rheims,
Mentz, Ratisbon, Fulda, Cologne, and other places, already Christian.
But it was not in the banishment of masters, the destruction of
libraries and school buildings, the worst consequences of the Gentile
war were felt. Their ferocity provoked retaliation in kind, and
effaced, first among the military class, and gradually from among all
others, that growing gentleness of manners and clemency of temper,
which we can trace in such princes as Nial of the Showers and Nial of
Callan. "A change in the national spirit is the greatest of all
revolutions;" and this change the Danish and Norwegian wars had
wrought, in two centuries, among the Irish.
The number of Bishops in the early Irish Church was greatly in excess
of the number of modern dioceses. From the eighth to the twelfth
century we hear frequently of _Episcopi Vagantes_, or itinerant, and
_Episcopi Vacantes_, or unbeneficed Bishops; the Provincial Synods of
England and Gaul frequently had to complain of the influx of such
Bishops into their country. At the Synod held near the Hill of Usny, in
the year 1111, fifty Bishops attended, and at the Synod of Rath-Brazil,
seven years later, according to Keating, but twenty-five were present.
To this period, then, when Celsus was Primate and Legate of the Holy
See, we may attribute the first attempted reduction of the Episcopal
body to something like its modern number; but so far was this salutary
restriction from being universally observed that, at the Synod of Kells
(A.D. 1152), the hierarchy had again risen to thirty-four, exclusive of
the four Archbishops. Three hundred priests, and three thousand
ecclesiastics are given as the number present at the first-mentioned
Synod.
The religious orders, probably represented by the above proportion of
three thousand ecclesiastics to three hundred [secular] priests had
also undergone a remarkable revolution. The rule of all the early Irish
monasteries and convents was framed upon an original constitution,
which St. Patrick had obtained in France from St. Martin of Tours, who
in turn had copied after the monachism of Egypt and the East. It is
called by ecclesiastical writers the Columban rule, and was more rigid
in some particulars than the rule of St. Benedict, by which it was
afterwards supplanted. Amongst other restrictions it prohibited the
admission of all unprofessed persons within the precincts of the
monastery—a law as regards females incorporated in the Benedictine
constitution; and it strictly enjoined silence on the professed—a
discipline revived by the brethren of La Trappe. The primary difference
between the two orders lay perhaps in this, that the Benedictine made
study and the cultivation of the intellect subordinate to manual labour
and implicit obedience, while the Columban Order attached more
importance to the acquisition of knowledge and missionary enterprise.
Not that this was their invariable, but only their peculiar
characteristic: a deep-seated love of seclusion and meditation often,
intermingled with this fearless and experimental zeal. It was not to be
expected in a century like the ninth, especially when the Benedictine
Order was overspreading the West, that its milder spirit should not act
upon the spirit of the Columban rule. It was, in effect, more social,
and less scientific, more a wisdom to be acted than to be taught. Armed
with the syllogism, the Columbites issued out of their remote island,
carrying their strongly marked personality into every controversy and
every correspondence. In Germany and Gaul, their system blazed up in
Virgilius, in Erigena, and Macarius, and then disappeared in the
calmer, slower, but safer march of the Benedictine discipline. By a
reform of the same ancient order, its last hold on native soil was
loosened when, under the auspices of St. Malachy, the Cistercian rule
was introduced into Ireland the very year of his first visit to
Clairvaux (A.D. 1139). St. Mary's Abbey, Dublin, was the first to adopt
that rule, and the great monastery of Mellifont, placed under the
charge of the brother of the Primate, sprung up in Meath, three years
later. The Abbeys of Bective, Boyle, Baltinglass, and Monasternenagh,
date from the year of Malachy's second journey to Rome, and death at
Clairvaux—A.D. 1148. Before the end of the century, the rule was
established at Fermoy, Holycross, and Odorney; at Athlone and Knockmoy;
at Newry and Assaroe, and in almost every tribe-land of Meath and
Leinster. It is usually but erroneously supposed that the Cistercian
rule came in with the Normans; for although many houses owed their
foundation to that race, the order itself had been naturalized in
Ireland a generation before the first landing of the formidable allies
of Dermid on the coast of Wexford. The ancient native order had
apparently fulfilled its mission, and long rudely lopped and shaken by
civil commotions and Pagan war, it was prepared to give place to a new
and more vigorous organization of kindred holiness and energy.
As the horrors of war disturbed continually the clergy from their
sacred calling, and led many of them, even Abbots and Bishops, to take
up arms, so the yoke of religion gradually loosened and dropped from
the necks of the people. The awe of the eighth century for a Priest or
Bishop had already disappeared in the tenth, when Christian hands were
found to decapitate Cormac of Cashel, and offer his head as a trophy to
the Ard-Righ. In the twelfth century the Archbishop and Bishops of
Connaught, bound to the Synod of Trim, were fallen upon by the Kern of
Carbre the Swift, before they could cross the Shannon, their people
beaten and dispersed and two of them killed. In the time of Thorlogh
More O'Conor, a similar outrage was offered by Tiernan O'Ruarc to the
Archbishop of Armagh, and one of his ecclesiastics was killed in the
assault. Not only for the persons of ministers of religion had the
ancient awe and reverence disappeared, but even for the sacred
precincts of the Sanctuary. In the second century of the war with the
Northmen we begin to hear of churches and cloisters plundered by native
chiefs, who yet called themselves Christians, though in every such
instance our annalists are careful to record the vengeance of Heaven
following swift on sacrilege. Clonmacnoise, Kildare, and Lismore, were
more than once rifled of their wealth by impious hands, and given over
to desolation and burning by so-called Christian nobles and soldiers!
It is some mitigation of the dreadful record thus presented to be
informed—as we often are—especially in the annals of the twelfth
century, that the treasures so pillaged were not the shrines of saints
nor the sacred ornaments of the altar, but the temporal wealth of
temporal proprietors, laid up in churches as places of greatest
security.
The estates of the Church were, in most instances, farmed by laymen,
called _Erenachs_, who, in the relaxation of all discipline, seem to
have gradually appropriated the lands to themselves, leaving to the
Clergy and Bishops only periodical dues and the actual enclosure of the
Church. This office of Erenach was hereditary, and must have presented
many strong temptations to its occupants. It is indeed certain that the
Irish Church was originally founded on the broadest voluntaryism, and
that such was the spirit of all its most illustrious fathers. "Content
with food and raiment," says an ancient Canon attributed to St.
Patrick, "reject the gifts of the wicked beside, seeing that the lamb
takes only that with which it is fed." Such, to the letter, was the
maxim which guided the conduct of Colman and his brethren, of whom Bede
makes such honourable mention, in the third century after the preaching
of St. Patrick. But the munificence of tribes and Princes was not to be
restrained, and to obviate any violation of the revered canons of the
apostle, laymen, as treasurers and stewards over the endowments of the
Church, were early appointed. As those possessions increased, the
desire of family aggrandizement proved too much for the Erenachs not
only of Armagh, but of most other sees, and left the clergy as
practically dependent on free-will offerings, as if their Cathedrals or
Convents had never been endowed with an acre, a mill, a ferry, or a
fishery. The free offerings were, however, always generous, and
sometimes munificent. When Celsus, on his elevation to the Primacy,
made a tour of the southern half-kingdom, he received "seven cows and
seven sheep, and half an ounce of silver from every cantred [hundred]
in Munster." The bequests were also a fruitful source of revenue to the
principal foundations; of the munificence of the monarchs we may form
some opinion by what has been already recorded of the gifts left to
churches by Thorlogh More O'Conor.
The power of the clerical order, in these ages of Pagan warfare, had
very far declined from what it was, when Adamnan caused the law to be
enacted to prevent women going to battle, when Moling obtained the
abolition of the Leinster tribute, and Columbkill the recognition of
Scottish independence. Truces made in the presence of the highest
dignitaries, and sworn to on the most sacred relics, were frequently
violated, and often with impunity. Neither excommunication nor public
penance were latterly inflicted as an atonement for such perjury: a
fine or offering to the Church was the easy and only mulct on the
offender. When we see the safeguard of the Bishop of Cork so flagrantly
disregarded by the assassins of Mahon, son of Kennedy, and the solemn
peace of the year 1094 so readily broken by two such men as the Princes
of the North and the South, we need no other proofs of the decadence of
the spiritual authority in that age of Irish history.
And the morals of private life tell the same sad tale. The facility
with which the marriage tie was contracted and dissolved is the
strongest evidence of this degeneracy. The worst examples were set in
the highest stations, for it is no uncommon incident, from the ninth
century downwards, to find our Princes with more than one wife living,
and the repudiated wife married again to a person of equal or superior
rank. We have the authority of Saint Anselm and Saint Bernard, for the
existence of grave scandal and irregularities of life among the clergy,
and we can well believe that it needed a generation of Bishops, with
all the authority and all the courage of Saint Celsus, Saint Malachy,
and Saint Lawrence, to rescue from ruin a Priesthood and a people, so
far fallen from the bright example of their ancestors. That the
reaction towards a better life had strongly set in, under their
guidance, we may infer from the horror with which, in the third quarter
of the twelfth century, the elopement of Dermid and Dervorgoil was
regarded by both Princes and People. A hundred years earlier, that
event would have been hardly noticed in the general disregard of the
marriage tie, but the frequent Synods, and the holy lives of the
reforming Bishops, had already revived the zeal that precedes and
ensures reformation.
Primate Malachy died at Clairvaulx, in the arms of Saint Bernard, in
the year 1148, after having been fourteen years Archbishop of Armagh
and ten years Bishop of Down and Conor. His episcopal life, therefore,
embraced the history of that remarkable second quarter of the century,
in which the religious reaction fought its first battles against the
worst abuses. The attention of Saint Bernard, whose eyes nothing
escaped, from Jerusalem to the farthest west, was drawn ten years
before to the Isle of Saints, now, in truth, become an Isle of Sinners.
The death of his friend, the Irish Primate, under his own roof, gave
him a fitting occasion for raising his accusing voice—a voice that
thrilled the Alps and filled the Vatican—against the fearful degeneracy
of that once fruitful mother of holy men and women. The attention of
Rome was thoroughly aroused, and immediately after the appearance of
the Life of Saint Malachy, Pope Eugenius III.—himself a monk of
Clairvaulx—despatched Cardinal Papiron, with legantine powers, to
correct abuses, and establish a stricter discipline. After a tour of
great part of the Island, the Legate, with whom was associated
Gilla-Criost, or Christianus, Bishop of Lismore, called the great Synod
of Kells, early in the year after his arrival (March, 1152), at which
simony, usury, concubinage, and other abuses, were formally condemned,
and tithes were first decreed to be paid to the secular clergy. Two new
Archbishoprics, Dublin and Tuam, were added to Armagh and Cashel,
though not without decided opposition from the Primates both of Leath
Mogha and Leath Conn, backed by those stern conservatives of every
national usage, the Abbots of the Columban Order. The _pallium_, or
Roman cape, was, by this Legate, presented to each of the Archbishops,
and a closer conformity with the Roman ritual was enacted. The four
ecclesiastical Provinces thus created were in outline nearly identical
with the four modern Provinces. Armagh was declared the metropolitan
over all; Dublin, which had been a mere Danish borough-see, gained most
in rank and influence by the new arrangement, as Glendalough, Ferns,
Ossory, Kildare and Leighlin, were declared subject to its presidency.
We must always bear in mind the picture drawn of the Irish Church by
the inspired orator of Clairvaulx, when judging of the conduct of Pope
Adrian IV., who, in the year 1155—the second of his Pontificate—granted
to King Henry II. of England, then newly crowned, his Bull authorising
the invasion of Ireland. The authenticity of that Bull is now
universally admitted; and both its preamble and conditions show how
strictly it was framed in accordance with St. Bernard's accusation. It
sets forth that for the eradication of vice, the implanting of virtue,
and the spread of the true faith, the Holy Father solemnly sanctions
the projected invasion; and it attaches as a condition, the payment of
Peter's pence, for every house in Ireland. The bearer of the Bull, John
of Salisbury, carried back from Rome a gold ring, set with an emerald
stone, as a token of Adrian's friendship, or it may be, his
subinfeudation of Henry. As a title, however powerless in modern times
such a Bull might prove, it was a formidable weapon of invasion with a
Catholic people, in the twelfth century. We have mainly referred to it
here, however, as an illustration of how entirely St. Bernard's
impeachment of the Irish Church and nation was believed at Rome, even
after the salutary decrees of the Synod of Kells had been promulgated.
The restoration of religion, which was making such rapid progress
previous to the Norman invasion, was accompanied by a relative revival
of learning. The dark ages of Ireland are not those of the rest of
Europe—they extend from the middle of the ninth century to the age of
Brian and Malachy II. This darkness came from the North, and cleared
away rapidly after the eventful day of Clontarf. The first and most
natural direction which the revival took was historical investigation,
and the composition of Annals. Of these invaluable records, the two of
highest reputation are those of Tigernach (Tiernan) O'Broin, brought
down to the year of his own death, A.D. 1088, and the chronicle of
Marianus Scotus, who died at Mentz, A.D. 1086. Tiernan was abbot of
Clonmacnoise, and Marian is thought to have been a monk of that
monastery, as he speaks of a superior called Tigernach, under whom he
had lived in Ireland. Both these learned men quote accurately the works
of foreign writers; both give the dates of eclipses, in connection with
historical events for several centuries before their own time; both
show a familiarity with Greek and Latin authors. _Marianus_ is the
first writer by whom the name _Scotia Minor_ was given to the Gaelic
settlement in Caledonia, and his chronicle was an authority mainly
relied on in the disputed Scottish succession in the time of Edward I.
of England. With _Tigernach_, he may be considered the founder of the
school of Irish Annalists, which flourished in the shelter of the great
monasteries, such as Innisfallen, Boyle and Multifernan; and culminated
in the great compilation made by "the Four Masters" in the Abbey of
Donegal.
Of the Gaelic metrical chroniclers, Flann of the Monastery, and
Gilla-Coeman; of the Bards McLiag and McCoisse; of the learned
professors and lectors of Lismore and Armagh—now restored for a season
to studious days and peaceful nights, we must be content with the
mention of their names. Of Lismore, after its restoration, an old
British writer has left us this pleasant and happy picture. "It is," he
says, "a famous and holy city, half of which is an asylum, into which
no woman dares enter; but it is full of cells and monasteries; and
religious men in great abundance abide there."
Such was the promise of better days, which cheered the hopes of the
Pastors of the Irish, when the twelfth century had entered on its third
quarter. The pious old Gaelic proverb, which says, "on the Cross the
face of Christ was looking westwards—," was again on the lips and in
the hearts of men, and though much remained to be done, much had been
already done, and done under difficulties greater than any that
remained to conquer.
CHAPTER V.
SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE IRISH PREVIOUS TO THE NORMAN INVASION.
The total population of Ireland, when the Normans first entered it, can
only be approximated by conjecture. Supposing the whole force with
which Roderick and his allies invested the Normans in Dublin, to be, as
stated by a cotemporary writer, some 50,000 men, and that that force
included one-fourth of all the men of the military age in the country;
and further, supposing the men of military age to bear the proportion
of one-fifth to the whole number of inhabitants, this would give a
total population of about one million. Even this conjecture is to be
taken with great diffidence and distrust, but, for the sake of
clearness, it is set down as a possible Irish census, towards the close
of the twelfth century.
This population was divided into two great classes, the _Saer-Clanna_,
or free tribes, chiefly, if not exclusively, of Milesian race; and the
_Daer-Clanna_, or unfree tribes, consisting of the descendants of the
subjugated older races, or of clans once free, reduced to servitude by
the sword, or of the posterity of foreign mercenary soldiers. Of the
free clans, the most illustrious were those of whose Princes we have
traced the record—the descendants of Nial in Ulster and Meath, of
Cathaeir More in Leinster, of Oliold in Munster, and of Eochaid in
Connaught. An arbitrary division once limited the free clans to six in
the southern half-kingdom, and six in the north; and the unfree also to
six. But Geoffrey Keating, whose love of truth was quite as strong as
his credulity in ancient legends—and that is saying much—disclaimed
that classification, and collected his genealogies from principal
heads—branching out into three families of tribes, descended from Eber
Finn, one from Ir, and four from Eremhon, sons of Milesians of Spain;
and ninth tribe sprung from Ith, granduncle to the sons of Milesius.
The principal Eberian families' names were McCarthy, O'Sullivan,
O'Mahony, O'Donovan, O'Brien, O'Dea, O'Quin, McMahon (of Clare),
McNamara, O'Carroll (of Ely), and O'Gara; the Irian families were
Magennis, O'Farrall, and O'Conor (of Kerry); the posterity of Eremhon
branched out into the O'Neils, O'Donnells, O'Dohertys, O'Gallahers,
O'Boyles, McGeoghegans, O'Conors (of Connaught), O'Flahertys, O'Heynes,
O'Shaughnessys, O'Clerys, O'Dowdas, McDonalds (of Antrim), O'Kellys,
Maguires, Kavanaghs, Fitzpatricks, O'Dwyers, and O'Conors (of Offally).
The chief families of Ithian origin were the O'Driscolls, O'Learys,
Coffeys, and Clancys. Out of the greater tribes many subdivisions arose
from time to time, when new names were coined for some intermediate
ancestor; but the farther enumeration of these may be conveniently
dispensed with.
The _Daer-Clanna_, or unfree tribes, have left no history. Under the
despotism of the Milesian kings, it was high treason to record the
actions of the conquered race; so that the Irish Belgae fared as badly
in this respect, at the hands of the Milesian historians, as the latter
fared in after times from the chroniclers of the Normans. We only know
that such tribes were, and that their numbers and physical force more
than once excited the apprehension of the children of the conquerors.
What proportion they bore to the _Saer-Clanna_ we have no positive data
to determine. A fourth, a fifth, or a sixth, they may have been; but
one thing is certain, the jealous policy of the superior race never
permitted them to reascend the plane of equality, from which they had
been hurled, at the very commencement of the Milesian ascendency.
In addition to the enslaved by conquest and the enslaved by crime,
there were also the enslaved by purchase. From the earliest period,
slave dealers from Ireland had frequented Bristol, the great British
slave market, to purchase human beings. Christian morality, though it
may have mitigated the horrors of this odious traffic, did not at once
lead to its abolition. In vain Saint Wulfstan preached against it in
the South, as Saint Aidan had done long before him in the North of
England. Files of fair-haired Saxon slaves, of both sexes, yoked
together with ropes, continued to be shipped at Bristol, and bondmen
and bondwomen continued to be articles of value—exchanged between the
Prince and his subordinates, as stipend or tribute. The King of Cashel
alone gave to the chief of the Eugenians, as part of his annual
stipend, ten bondmen and ten women; to the lord of Bruree, seven pages
and seven bondwomen; to the lord of Deisi, eight slaves of each sex,
and seven female slaves to the lord of Kerry; among the items which
make up the tribute from Ossory to Cashel are ten bondmen and ten grown
women; and from the Deisi, eight bondmen and eight "brown-haired"
women. The annual exchanges of this description, set down as due in the
Book of Rights, would require the transfer of several hundreds of
slaves yearly, from one set of masters to another. Cruelties and
outrages must have been inseparable from the system, and we can hardly
wonder at the sweeping decree by which the Synod of Armagh (A.D. 1171)
declared all the English slaves in Ireland free to return to their
homes, and anathematized the whole inhuman traffic. The fathers of that
council looked upon the Norman invasion as a punishment from Heaven on
the slave trade; for they believed in their purity of heart, that power
_is_ transferred from one nation to another, because of injustices,
oppressions, and divers deceits.
The purchased slaves and unfree tribes tilled the soil, and practised
the mechanic arts. Agriculture seems first to have been lifted into
respectability by the Cistercian Monks, while spinning, weaving, and
almost every mechanic calling, if we except the scribe, the armorer,
and the bell-founder, continued down to very recent tunes to be held in
contempt among the Gael. A brave man is mentioned as having been a
"weaving woman's son," with much the same emphasis as Jeptha is spoken
of as the son of an Harlot. Mechanic wares were disposed of at those
stated gatherings, which combined popular games, chariot races for the
nobles, and markets for the merchants. A Bard of the tenth or eleventh
century, in a desperate effort to vary the usual high-flown
descriptions of the country, calls it "Erin of the hundred fair
greens,"—a very graphic, if not a very poetic illustration.
The administration of justice was an hereditary trust, committed to
certain judicial families, who held their lands, as the Monks did, by
virtue of their profession. When the posterity of the Brehon, or Judge
failed, it was permitted to adopt from the class of students, a male
representative, in whom the judicial authority was perpetuated: the
families of O'Gnive and O'Clery in the North, of O'Daly in Meath,
O'Doran in Leinster, McEgan in Munster, Mulconry or Conroy in
Connaught, were the most distinguished Brehon houses. Some
peculiarities of the Brehon law, relating to civil succession and
sovereignty, such as the institution of Tanistry, and the system of
stipends and tributes, have been already explained; parricide and
murder were in latter ages punished with death; homicide and rape by
_eric_ or fine. There were, besides, the laws of gavelkind or division
of property among the members of the clan; laws relating to boundaries;
sumptuary laws regulating the dress of the various castes into which
society was divided; laws relating to the planting of trees, the
trespass of cattle, and billeting of troops. These laws were either
written in detail, or consisted of certain acknowledged ancient maxims
of which the Brehon made the application in each particular case,
answering to what we call "Judge-made law." Of such ancient tracts as
composed the Celtic code, an immense number have, fortunately survived,
even to this late day, and we may shortly expect a complete digest of
all that are now known to exist, in a printed and imperishable form,
from the hands of native scholars, every way competent to the task.
The commerce of the country, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, was
largely in the hands of the Christian Hiberno-Danes, of the eastern and
southern coast. By them the slave trade with Bristol was mostly
maintained, and the Irish oak, with which William Rufus roofed
Westminster Abbey, was probably rafted by them in the Thames. The
English and Welsh coasts, at least, were familiar to their pilots, and
they combined, as was usual in that age, the military with the
mercantile character. In 1142, and again in 1165, a troop of Dublin
Danes fought under Norman banners against the brave Britons of Cambria,
and in the camps of their allies, sung the praises of the fertile
island of the west. The hundred fairs of Erin—after their conversion
and submission to native authority—afforded them convenient markets for
disposing of the commodities they imported from abroad.
The Gaelic mind, long distracted by the din of war from the purifying
and satisfying influences of a Christian life, naturally fell back upon
the abandoned, half-forgotten superstitions of the Pagan period.
Preceding every fresh calamity, we hear of signs and wonders, of
migratory lakes disappearing in a night, of birds and wolves speaking
with human voices, of showers of blood falling in the fields, of a
whale with golden teeth stranded at Carlingford, of cloud ships, with
their crews, seen plainly sailing in the sky. One of the marvels of
this class is thus gravely entered in our Annals, under the year
1054—"A steeple of fire was seen in the air over Rossdala, on the
Sunday of the festival of St. George, for the space of five hours;
innumerable black birds passed into and out of it, and one large bird
in the middle of them; and the little birds went under his wings when
they went into the steeple. They came out and raised up a greyhound
that was in the middle of the town aloft in the air, and let it drop
down again, so that it died immediately; and they took up three cloaks
and two shirts, and let them drop down in the same manner. The wood on
which these birds perched fell under them; and the oak tree on which
they perched shook with its roots in the earth." In many other
superstitions of the same age we see the latent moral sentiment, as
well as the over-excited imagination of the people. Such is the story
of the stolen jewels of Clonmacnoise, providentially recovered in the
year 1130. The thief in vain endeavoured to escape out of the country,
from Cork, Lismore, and Waterford, "but no ship into which he entered
found a wind to sail, while all the other ships did." And the
conscience stricken thief declared, in his dying confession, that he
used to see Saint Kieran "stopping with his crozier, every ship into
which he entered." It was also an amiable popular illusion that
abundant harvests followed the making of peace, the enacting of
salutary laws, and the accession of a King who loved justice; and
careful entry is made in our chronicles of every evidence of this
character.
The literature of the masses of the people was pretty equally composed
of the legends of the Saints and the older Ossianic legend, so much
misunderstood and distorted by modern criticism. The legends of the
former class were chiefly wonders wrought by the favourite Saints of
the district or the island, embellished with many quaint fancies and
tagged out with remnants of old Pagan superstition. St. Columbkill and
St. Kieran were, most commonly, the heroes of those tales, which,
perhaps, were never intended by their authors to be seriously believed.
Such was the story of the great founder of Iona having transformed the
lady and her maid, who insulted him on his way to Drom-Keth, into two
herons, who are doomed to hover about the neighbouring ford till the
day of doom; and such that other story of "the three first monks" who
joined St. Kieran in the desert, being a fox, a badger, and a bear, all
endowed with speech, and all acting a part in the legend true to their
own instincts. Of higher poetic merit is the legend of the voyage of
St. Brendan over the great sea, and how the birds which sung vespers
for him in the groves of the Promised Land were inhabited by human
souls, as yet in a state of probation waiting for their release!
In the Ossianic legend we have the common stock of Oriental ideas—the
metamorphosis of guilty wives and haughty concubines into dogs and
birds; the speaking beasts and fishes; the enchanted swans, originally
daughters of Lir; the boar of Ben Bulben, by which the champion,
Diarmid, was slain; the Phoenix in the stork of Inniskea, of which
there never was but one, yet that one perpetually reproduced itself;
the spirits of the wood, and the spirits inhabiting springs and
streams; the fairy horse; the sacred trees; the starry influences.
Monstrous and gigantic human shapes, like the Jinns of the Arabian
tales, occasionally enter into the plot, and play a midnight part,
malignant to the hopes of good men. At their approach the earth is
troubled, the moon is overcast, gusts of storm are shaken out from the
folds of their garments, the watch dogs and the war dogs cower down, in
camp and rath, and whine piteously, as if in pain.
The variety of grace, and peculiarities of organization, with which, if
not the original, certainly the Christianized Irish imagination,
endowed and equipped the personages of the fairy world, were of almost
Grecian delicacy. There is no personage who rises to the sublime height
of Zeus, or the incomparable union of beauty and wisdom in Pallas
Athene: what forms Bel, or Crom, or Bride, the queen of Celtic song,
may have worn to the pre-Christian ages we know not, nor can know; but
the minor creations of Grecian fancy, with which they peopled their
groves and fountains, are true kindred of the brain, to the innocent,
intelligent, and generally gentle inhabitants of the Gaelic Fairyland.
The _Sidhe_, a tender, tutelary spirit, attached herself to heroes,
accompanied them in battle, shrouded them with invisibility, dressed
their wounds with more than mortal skill, and watched over them with
more than mortal love; the _Banshee_, a sad, Cassandra-like spirit,
shrieked her weird warning in advance of death, but with a prejudice
eminently Milesian, watched only over those of pure blood, whether
their fortunes abode in hovel or hall. The more modern and grotesque
personages of the Fairy world are sufficiently known to render
description unnecessary.
Two habitual sources of social enjoyment and occupation with the Irish
of those days were music and chess. The harp was the favourite
instrument, but the horn or trumpet, and the pibroch or bagpipe, were
also in common use. Not only professional performers, but men and women
of all ranks, from the humblest to the highest, prided themselves on
some knowledge of instrumental music. It seems to have formed part of
the education of every order, and to have been cherished alike in the
palace, the shieling, and the cloister. "It is a poor church that has
no music," is a Gaelic proverb, as old, perhaps, as the establishment
of Christianity in the land; and no house was considered furnished
without at least one harp. Students from other countries, as we learn
from _Giraldus_, came to Ireland for their musical education in the
twelfth century, just as our artists now visit Germany and Italy with
the same object in view.
The frequent mention of the game of chess, in ages long before those at
which we have arrived, shows how usual was that most intellectual
amusement. The chess board was called in Irish _fithcheall_, and is
described in the Glossary of Cormac, of Cashel, composed towards the
close of the ninth century, as quadrangular, having straight spots of
black and white. Some of them were inlaid with gold and silver, and
adorned with gems. Mention is made in a tale of the twelfth century of
a "man-bag of woven brass wire." No entire set of the ancient men is
now known to exist, though frequent mention is made of "the brigade or
family of chessmen," in many old manuscripts. Kings of bone, seated in
sculptured chairs, about two inches in height, have been found, and
specimens of them engraved in recent antiquarian publications.
It only remains to notice, very briefly, the means of locomotion which
bound and brought together this singular state of society. Five great
roads, radiating from Tara, as a centre, are mentioned in our earliest
record; the road _Dala_ leading to Ossory, and so on into Munster; the
road _Assail_, extending western through Mullingar towards the Shannon;
the road _Cullin_, extending towards Dublin and Bray; the exact route
of the northern road, _Midhluachra_, is undetermined; _Slighe Mor_, the
great western road, followed the course of the _esker_, or hill-range,
from Tara to Galway. Many cross-roads are also known as in common use
from the sixth century downwards. Of these, the Four Masters mention,
at various dates, not less than forty, under their different local
names, previous to the Norman invasion. These roads were kept in
repair, according to laws enacted for that purpose, and were traversed
by the chiefs and ecclesiastics in _carbads_, or chariots; a main road
was called a _slighe_ (_sleigh_), because it was made for the free
passage of two chariots—"i.e. the chariot of a King and the chariot of
a Bishop." Persons of that rank were driven by an _ara_, or charioteer,
and, no doubt, made a very imposing figure. The roads were legally to
be repaired at three seasons, namely, for the accommodation of those
going to the national games, at fair-time, and in time of war. Weeds
and brushwood were to be removed, and water to be drained off; items of
road-work which do not give us a very high idea of the comfort or
finish of those ancient highways.
Such, faintly seen from afar, and roughly sketched, was domestic life
and society among our ancestors, previous to the Anglo-Norman invasion,
in the reign of King Roderick O'Conor.
CHAPTER VI.
FOREIGN RELATIONS OF THE IRISH PREVIOUS TO THE ANGLO-NORMAN INVASION.
The relations of the Irish with other nations, notwithstanding the
injurious effects of their War of Succession on national unity and
reputation, present several points of interest. After the defeat of
Magnus Barefoot, we may drop the Baltic countries out of the map of the
relations of Ireland. Commencing, therefore, at the north of the
neighbouring island—which, in its entirety, they sometimes called
_Inismore_—the most intimate and friendly intercourse was always upheld
with the kingdom of Scotland. Bound together by early ecclesiastical
and bardic ties, confronting together for so many generations a common
enemy, those two countries were destined never to know an international
quarrel. About the middle of the ninth century (A.D. 843), when the
Scoto-Irish in Caledonia had completely subdued the Picts and other
ancient tribes, the first national dynasty was founded by Kenneth
McAlpine. The constitution given by this Prince to the whole country
seems to have been a close copy of the Irish—it embraced the laws of
Tanistry and succession, and the whole Brehon code, as administered in
the parent state. The line of Kenneth may be said to close with Donald
Bane, brother of Malcolm III., who died in 1094, and not only his
dynasty but his system ended with that century. Edgar, Alexander I.,
and David I., all sons of Malcolm III., were educated in England among
the victorious Normans, and in the first third of the twelfth century,
devoted themselves with the inauspicious aid of Norman allies, to the
introduction of Saxon settlers and the feudal system, first into the
lowlands, and subsequently into Moray-shire. This innovation on their
ancient system, and confiscation of their lands, was stoutly resisted
by the Scottish Gael. In Somerled, lord of the Isles, and ancestor of
the Macdonalds, they found a powerful leader, and Somerled found Irish
allies always ready to assist him, in a cause which appealed to all
their national prejudices. In the year 1134, he led a strong force of
Irish and Islesmen to the assistance of the Gaelic insurgents, but was
defeated and slain, near Renfrew, by the royal troops, under the
command of the Steward of Scotland. During the reigns of William the
Lion, Alexander II., and Alexander III., the war of systems raged with
all its fierceness, and in nearly all the great encounters Irish
auxiliaries, as was to be expected, were found on the side of the
Gaelic race and Gaelic rights. Nor did this contest ever wholly cease
in Scotland, until the last hopes of the Stuart line were extinguished
on the fatal field of Culloden, where Irish captains formed the battle,
and Irish blood flowed freely, intermingled with the kindred blood of
Highlanders and Islesmen.
The adoption of Norman usages, laws, and tactics, by the Scottish
dynasties of the twelfth and succeeding centuries, did not permanently
affect the national relations of Ireland and Scotland. It was otherwise
with regard to England. We have every reason to believe—we have the
indirect testimony of every writer from Bede to Malmsbury—that the
intercourse between the Irish and Saxons, after the first hostility
engendered by the cruel treatment of the Britons had worn away, became
of the most friendly character. The "Irish" who fought at Brunanburgh
against Saxon freedom were evidently the natural allies of the
Northmen, the Dano-Irish of Dublin, and the southern seaports. The
commerce of intelligence between the islands was long maintained; the
royalty of Saxon England had more than once, in times of domestic
revolution, found a safe and desired retreat in the western island. The
fair Elgiva and the gallant Harold had crossed the western waves in
their hour of need. The fame of Edward the Confessor took such deep
hold on the Irish mind that, three centuries after his death, his
banner was unfurled and the royal leopards laid aside to facilitate the
march of an English King, through the fastnesses of Leinster. The
Irish, therefore, were not likely to look upon the establishment of a
Norman dynasty, in lieu of the old Saxon line, as a matter of
indifference. They felt that the Norman was but a Dane disguised in
armour. It was true he carried the cross upon his banner, and claimed
the benediction of the successor of St. Peter; true also he spoke the
speech of France, and claimed a French paternity; but the lust for
dominion, the iron self-will, the wily devices of strategy, bespoke the
Norman of the twelfth, the lineal descendant of the Dane of the tenth
century. When, therefore, tidings reached Ireland of the battle of
Hastings and the death of Harold, both the apprehensions and the
sympathies of the country were deeply excited. Intelligence of the
coronation of William the Conqueror quickly followed, and emphatically
announced to the Irish the presence of new neighbours, new dangers, and
new duties.
The spirit with which our ancestors acted towards the defeated Saxons,
whatever we may think of its wisdom, was, at least, respectable for
decision and boldness. Godwin, Edmund, and Magnus, sons of Harold, had
little difficulty in raising in Ireland a numerous force to co-operate
with the Earls Edwin and Morcar, who still upheld the Saxon banner.
With this force, wafted over in sixty-six vessels, they entered the
Avon, and besieged Bristol, then the second commercial city of the
kingdom. But Bristol held out, and the Saxon Earls had fallen back into
Northumberland, so the sons of Harold ran down the coast, and tried
their luck in Somersetshire with a better prospect. Devonshire and
Dorsetshire favoured their cause; the old Britons of Cornwall swelled
their ranks, and the rising spread like flame over the west. Eadnoth, a
renegade Saxon, formerly Harold's Master of Horse, despatched by
William against Harold's sons, was defeated and slain. Doubling the
Land's End, the victorious force entered the Tamar, and overran South
Devon. The united garrisons of London, Winchester, and Salisbury, were
sent against them, under the command of the martial Bishop of
Coutances; while a second force advanced along the Tamar, under Brian,
heir of the Earl of Brittany, who routed them with a loss of 2,000 men,
English, Welsh, and Irish. The sons of Harold retreated to their
vessels with all their booty, and returned again into Ireland, where
they vanish from history. Such, in the vale of Tamar, was the first
collision of the Irish and Normans, and as the race of Rollo never
forgot an enemy, nor forewent a revenge, we may well believe that, even
thus early, the invasion of Ireland was decided upon. Meredith Hanmer
relates in his Chronicle that William Rufus, standing on a high rock,
and looking towards Ireland said: "I will bring hither my ships, and
pass over and conquer that land;" and on these words of the son of the
Conqueror being repeated to Murkertach O'Brien, he replied: "Hath the
King in his great threatening said _if it please God?_" and when
answered "No;" "Then," said the Irish monarch, "I fear him not, since
he putteth his trust in man and not in God."
Ireland, however, was destined to be reached through Wales, and along
that mountain coast we early find Norman castles and Norman ships. It
was the special ambition of William Rufus to add the principality to
the conquests of his father, and the active sympathy of the Welsh with
the Saxons on their inland border gave him pretexts enough. A bitter
feud between North and South Wales hastened an invasion, in which
Robert Fitz-Aymon and his companions played, by anticipation, the parts
of Strongbow and Fitz-Stephen, in the invasion of Ireland.
The struggle, commenced under them, was protracted through the reign of
Rufus, who led an army in person (A.D. 1095) against the Welsh, but
with little gain and less glory. As an after thought he adopted the
device of his father, (followed, too, in Ireland by Henry II.,) of
partitioning the country among the most enterprising nobles, gravely
accepting their homage in advance of possession, and authorizing them
to maintain troops at their own charges, for making good his grant of
what never belonged to him. Robert Fitz-Aymon did homage for Glamorgan,
Bernard Newmarch for Brecknock, Roger de Montgomery for Cardigan, and
Gilbert de Clare for Pembroke: the best portions of North Wales were
partitioned between the Mortimers, Latimers, De Lacys, Fitz-Alans, and
Montgomerys. Rhys, Prince of Cambria, with many of his nobles, fell in
battle defending bravely his native hills; but Griffith, son of Rhys,
escaped into Ireland, from which he returned some twenty years later,
and recovered by arms and policy a large share of his ancestral
dominions. In the reign of Henry I. (A.D. 1110), a host of Flemings,
driven from their own country by an inundation of the sea, were planted
upon the Welsh marches, from which they soon swarmed into all the
Cambrian glens and glades. The industry and economy of this new people,
in peaceful times, seemed almost inconsistent with their stubborn
bravery in battle; but they demonstrated to the Welsh, and afterwards
to the Irish, that they could handle the halbert as well as throw the
shuttle; that men of trade may on occasion prove themselves capable men
of war.
The Norman Kings of England were not insensible to the fact that the
Cymric element in Wales, the Saxon element in England, and the Gaelic
element in Scotland, were all more agreeable to the Irish than the race
of Rollo and William. They were not ignorant that Ireland was a refuge
for their victims and a recruiting ground for their enemies. They knew,
furthermore, that most of the strong points on the Irish coast, from
the Shannon to the Liffey, were possessed by Christian Northmen kindred
to themselves. They knew that the land was divided within itself,
weakened by a long war of succession; groaning under the ambition of
five competitors for the sovereignty; and suffering in reputation
abroad under the invectives of Saint Bernard, and the displeasure of
Rome. More tempting materials for intrigue, or fairer opportunities of
aggrandizement, nowhere presented themselves, and it was less want of
will than of leisure from other and nearer contests, which deferred
this new invasion for a century after the battle of Hastings.
While that century was passing over their heads, an occasional
intercourse, not without its pleasing incidents, was maintained between
the races. In the first year of the twelfth, Arnulph de Montgomery,
Earl of Chester, obtained a daughter of Murkertach O'Brien in marriage;
the proxy on the occasion being Gerald, son of the Constable of
Windsor, and ancestor of the Geraldines. Murkertach, according to
Malmsbury, maintained a close correspondence with Henry I., for whose
advice he professed great deference. He was accused of aiding the
rebellion of the Montgomerys against that Prince; and if at one time he
did so, seems to have abandoned their alliance, when threatened with
reprisals on the Irish engaged in peaceful commerce with England. The
argument used on this occasion seems to be embodied in the question of
Malmsbury—and has since become familiar—"What would Ireland do," says
the old historian, "if the merchandize of England were not carried to
her shores?"
The estimation in which the Irish Princes were held in the century
preceding the invasion, at the Norman Court, may be seen in the style
of Lanfranc and Anselm, when addressing the former King Thorlogh, and
the latter King Murkertach O'Brien. The first generation of the
conquerors had passed away before the second of these epistles was
written. In the first, the address runs—"Lanfrancus, a sinner, and the
unworthy Bishop of the Holy Church of Dover, to the illustrious
Terdelvacus, King of Ireland, blessing," &c., &c.; and the epistle of
Anselm is addressed—"To Muriardachus, by the grace of God, glorious
King of Ireland, Anselm, servant of the Church of Canterbury, greeting
health and salvation," &c., &c. This was the tone of the highest
ecclesiastics in England towards the ruler of Ireland, in the reigns of
William I. and Henry I., and equally obsequious were the replies of the
Irish Princes.
After the death of Henry I., nineteen years of civil war and anarchy
diverted the Anglo-Normans from all other objects. In the year 1154,
however, Henry of Anjou succeeded to the throne, on which he was
destined to act so important a part. He was born in Anjou in the year
1133, and married at eighteen the divorced wife of the King of France.
Uniting her vast dominions to his own patrimony, he became the lord of
a larger part of France than was possessed by the titular king. In his
twenty-first year he began to reign in England, and in his thirty-fifth
he received the fugitive Dermid of Leinster, in some camp or castle of
Aquitaine, and took that outlaw, by his own act, under his protection.
The centenary of the victory of Hastings had just gone by, and it
needed only this additional agent to induce him to put into execution a
plan which he must have formed in the first months of his reign, since
the Bull he had procured from Pope Adrian, bears the date of that
year—1154. The return from exile, and martyrdom of Beckett, disarranged
and delayed the projects of the English King; nor was he able to lead
an expedition into Ireland until four years after his reception of the
Leinster fugitive in France.
Throughout the rest of Christendom—if we except Rome—the name of
Ireland was comparatively little known. The commerce of Dublin,
Limerick, and Galway, especially in the article of wine, which was
already largely imported, may have made those ports and their merchants
somewhat known on the coasts of France and Spain. But we have no
statistics of Irish commerce at that early period. Along the Rhine and
even upon the Danube, the Irish missionary and the Irish schoolmaster
were still sometimes found. The chronicle of Ratisbon records with
gratitude the munificence of Conor O'Brien, King of Munster, whom it
considers the founder of the Abbey of St. Peter in that city. The
records of the same Abbey credit its liberal founder with having sent
large presents to the Emperor Lothaire, in aid of the second crusade
for the recovery of the Holy Land. Some Irish adventurers joined in the
general European hosting to the plains of Palestine, but though neither
numerous nor distinguished enough to occupy the page of history, their
_glibs_ and _cooluns_ did not escape the studious eye of him who sang
Jerusalem Delivered and Regained.
BOOK IV.
THE NORMANS IN IRELAND.
CHAPTER I.
DERMID McMURROGH'S NEGOTIATIONS AND SUCCESS—THE FIRST EXPEDITION OF THE
NORMANS INTO IRELAND.
The result of Dermid McMurrogh's interview with Henry II., in
Aquitaine, was a royal letter, addressed to all his subjects,
authorizing such of them as would, to enlist in the service of the
Irish Prince. Armed alone with this, the expelled adulterer, chafing
for restoration and revenge, retraced his course to England. He was at
this time some years beyond three score, but the snows of age had no
effect in cooling his impetuous blood; his stature is described as
almost gigantic; his voice loud and harsh; his features stern and
terrible. His cruel and criminal character we already know. Yet it is
but just here to recall that much of the horror and odium which has
accumulated on his memory is posthumous and retrospective. Some of his
cotemporaries were no better in their private lives than he was; but
then they had no part in bringing in the Normans. Talents both for
peace and war he certainly had, and there was still a feeling of
attachment, or at least of regret, cherished towards him among the
people of his patrimony.
Dermid proceeded at once to seek the help he so sorely needed, upon the
marches of Chester, in the city of Bristol, and at the court of the
Prince of North Wales. At Bristol he caused King Henry's letter to be
publicly read, and each reading was accompanied by ample promises of
land and recompense to those disposed to join in the expedition—but all
in vain. From Bristol he proceeded to make the usual pilgrimage to the
shrine of St. David, the Apostle of Wales, and then he visited the
Court of Griffith ap Rhys, Prince of North Wales, whose family ties
formed a true Welsh triad among the Normans, the Irish, and the Welsh.
He was the nephew of the celebrated Nest or Nesta, the Helen of the
Welsh, whose blood flowed in the veins of almost all the first Norman
adventurers in Ireland, and whose story is too intimately interwoven
with the origin of many of the highest names of the Norman-Irish to be
left untold.
She was, in her day, the loveliest woman of Cambria, and perhaps of
Britain, but the fabled mantle of Tregau, which, according to her own
mythology, will fit none but the chaste, had not rested on the white
shoulders of Nesta, the daughter of Rhys ap Tudor. Her girlish beauty
had attracted the notice of Henry I., to whom she bore Robert Fitz-Roy
and Henry Fitz-Henry, the former the famous Earl of Gloucester, and the
latter the father of two of Strongbow's most noted companions.
Afterwards, by consent of her royal paramour, she married Gerald,
constable of Pembroke, by whom she had Maurice Fitzgerald, the common
ancestor of the Kildare and Desmond Geraldines. While living with
Gerald at Pembroke, Owen, son of Cadogan, Prince of Powis, hearing of
her marvellous beauty at a banquet given by his father at the Castle of
Aberteivi, came by night to Pembroke, surprised the Castle, and carried
off Nesta and her children into Powis. Gerald, however, had escaped,
and by the aid of his father-in-law, Rhys, recovered his wife and
rebuilt his castle (A.D. 1105). The lady survived this husband, and
married a second time, Stephen, constable of Cardigan, by whom she had
Robert Fitzstephen, and probably other children. One of her daughters,
Angharad, married David de Barri, the father of Giraldus and Robert de
Barri; another, named after herself, married Bernard of Newmarch, and
became the father of the Fitz-Bernard, who accompanied Henry II. In the
second and third generations this fruitful Cambrian vine, grafted on
the Norman stock, had branched out into the great families of the
Carews, Gerards, Fitzwilliams, and Fitzroys, of England and Wales, and
the Geraldines, Graces, Fitz-Henries, and Fitz-Maurices, of Ireland.
These names will show how entirely the expeditions of 1169 and 1170
were joint-stock undertakings with most of the adventurers; Cambria,
not England, sent them forth; it was a family compact; they were
brothers in blood as well as in arms, those comely and unscrupulous
sons, nephews, and grand-sons of Nesta!
When the Leinster King reached the residence of Griffith ap Rhys, near
St. David's, he found that for some personal or political cause he held
in prison his near kinsman, Robert, son of Stephen, who had the
reputation of being a brave and capable knight. Dermid obtained the
release of Robert, on condition of his embarking in the Irish
enterprise, and he found in him an active recruiting agent, alike among
Welsh, Flemings, and Normans. Through him Maurice Fitzgerald, the de
Barris, and Fitz-Henrys, and their dependents, were soon enlisted in
the adventure. The son of Griffith ap Rhys, who may be mentioned along
with these knights, his kinsmen, and whom the Irish annalists consider
the most important person of the first expedition—their pillar of
battle—also resolved to accompany them, with such forces as he could
enlist.
But a still more important ally waited to treat with Dermid, on his
return to Bristol. This was Richard de Clare, called variously from his
castles or his county, Earl of Strigul and Chepstow, or Earl of
Pembroke. From the strength of his arms he was nicknamed Strongbow, and
in our Annals he is usually called Earl Richard, by which title we
prefer hereafter to distinguish him. His father, Gilbert de Clare, was
descended from Richard of Normandy, and stood no farther removed in
degree from that Duke than the reigning Prince. For nearly forty years
under Henry I. and during the stormy reign of King Stephen, he had been
Governor of Pembroke, and like all the great Barons played his game
chiefly to his own advantage. His castle at Chepstow was one of the
strongest in the west, and the power he bequeathed to his able and
ambitious son excited the apprehensions of the astute and suspicious
Henry II. Fourteen years of this King's reign had passed away, and Earl
Richard had received no great employments, no new grants of land, no
personal favours from his Sovereign. He was now a widower, past middle
age, condemned to a life of inaction such as no true Norman could long
endure. Arrived at Bristol, he read the letter of Henry, and heard from
Dermid the story of his expulsion and the grounds on which he vested
his hopes of restoration. A consultation ensued, at which it is
probable the sons of Nesta assisted, as it was there agreed that the
town of Wexford, with two cantreds of land adjoining it, should be
given to them. The pay of the archers and men-at-arms, and the duration
of their service, were also determined. Large grants of land were
guaranteed to all adventurers of knightly rank, and Earl Richard was to
marry the King's daughter and succeed him in the sovereignty of
Leinster.
Having by such lavish promises enlisted this powerful Earl and those
adventurous knights, Dermid resolved to pass over in person with such
followers as were already equipped, in order to rally the remnant of
his adherents. The Irish Annals enter this return under the year 1167,
within twelvemonths or thereabouts from the time of his banishment; by
their account he came back, accompanied by a fleet of strangers whom
they called Flemings, and who were probably hired soldiers of that
race, then easily to be met with in Wales. The Welsh Prince already
mentioned seems to have accompanied him personally, as he fell by his
side in a skirmish the following year. Whatever this force may have
amounted to, they landed at Glascarrig point, and wintered—probably
spent the Christmas—at Ferns. The more generally received account of
Dermid's landing alone, and disguised, and secretly preparing his
plans, under shelter of the Austin Friary at Ferns, must be rejected,
if we are still to follow those trite but trustworthy guides, whom we
have so many reasons to confide in. The details differ in many very
important particulars from those usually received, as we shall
endeavour to make clear in a few words.
Not only do they bring Dermid over with a fleet of Flemings, of whom
the natives made "small account," but dating that event before the
expiration of the year 1167, at least sixteen months must have elapsed
between the return of the outlaw and the arrival of the Normans. By
allowing two years instead of one for the duration of his banishment,
the apparent difficulty as to time would be obviated, for his return
and Fitzstephen's arrival would follow upon each other in the spring
and winter of the same year. The difficulty, however, is more apparent
than real. A year sufficed for the journey to Aquitaine and the Welsh
negotiations. Another year seems to have been devoted with equal art
and success to resuscitating a native Leinster party favourable to his
restoration. For it is evident from our Annals that when Dermid showed
himself to the people after his return, it was simply to claim his
patrimony—Hy-Kinsellagh—and not to dispute the Kingdom of Leinster with
the actual ruler, _Murrogh na Gael_. By this pretended moderation and
humility, he disarmed hostility and lulled suspicion asleep. Roderick
and O'Ruarc did indeed muster a host against him, and some of their
cavalry and Kernes skirmished with the troops in his service at
Kellistown, in Carlow, when six were killed on one side and twenty-five
on the other, including the Welsh Prince already mentioned; afterwards
Dermid emerged from his fastnesses, and entering the camp of O'Conor,
gave him seven hostages for the ten cantreds of his patrimony; and to
O'Ruarc he gave "one hundred ounces of gold for his _eineach_"—that is,
as damages for his criminal conversation with Devorgoil. During the
remainder of the year 1168, Dermid was left to enjoy unmolested the
moderate territory which he claimed, while King Roderick was engaged in
enforcing his claims on the North and South, founding lectorships at
Armagh, and partitioning Meath between his inseparable colleague,
O'Ruarc, and himself. He celebrated, in the midst of an immense
multitude, the ancient national games at Tailtin, he held an assembly
at Tara, and distributed magnificent gifts to his suffragans. Roderick
might have spent the festival of Christmas, 1168, or of Easter, 1169,
in the full assurance that his power was firmly established, and that a
long succession of peaceful days were about to dawn upon Erin. But he
was destined to be soon and sadly undeceived.
In the month of May, a little fleet of Welsh vessels, filled with armed
men, approached the Irish shore, and Robert Fitzstephen ran into a
creek of the bay of Bannow, called by the adventurers, from the names
of two of their ships, Bag-and-Bun. Fitzstephen had with him thirty
knights, sixty esquires, and three hundred footmen. The next day he was
joined by Maurice de Prendergast, a Welsh gentleman, with ten knights
and sixty archers. After landing they reconnoitred cautiously, but saw
neither ally nor enemy—the immediate coast seemed entirely deserted.
Their messenger despatched to Dermid, then probably at Ferns, in the
northern extremity of the county, must have been absent several anxious
days, when, much to their relief, he returned with Donald, the son of
Dermid, at the head of 500 horsemen. Uniting their troops, Donald and
Fitzstephen set out for Wexford, about a day's march distant, and the
principal town in that angle of the island which points towards Wales.
The tradition of the neighbourhood says they were assailed upon the way
by a party of the native population, who were defeated and dispersed.
Within ten days or a fortnight of their landing, they were drawn up
within sight of the walls of Wexford, where they were joined by Dermid,
who obviously did not come unattended to such a meeting. What
additional force he may have brought up is nowhere indicated; that he
was not without followers or mercenaries, we know from the mention of
the Flemings in his service, and the action of Kellistown in the
previous year. The force that had marched from Bannow consisted, as we
have seen, of 500 Irish horse under his son Donald, surnamed
_Kavanagh_; 30 knights, 60 esquires, and 300 men-at-arms under
Fitzstephen; 10 knights and 60 archers under Prendergast; in all,
nobles or servitors, not exceeding 1,000 men. The town, a place of
considerable strength, could muster 2,000 men capable of bearing arms,
nor is it discreditable to its Dano-Irish artizans and seamen that they
could boast no captain equal to Fitzstephen or Donald Kavanagh. What a
town multitude could do they did. They burned down an exposed suburb,
closed their gates, and manned their walls. The first assault was
repulsed with some loss on the part of the assailants, and the night
past in expectation of a similar conflict on the morrow. In the early
morning the townsmen could discern that the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass
was being offered in the camp of their besiegers as a preparative for
the dangers of the day. Within the walls, however, the clergy exercised
all their influence to spare the effusion of blood, and to bring about
an accommodation. Two Bishops who were in the town especially advised a
surrender on honourable terms, and their advice was taken. Four of the
principal citizens were deputed to Dermid, and Wexford was yielded on
condition of its rights and privileges, hitherto existing, being
respected. The cantreds immediately adjoining the town on the north and
east were conferred on Fitzstephen according to the treaty made at
Bristol, and he at once commenced the erection of a fortress on the
rock of Carrig, at the narrowest pass on the river Slaney. Strongbow's
uncle, Herve, was endowed with two other cantreds, to the south of the
town, now known as the baronies of Forth and Bargey, where the
descendants of the Welsh and Flemish settlers then planted are still to
be found in the industrious and sturdy population, known as Flemings,
Furlongs, Waddings, Prendergasts, Barrys, and Walshes. Side by side
with them now dwell in peace the Kavanaghs, Murphys, Conors, and
Breens, whose ancestors so long and so fiercely disputed the intrusion
of these strangers amongst them.
With some increase of force derived from the defenders of Wexford,
Dermid, at the head of 3000 men, including all the Normans, marched
into the adjoining territory of Ossory, to chastise its chief, Donogh
Fitzpatrick, one of his old enemies. This campaign appears to have
consumed the greater part of the summer of the year, and ended with the
submission of Ossory, after a brave but unskilful resistance. The
tidings of what was done at Wexford and in Ossory had, however, roused
the apprehension of the monarch Roderick, who appointed a day for a
national muster "of the Irish" at the Hill of Tara. Thither repaired
accordingly the monarch himself, the lords of Meath, Oriel, Ulidia,
Breffni, and the chiefs of the farther north. With this host they
proceeded to Dublin, which they found as yet in no immediate danger of
attack; and whether on this pretext or some other, the Ulster chiefs
returned to their homes, leaving Roderick to pursue, with the aid of
Meath and Breffni only, the footsteps of McMurrogh. The latter had
fallen back upon Ferns, and had, under the skilful directions of
Fitzstephen, strengthened the naturally difficult approaches to that
ancient capital, by digging artificial pits, by felling trees, and
other devices of Norman strategy. The season, too, must have been
drawing nearly to a close, and the same amiable desire to prevent the
shedding of Christian blood, which characterized all the clergy of this
age, again subserved the unworthy purposes of the traitor and invader.
Roderick, after a vain endeavour to detach Fitzstephen from Dermid and
to induce him to quit the country, agreed to a treaty with the Leinster
King, by which the latter acknowledged his supremacy as monarch, under
the ancient conditions, for the fulfilment of which he surrendered to
him his son Conor as hostage. By a secret and separate agreement Dermid
bound himself to admit no more of the Normans into his service—an
engagement which he kept as he did all others, whether of a public or a
private nature. After the usual exchange of stipends and tributes,
Roderick returned to his home in the west; and thus, with the treaty of
Ferns, ended the comparatively unimportant but significant campaign of
the year 1169.