The Norsemen or Northmen were the people of Norway, Sweden and
Denmark. They always call themselves Northmen. This implies that they
regarded themselves as being the northern branch of a larger
people--and that larger people can only have been the Germans.
Northmen means North Germans. On their first appearance on the Irish
and Scottish coasts, the Irish called them simply "the Heathens"--Genti:
all the other peoples with whom the Irish came in contact at that time
being Christians. Afterwards they were called in Irish _Lochlannaigh_.
The origin of this name is unknown. Professor Marstrander thinks it must
mean the men of Rogaland, an old division of Scandinavia.
The Norse invasions are seen to go through several phases. In the
first phase, the islands and coasts are fiercely devastated, and the
Northmen make away again with their booty and captives, or hold the
captives to ransom. In the second phase, they occupy islands and
outlying forelands. They are thus able to gather strong bands and plan
out incursions into the interior. These two phases cover about half a
century, from 790 to 840. Gradually the leaders are learning the
geography of Ireland, especially of its harbours and navigable
rivers.
The rapid development of these raiding enterprises has been explained
as caused by political changes in Norway. But these changes did not
take place until about eighty years after the Norse raids began. They
amounted to a strong centralisation under king Harald the Fairhaired
and a diminution of the power of the nobles; and they were perhaps
rather a consequence than a cause of the raiding movement. We have
seen how, some five centuries earlier, an almost similar outbreak of
raiding activity brought the Irish into touch with Roman Britain and
Gaul, and how the rewards of plunder enabled Irish kings to maintain a
permanent military organisation and to acquire thereby much greater
power, leading to a depression of the old nobility. I think it likely
that the chief cause of the Norse movement of invasion was the
development of a particularly suitable style of ship-building; the
building of long undecked ships of light draft and very strong
construction, very seaworthy; in which, during a sea-fight, every man
could take a hand.
The third phase was the occupation of inland waters. The invaders ran
their ships, which were propelled by oars as well as by sails, up the
navigable rivers, if necessary dragging them overland where the
navigable parts were interrupted by shallow rapids, for example on the
Bann and the Shannon. Thus they could place a whole fleet on a lake
like Loch Neagh or Loch Ree. There they were safe from attack and were
in a position to choose the place on a large shoreline for their
incursions. It is to be borne in mind that, during the period of the
Norse wars in Ireland and for some centuries before and after it, the
Irish had no permanent military organisation. Their largest military
operations never extended beyond a few weeks. Their fighting men were
called out for the purpose from their ordinary peaceful occupations,
and could not lawfully be held to military service for more than a few
weeks in any year. Thus there was no effective means of fighting down
a hostile force encamped on its ships in a large inland water. It was
by a crafty lure, we are told, that Turgesius, commander of the Norse
fleet on the Shannon, was captured.
The fourth phase was the occupation of a fortified station on some
haven, so that the ships, drawn up on land, were secure from attack.
The earliest of these Norse stations in Ireland were at Dublin and at
Annagassan in Co. Louth. Annagassan, now a mere hamlet, was a port of
note in ancient times. Its sandy estuary suited the shipping of that
age. Irish folk-tales still describe the old way of bringing ships to
land in such places. The ships were of very light draft. Those made in
Ireland had the strong framework covered with hides not planks. They
were run ashore in a sandy rivermouth and dragged up on land beyond
the reach of the tide. What gave Annagassan importance was that at
this point the old great northern highway, the Slighe Midhluachra,
touched the coast. It is in describing the fortified stations of the
Norsemen at Dublin and Annagassan, in the annals under the year 841,
that we first find the Irish term _long-phort_. This word, about
seventy years afterwards, has come to mean an entrenched or stockaded
position for an army, a fortified camp; and its use in this sense
shews us what was the character of these first Norse stations on the
Irish mainland.
The occupation of these fortified stations enabled the invaders to
accumulate force for strong expeditions overland. Such expeditions
were soon undertaken with success.
Dublin was well chosen. The Liffey here was the boundary between two
of the greater kingdoms--Leinster and Bregia. The Norsemen of Dublin
were thus in a position to take advantage of the ancient hostility
between the Leinstermen and the Ui Néill who had wrested the plain of
Meath from Leinster and imposed a hated tribute on the Leinster kings.
So, as a rule, we find the Norse of Dublin and the kings of Leinster
in close alliance.
The Irish annals indicate an earlier date for the centralising policy
of the kings of Norway than Norwegian historians seem to accept. In
849, they tell us, eight years after the occupation of Dublin, the
king of Norway (Lochlainn) sent a fleet to establish his authority
over the Norse settlers in Ireland; and four years later, in 853, they
say that Olaf, whom they call son of the king of Lochlainn, assumed
kingship over the Norsemen in Ireland. He became joint king of Dublin
with Ivar.
Soon after this, in 856 and 857, the Gall-Ghaedhil or Norse-Irish,
make their appearance in various parts of the island--in Meath and
Ulster and Munster. These were the people of the generation following
the Norse occupation of the Scottish islands and the Isle of Man.
They spoke a broken Irish and no doubt also a broken Norse dialect.
In 851, a new variety of Norsemen arrives on the Irish coast. They are
called the Black Heathens, the Black Foreigners, the Black
Lochlannachs, in contradistinction to the Fair Heathens, Fair
Foreigners, or Fair Lochlannachs who had been here before them. The
Welsh chronicle, the Annales Cambriae, makes it fairly clear that
these Black Heathens were the Danes. They came in hostility to the
Norwegians, with whom they fought fierce battles; and we have already
seen that for a number of years the Danes held the chief power in the
Hebrides.
At this point of time, about the middle of the ninth century, the
Norsemen must have seemed to be about to become masters of all
northern Europe from the west of Ireland to the banks of the Volga.
England was crumbling under their attacks. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
tells how Norse armies marched up and down through the country without
resistance, then moved off to the Continent. They occupied Ghent in
Flanders for a year. They defeated the Franks in battle and supplied
themselves with horses from their captures, pushed up the Meuse into
France, encamped there for another year; went up the Scheldt to Condé
and sat there for a year; up the Somme to Amiens, and sat there for a
year. Then up the Seine, and took up their winter quarters beside
Paris. Then the "army went up through the bridge at Paris, and thence
up along the Seine as far as the Marne, and thence up the Marne to
Cheny, and then sat down, there and on the Yonne, two winters in the
two places." Then they crossed from the Seine to the borders of
Brittany, where the Bretons attacked and defeated them, driving them
into their ships, which apparently had been sent round by sea to
co-operate with them. Turning again eastward they were defeated next
year in Germany, but held together in France for two years more, when
they came down to Boulogne, and finding shipping for their whole
force, including horses, crossed over to England in two hundred and
fifty ships, Alfred being then king in England. Afterwards they
crossed England, passing up the Thames and then up the Severn. Alfred,
assisted by the Welsh, defeated them. They fell back on Essex,
mustered fresh forces there, once more crossed England and laid siege
to Chester, invaded Wales and were driven out of it. Some settled down
in the conquered lands of East Anglia and Northumbria, the rest made a
fresh expedition into France. Though Alfred was a great and admirable
king, and justly held up to renown in English history, he could do no
more than hold a minor part of England against these invaders, and at
his death in 901 they were undisputed masters of about two thirds of
that country.
Several causes operated in checking the growth of Norse power. One was
the rivalry between the Danes and the Norwegians. Another was the
consolidation of Scotland under Cinaeth Mac Ailpin. A third cause
undoubtedly was the tenacious resistance of the "Celts." Had the
Norsemen been as successful in Scotland and Ireland, Wales and
Brittany, as they were in England and Normandy, Harald the Fair might
have been the head of a new empire. The annals give a long list of
pitched battles in Ireland, in some of which the invaders were
victorious but for the most part they were defeated. Mr. Orpen
ascribes their failure to the fact that the Irish were not politically
centralised and were therefore harder to break down; yet he goes on to
censure this defect in the Irish polity. Are we to conclude that it
was a misfortune for Ireland and other countries that Ireland was not
subjugated by the Scandinavian Heathens?
As a matter of fact, it was under the personal command of the
high-king, Aedh Finnliath, that the Irish resistance took a definitely
successful turn. In 866, this king captured all the strongholds of the
Norsemen in the northern half of Ireland; and from this time on, they
made no settlements to the north of Dublin and Limerick. Olaf and
Ivar, the two kings of Dublin, turned their arms against Britain. In
870, as already related, after a siege of four months, they captured
the last stronghold of the northern Britons at Dumbarton. In recording
the death of Ivar in 873, the Irish annals entitled him "king of the
Norsemen of Ireland and Britain."
Ireland, however, was not at peace from the invaders. Under the same
year, 873, we find a characteristic entry in the annals. I have
already said that those who resort to these chronicles for a record
of the normal affairs of Ireland mistake the character of the record
and expose themselves to deception. One of the institutions connected
with the Irish monarchy was the "Fair" or Assembly of Taillte near
Navan. This was considered to be the principal assembly in Ireland,
and to preside over it was a function of the king of Ireland. Yet
during more than four centuries before this year 873, the Assembly is
only five times mentioned, and in each instance it is not the normal
fact but an abnormal incident that is recorded. In the year 717, the
Assembly was disturbed by Foghartach, king of Bregia. Foghartach was a
claimant to the high-kingship. In 714, he was deposed and exiled to
Britain. In 716, he is recorded as reigning again. His disturbance of
the Assembly of Taillte in the following year marks therefore an
attempt on his part to assert his position as monarch. The effective
high-king at the time was Fergal, king of Ailech. In 733, Cathal, king
of Munster, made a similar attempt to preside, and was prevented by
the king of Meath. After this event, there is no mention of the
Assembly until 811. In that year, the Ui Néill having done something
in violation of the sanctuary rights of the monastery of Tallaght near
Dublin, the monastic authorities placed the Assembly under an
interdict. The high-king nevertheless proceeded to hold it. He was
Aedh Oirdnidhe, king of Ailech; and so we see that whether the monarch
had his domestic realm in Meath or in the far North, it was equally
his custom to preside over this Assembly. He failed to hold the
Assembly. In face of the ban "neither horse nor chariot came
thither." And the violated sanctuary of Tallaght received reparation
after this in the form of many gifts.
In 827, the Assembly was broken up "against the Gailings" by the
high-king Conchobor. The explanation of this event is possibly that
the high-king failed to hold the Assembly, being preoccupied with the
hostile activities of the Norsemen who in that year were plundering,
burning and wasting the Bregian seaboard, not far from Taillte; also
with the equally troublesome activities of Feidlimid, king of Cashel,
about whom there is more to be said. The Gailings, whose territory lay
close by, were loth to be deprived of the customary celebration, and
attempted to hold the Assembly on their own account, but were forcibly
prevented by the high-king.
In 831, the annals record a disturbance in the courts of the Assembly,
owing to some dispute regarding reliquaries of St. Patrick and St.
MacCuilinn of Lusk, the reliquaries no doubt being brought there for
the purpose of administering oaths in litigation.
Let it not be thought that the silence of the annals in other years is
compatible with the absence of the unrecorded event. The entry of the
year 873 puts this possibility out of question. It says: "The Assembly
of Taillte is not held, in the absence of just and worthy cause, a
thing which we have not heard to have befallen from ancient times."
Nevertheless, that there was sufficient cause in the disturbed
condition of the country owing to the Norse wars is made evident, for
the chronicler has to record the abandonment of the Assembly three
years later, in 876, when again he denies a just and worthy cause; and
again in the second year after that, in 878, without just and worthy
cause. When we come to 888, we are told only that the Assembly fell
through. This is repeated in 889, and then, when the failure to hold
the Assembly becomes annual and, so to speak, normal, the annalist
ceases to record it. The next we hear of this institution is in 916,
and once more it is the unwonted thing that is chronicled. In that
year, the Assembly of Taillte was restored by the high-king, Niall
Glúndubh. Hence it would appear that the half-century preceding 916
was the period during which the disturbance of normal conditions in
Ireland reached its maximum; and this is also the period of maximum
activity for the Norsemen in neighbouring countries.
Aedh Finnliath died in the monastery of Dromiskin in 879. Dromiskin is
in Co. Louth, near the sea-coast, and the fact that it was there the
high-king "fell asleep," _i.e._ died a peaceful death in religious
retirement, testifies to his success in checking the menace of the
Norsemen in northern Ireland. He was succeeded in the monarchy,
according to the custom of alternation, by Flann Sinna, king of Meath.
In the meantime, the power of the kings of Cashel continued to
increase. It is a remarkable thing that at least four kings of Cashel
during this period were ecclesiastics. These were Ólchobor, who died
in 796, a scribe and a bishop; Feidlimid, who reigned from 820 to 847,
described in his obit as "scribe and anchorite," but in an earlier
annal he is mentioned as carrying his crozier to battle; Cormac, the
learned bishop, who fell in battle in 908; and Flaithbertach, the
chief cause of Cormac's tragedy, who was abbot of Inis Cathaigh,
afterwards became king of Cashel, abdicated or was deposed, and died
in 944. The career of Feidlimid reads like that of a Heathen king of
Norsemen. There are some churchmen who stand upon the letter of the
law, and consider themselves thereby entitled to do things that are
hard to reconcile with the spirit. Feidlimid began his reign by
proclaiming the Law of Patrick over Munster, _i.e._ by enforcing there
the primatial claims of Armagh. In the same year he burned the
monastery of Gallen, a foundation of the Britons in the west of Meath,
destroying all its dwelling places and its oratory. Three years later,
in 826, he led the army of Munster into the same district and wasted
it. In 827 the king of Ireland, Conchobor, met him in convention at
Birr; this indicating that the two kings were on terms of equality. In
830, he was again burning and wasting over his borders in Meath and
Connacht. In 831, he appeared at the head of an army of Munster and
Leinster in Bregia. In 833, he attacked Clonmacnois, slaughtered its
monks and burned its termon-lands up to the church gates; then handled
the monastery of Durrow in the same fashion. In 836, he attacked
Kildare, then a purely ecclesiastical and monastic settlement, and
finding the abbot and other dignitaries of Armagh there on
visitation, he carried them off as captives, no doubt holding them to
ransom. Next year he again invaded Connacht, and in 838 another king
of Ireland met him in convention at Cloncurry, and doubtless came to
terms with him; in 840 he attacked Meath, Bregia, and Connacht, and
exacted the hostages of Connacht; in 841, the year in which the
Norsemen established themselves at Dublin, Feidlimid with his army
encamped on Tara. This, along with his taking the hostages of
Connacht, shows that his aim was to secure the high-kingship. In the
same year he marched to Carman, near Mullaghmast; Carman was the
assembly-place of the kings of Leinster, and Feidlimid no doubt wished
to preside and so assert his sovereignty over Leinster. This time,
however, he overstretched his power. The reigning high-king, Niall,
came in force against him and drove him out, and a poem on this event
says that in his flight the vigil-keeping Feidlimid left his crozier
behind. After this check, he is not further heard of until his death
in 847. In his obit he is called by the northern chronicler "optimus
Scottorum," the best man of the Irish. His reign exhibits the
high-water mark of the power of the Eoghanacht kings of Munster.
After 500 years of undisputed sovereignty in Munster, the Eoghanacht
dynasty of Cashel reached a turning point in the battle of Belach
Mugna in 908. In that year, urged on by Flaithbertach, abbot of Inis
Cathaigh, an eligible prince and afterwards king of Cashel, king
Cormac, the bishop, invaded Leinster. The high-kings of the line of
Niall regarded the Leinster kings as their own choice vassals and
jealously reserved to themselves the privilege of exacting homage and
tribute from Leinster. We have seen how a high-king allowed a king of
Cashel to plunder and harry in Connacht and Meath, and interfered with
effect only when the Assembly of Carman and the sovereignty of
Leinster were involved. So it befel with Cormac. Advancing through
Ossory he compelled the king of Ossory to join forces with him, and
crossing the Barrow they were confronted by the Leinster king and his
army. They encamped for the night, prepared to do battle on the
morrow. Flann Sinna, the high-king, must have been well warned, for
when the morning came, the Munster army found not only the Leinstermen
against them in front, but the high-king and the king of Connacht
coming upon their left flank. The king of Ossory attempted to retreat
but was cut off and killed. The battle became a rout. King Cormac was
unhorsed and beheaded. Two Munster abbots fell in the slaughter. The
abbot of Inis Cathaigh escaped.
A graphic account of this expedition, with all the appearance of
authentic detail, is found in a book of annals apparently compiled at
Durrow in Ossory. The memory of King Cormac was held afterwards in
great veneration. To him is ascribed the compilation of the Irish
glossary that bears his name, also of the Psalter of Cashel and the
Book of Rights. The Psalter of Cashel survives only in excerpts and
quotations, and to judge from these it was a collection of historical
and genealogical matter. Of the Book of Rights, Professor Ridgeway
once said to me that it was the most remarkable state document
produced by any European country outside of the Byzantine empire in
that age. We must consider its character and content on a later
occasion.
This tragic battle, fought in the year 908, ended the long-established
prestige of the Cashel dynasty. Six years afterwards, in 914, the
Norsemen took possession of Waterford without opposition; and still
six years later, in 920, they took possession of Limerick. Until these
years, they had gained no foothold on the land of Munster. Another
result of the weakening of the Eoghanacht power was the rapid rise of
the Dalcassian kings.
Closely connected with the events of this time, a thousand years ago,
was the remarkable story of Queen Gormlaith. She was daughter of the
king of Ireland, Flann Sinna. Apparently she had been betrothed to
Cormac, king of Cashel. He having become an ecclesiastic, Gormlaith
was given in marriage to Cearbhall, king of Leinster, the same
Cearbhall, victor over Cormac at Belach Mugna, to whose sword an ode
written by a Leinster poet is preserved in the Book of Leinster. The
Ossory collection of annals, which differs from the ordinary
chronicles in expanding into narrative, tells that Cearbhall, wounded
in the battle, lay long a-healing, and that once, as the queen sat on
the couch at his feet, he boasted rudely over the death of Cormac.
Gormlaith reproached him for his disrespect to the memory of so good a
king. Her husband, remembering that she had been promised wife to
Cormac, became enraged, and with his foot cast the queen from the
couch to the floor. Thus affronted in the presence of others,
Gormlaith left her husband and went back to her father. Flann refused
to receive her, not desiring a quarrel with the king of Leinster.
Gormlaith then sought protection from Niall Glúndubh, king of Ailech.
Cearbhall died of his wounds the year after the battle, and Niall
married Gormlaith. On the death of Flann in 916, Niall became king of
Ireland.
I have shown that the annals are a record of abnormal rather than of
normal matters. Another character of the annals is that they are in
the main an aristocratic and personal record, having chief regard to
great personages in Church and State and to the personal aspect of
events as they concerned these magnates. A good exemplification of
this feature of the annals is shown in the record of king Flann's
death. It says: "Flann, son of Mael Sechnaill, king of Tara, who
reigned thirty-six years, six months, and five days, died in the
sixty-eighth year of his age, on Saturday, the 25th of May, about the
hour of 1 _p.m._" So Gormlaith, daughter of a king of Ireland, chosen
to be queen of Munster, became queen of Leinster, then queen of
Ailech, and lastly queen of Ireland. There is an old poem which
represents her standing by the grave of her husband Niall and
commanding a monk not to set his foot upon that clay. She died in
religious retirement in 948, forty years after the battle of Belach
Mugna.
In the first year of his reign as king of Ireland, 916, Niall
Glúndubh, as already told, restored the Assembly of Taillte. In the
following year, 917, he marched against the Norsemen of Waterford.
They came out to meet him. An indecisive action was fought. Then both
armies fortified themselves in the field, anticipating the modern
manner of warfare, and remained thus face to face for three weeks.
Niall meanwhile sent to the king of Leinster requesting him to attack
the Norsemen from that side. The Norsemen, however, did not wait for
this attack. Keeping enough force to hold their position against
Niall, they sent their main body to meet the Leinstermen, whom they
completely defeated. The place of this encounter is named Cenn Fuait,
and was absurdly identified by O'Donovan with Confey in Co. Kildare,
apparently on the principle that there is an M in Macedon and also in
Monmouth. The battle must have taken place close to Waterford Harbour
on the Leinster side. Other editors of the annals content themselves
with repeating O'Donovan's conjecture as authentic. After this
failure, Niall withdrew, and the Norsemen held Waterford from that
time until the Norman invasion.
Next year 918, Niall opened war on the Norsemen of Dublin. That is
just 1000 years ago. The following year, 919, he led an army against
Dublin. The Norsemen met him on the north bank of the Liffey at
Islandbridge. Niall was defeated and mortally wounded. This battle is
sometimes called the battle of Dublin, sometimes the battle of
Cell-mo-Shámhóg, from a church in the vicinity. The latter name
furnished O'Donovan with the occasion for another conjectural
identification, which other editors have blindly followed. He made
Cell-mo-Shámhóg to be the same as Kilmashogue, six or seven miles
from Dublin on the south side and among the hills. A little reflection
would have assured these editors that, just as a Leinster army coming
to the relief of an army near Waterford was not likely to encounter
the Norse of Waterford in the north of Leinster, so also an army from
northern Ireland was not likely to meet the Norsemen of Dublin in the
mountains to the south of Dublin. For the full identification of the
battle site, the student may refer to the name Cell Mo Shámóc in
Father Hogan's Onomasticon.
From Niall Glúndubh the O'Neills of Tyrone derive their surname and
descent.
The Norsemen were now no longer the ferocious heathens of their
earlier record. Most of them had adopted Christianity. Intermarriages
between them and the Irish were quite frequent. Their towns soon
developed into trading communities, though it is clear enough from
Norse documents that a Norse trading ship went to sea well prepared to
make gains by less patient methods than buying and selling. Wexford
seems to have been pre-eminently a trading settlement, and the first
part taken by the Wexford Norsemen in Irish wars was apparently the
defence of their town against the Anglo-Normans. With their Irish
neighbours they lived in peace and security. In the tenth century the
Norse settlements in Ireland became part of the Irish body politic,
and if they went to war in Ireland, as often as not, it was in
alliance with one Irish king against another. There were still
incursions of the Norsemen of outlying parts, the Isle of Man,
Galloway, the Hebrides, etc., and in Ireland the struggle takes the
form of resistance to these invaders, under a number of leaders of
note. One of these leaders, Cellachán of Cashel, king of Munster, has
a saga all to himself, but I think the story contains more than
history. Some of its striking events, which we might expect to find
recorded in the chronicles, find no place in them. However that may
be, Cellachán's activity against the Norsemen is the last glory of the
Cashel dynasty, the flame that shoots up from the candlestick before
the candle goes out. Already the Dalcassian line was preparing to take
the place of the declining Eoghanacht power in Munster. In the year
944, the father of Brian Bóramha, Cennétig, king of Dál gCais, with
the title of king of Thomond or North Munster, gave battle to
Cellachán, but was defeated. Brian was born in 941, three years before
this battle. Cellachán died in 954.
In northern Ireland at this time the head of resistance to the
Norsemen was Muirchertach, son of the high-king Niall Glúndubh who
fell in the battle of Dublin. A list of his victories is given, a
century after his time, by the poet-historian Flann of Monasterboice.
Among them is mentioned an expedition by sea against the Norsemen of
the Hebrides--it is also mentioned in the genealogies but not in the
contemporary annals. The annals on the other hand record that in 939
Muirchertach was captured in Ailech and carried off by the Norsemen to
their ships but was immediately ransomed. The event shows that Ailech,
one of the great prehistoric stone fortresses, was still occupied in
the tenth century by the kings who took their title from it.
Especially interesting in Muirchertach's career are his relations with
the high king Donnchadh. In the ordinary course of the alternate
succession, Muirchertach, as king of Ailech, was the designated
successor in the high-kingship to Donnchadh, who was king of Meath. At
times he appears prepared to dispute the authority of Donnchadh, at
other times he is active in upholding it. His most remarkable action
is what is known as his Circuit of Ireland, in 941, briefly noticed in
the Annals but described at length in a poem by Cormacán Éces, who
accompanied the expedition. With a picked force, said to number 1000,
Muirchertach marched through all the principal kingdoms of Ireland,
and exacted hostages from each king. In Cashel, he took the king
himself, Cellachán, as a hostage. The Dalcassians alone stood off, and
after four days marching here and there in their territory,
Muirchertach passed on to Connacht without the hostages of Dál gCais.
The fact of this expedition illustrates what I have already said,
that, from the sixth to the thirteenth century, there was no military
organisation in Ireland. The hostages were brought to Ailech and there
hospitably entertained by the king and queen for some weeks, after
which Muirchertach, so to speak, regularised his position in the
matter by handing over all the hostages to the high king Donnchadh.
Two years later, in 943, Muirchertach fell in battle with the Norsemen
near Dundalk. The high king Donnchadh died in the following year, 944.
In the ordinary course of the alternate succession, he should have
been succeeded by the king of Ailech, but Muirchertach's death left
this kingship either disputed or divided, and the high-kingship was
assumed by Congalach, king of Bregia, who reigned for twelve years and
fell in battle with the Norsemen. This reign of Congalach is the only
breach in the alternate monarchy between the years 734 and 1002.
The kingdom of Dál gCais occupied the eastern half of the present
county of Clare. Its prominence dates from the time of Lorcán,
grandfather of Brian. Being a border state, it was able to form
relations of mutual advantage with the border states of Connacht, with
Aidne, Ui Maine, and the Delbna. In the wars between Mathgamain and
the Limerick Norsemen, the Delbna were his allies. The kings of Aidne
and Ui Maine, Connacht states, were allies of Brian, and gave their
lives, as he did, on the great day of Clontarf.
The killing of Mathgamain in 976 appears in later writings in a more
odious light than it could have appeared to contemporaries. We can
recognise that the ancient Eoghanacht dynasty of Cashel, which
Mathgamain overthrew, had already lost its prestige and was no longer
able to rule and protect Munster. It has always happened in the
world's history, and is probably happening to-day, that institutions
and established powers appear to contemporary people to be full of
vigour and likely to last, whereas to people of a later time it is
clear that they resembled the hollow tree awaiting the blast that was
to lay it low. To the Eoghanacht princes who compassed the death of
Mathgamain, he was the successful usurper who had broken into the
ancient right of their kindred and held it by the strong hand.
With regard to Brian, there are some noteworthy things to be said
which even enthusiastic eulogists have ignored. Brian had one or two
ideas which, in the Ireland of his time, were revolutionary. He had
the idea of a more centralised authority than any Irish king in
history before him had attempted to create. To this end, he designed
holding in permanent garrison a number of fortified places in various
parts of Munster. This design is clearly expressed in a poem added in
his time, and no doubt under his direction, to the Book of Rights; and
the annals show that he endeavoured to give effect to it.
Brian had also definite notions on the subject of what in our time is
called sovereign independence. This is one of many matters about which
we must be on our guard against thinking the present back into the
past--an obvious precaution yet one which many writers on Irish
history have neglected. It can be shown, and it would have interested
Professor Bury had he known it, that from the earliest Irish
chronicle, from the sixth century, down to the eleventh or twelfth
century, the dominant idea in Ireland with regard to international
relations was this--that as in Ireland there were many little States
and over them all, in primacy rather than in operative authority,
there was a chief king, the monarch of Ireland, so in the world there
were many kingdoms and over all these a chief king whom Irish writers
called the king of the world. This idea was adopted from Latin
historians, especially from St. Jerome and Orosius. In our earliest
histories, the emperor reigning at Constantinople was regarded as king
of the world. A metrical list of the kings of the world from Noah's
Flood down to the eighth century was written by the poet-historian
Flann of Monasterboice, who died in 1056. The prevalence of this idea
probably facilitated Henry of Anjou in obtaining the submission of the
Irish princes. The annals, in relating Henry's arrival in Ireland in
1171 and his departure in 1172, say nothing about the papal grant, but
describe Henry as "the son of the Empress." The same idea lingered in
western Europe down to the time of the emperor Charles V, and was the
cause of no small anxiety to the mind of Henry VIII, with all his
bluffness. Nevertheless, it was very much shaken and confused by the
creation of the Western Empire under Charlemagne. That made two kings
of the world. If two why not more?
About the year 1000, under Brian, that portion of the Book of Rights
which concerns Munster was rewritten, and we have now the new version
side by side with the old one. The new poem on the rights of the king
of Cashel asserts that Cashel is subject to no king in Ireland but its
own. But what about the king of the world? On that point the old idea
still holds. This is what the poem says:
Cashel overheadeth every head
Except Patrick and the King of the Stars,
The high-king of the world and the Son of God
To these alone is due its homage.
But a few years later when Brian was king, not only of Cashel but of
all Ireland, his view about the high-king of the world, the
Emperor--eastern or western--had undergone a change. He recognised the
spiritual primacy of Armagh, and when he visited Armagh, which now
holds his dust, he offered a tribute of twenty ounces of gold. The
Book of Armagh was displayed to him, and in his presence his official
historian wrote in Latin these words, which are still upon the page:
"I Mael Suthain write this in the presence of Brian, Emperor of the
Irish."
This title, "emperor of the Irish," is not a mere high-sounding
epithet. It means that, as Basil was then supreme temporal ruler in
the East and Henry of Bavaria in the West, so was Brian in this
island.
Another trait in Brian's policy was his avoidance of battle when, by
delay or otherwise, he could hope to establish his authority. In 1001,
when Brian's aim at supremacy was clear to the high king Mael
Sechlainn, the latter prepared to resist with the effective
co-operation of the king of Connacht, and to this end built a new
causeway of stone across the Shannon at Athlone. Brian's first move
the following year was to occupy Athlone and prevent co-operation; and
it was at Athlone that he received the submission of both kings. Year
after year he led his army into the North to obtain the submission of
the northern states; and when he was opposed in force he retired
without battle, until at length it became evident that he had the
power to enforce submission and the northern hostages were yielded to
him in peace.
Some writers have been at pains to argue that the popular view of the
battle of Clontarf as a national victory over foreigners is a
delusion; and would have it that this battle was either a mere
incident in the domestic wars of Ireland or was rather a struggle
between the forces of Christianity and Heathendom. It is enough to say
that the Norse sagas regard the battle as the Irish popular view
regards it--a contest between Irishmen and Norsemen about the
sovereignty of Ireland. The kingdom of Ireland was the prize which
king Sigtrygg of Dublin offered to Earl Sigurd of the Orkneys. It was
to win Ireland that the Norsemen came from distant Iceland and from
Normandy; and the Norse poet who tells of the event says, "Brian fell
but saved his kingdom." "This Brian," too, says the Norse account,
"was the best of kings."
If the battle of Clontarf ended the prospect of a Norse conquest, it
brought no advantage to the internal peace of Ireland. The effect of
Brian's assumption of the monarchy is visible. The year after the
battle, Flaithbertach Ua Néill, king of Ailech, came southward with
his hosting, plainly with the aim of restoring the alternate
succession, under which he would become next king of Ireland after
Mael Sechnaill. Mael Sechnaill resumed the high-kingship and held it
until his death in 1022. The king of Ailech seems then to have made no
attempt to assert his claim to the high-kingship; and for half a
century afterwards no high-king is recognised. Towards the end of the
century, the monarchy is restored, going now always to the strong
hand--two O'Briens from Thomond, two O'Conors from Connacht, and two
O'Lochlainns from Tyrone; an irregular hegemony, without even the
semblance of an institution.
The Icelandic saga of Burnt Njal shows us in the most vivid possible
way how great a shock Clontarf sent through the Norse world. The
battle, it tells us, was accompanied or followed by apparitions and
dreadful portents seen in the Hebrides, in the Orkneys, in the Faroe
islands, and in distant Iceland. In truth a victory for Earl Sigurd
might have been, as his defeat must have been, a decisive event in
European history. The Norse of Dublin were comparatively not much
affected. They maintained their alliance with Leinster. Three years
after the battle, these confederates are again seen on the offensive,
invading Bregia, and their joint forces sustain a heavy defeat from
Mael Sechnaill.
Though a close intercourse was maintained with Norsemen in other
countries, the colonies of Dublin, Wexford, Waterford and Limerick
became a domestic factor in the life of Ireland. Intermarriage with
the Irish was quite common. We find Norse names in Irish families and
Irish names in Norse families, and a considerable vocabulary of Norse
words became at home in the Irish language. A new element, the
commercial life of towns, was introduced by these colonies.