of Lambay, near the mouth of what is now Dublin harbour. Returning a few
years later, sixty of their ships, according to the Irish annalists,
entered the Boyne, and sixty more the Liffy. These last were under the
command of a leader who figures in the annals as Turgesius, whose
identity has never been made very clear, but who appears to be the same
person known to Norwegian historians as Thorkels or Thorgist.
Whatever his name he was undoubtedly a bad scourge to Ireland. Landing
in Ulster, he burned the cathedral of Armagh, drove out St. Patrick's
successors, slaughtered the monks, took possession of the whole east
coast, and marching into the centre of the island, established himself
in a strong position near Athlone.
Beyond all other Land Leapers, this Thorgist, or Turgesius, seems to
have hated the churches. Not content with burning them, and killing all
priests and monks he could find, his wife, we are told, took possession
of the High Altar at Clonmacnois, and used it as a throne from which to
give audience, or to utter prophecies and incantations. He also exacted
a tribute of "nose money," which if not paid entailed the forfeit of the
feature it was called after. At last three or four of the tribes united
by despair rose against him, and he was seized and slain; an event about
which several versions are given, but the most authentic seems to be
that he was taken by stratagem and drowned in Lough Owel, near
Mullingar, in or about the year 845.
He was not, unfortunately, the last of the Land Leapers! More and more
they came, sweeping in from the north, and all seem to have made direct
for the plunder of the monasteries, into which the piety of centuries
had gathered most of the valuables of the country. The famous round
towers, or "Clocthech" of Ireland, have been credited with a hundred
fantastic origins, but are now known not to date from earlier than about
the eighth or ninth century, are always found in connection with
churches or monasteries, and were unquestionably used as defences
against these northern invaders. At the first sight of their unholy
prows, rising like water snakes above the waves, all the defenceless
inmates and refugees, all the church plate and valuables, and all sickly
or aged brothers were hurried into these monastic keeps; the doors--set
at a height of from ten to twenty feet above the ground--securely
closed, the ladders drawn up, food supplies having been no doubt already
laid in, and a state of siege began.
It is a pity that the annalists, who tell us so many things we neither
care to hear nor much believe in, should have left us no record of any
assault of the Northmen against one of these redoubtable towers. Even at
the present day they would, without ammunition, be remarkably difficult
nuts to crack; indeed, it is hard to see how their assault could have
been successfully attempted, save by the slow process of starvation, or
possibly by fires kindled immediately below the entrance, and so by
degrees smoking out their inmates.
[Illustration: KELLS ROUND TOWER. _(From a drawing by George Petrie,
LL.D.)_]
If any one ever succeeded in getting into them, we may be sure the Land
Leapers did! Before long they appear to have gathered nearly the whole
spoil of the country into the towns, which they built and fortified for
themselves at intervals along the coast. Cork, Waterford, Limerick,
Wexford, and Dublin, all owe their origin in the first instance to the
Northmen; indeed it is a curious fact that Dublin can never be said,
save for very short periods to have belonged to the Irish at all. It was
first the capital of their northern invaders, and afterwards that, of
course, of the English Government.
Three whole centuries the Danish power lasted, and internecine war
raged, a war during which almost every trace of earlier civilizing
influences, all those milder habits and ways of thought, which
Christianity had brought in and fostered, perished well-nigh utterly.
The ferocity of the invaders communicated itself to the invaded, and the
whole history is one confused and continual chronicle of horrors and
barbarities.
An important distinction must be made at this point between the effects
of the Northern invasion in England and in Ireland. In the former the
invaders and natives became after a while more or less assimilated, and,
under Canute, an orderly government, composed of both nationalities,
was, we know, established. In Ireland this was never the case. The
reason, doubtless, is to be found in the far closer similarity of race
in the former case than the latter. In Ireland the "Danes," as they are
popularly called, were always strangers, heathen tyrants, hated and
despised oppressors, who retorted this scorn and hatred in the fullest
possible measure upon their antagonists. From the moment of their
appearance down to the last we hear of them--as long, in fact, as the
Danes of the seaport towns retained any traces of their northern
origin--so long they continued to be the deadly foes of the rest of
the island.
Even where the Northmen accepted Christianity, it does not appear to
have had any strikingly ameliorating effect Thus we read that Godfrid,
son of Sitric, embraced Christianity in 948, and in the very next year
we discover that he plundered and burnt all the churches in East Meath,
killing over a hundred people who had taken refuge in them, and carrying
off a quantity of captives. Land-leaping, too, continued in full force.
"The godless hosts of pagans swarming o'er the Northern Sea," continued
to arrive in fresh and fresh numbers from their inexhaustible
Scandinavian breeding grounds--from Norway, from Sweden, from Denmark,
even, it is said, from Iceland. The eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries
are, in fact, the great period all over Europe for the incursions of the
Northmen--high noon, so to speak, for those fierce and roving sons of
plunder,--"People," says an old historian quaintly, "desperate in
attempting the conquest of other Realmes, being very sure to finde
warmer dwellings anywhere than in their own homes."
VIII.
BRIAN OF THE TRIBUTE.
At last a time came for their oppression to be cut short in Ireland. Two
valiant defenders sprang almost simultaneously into note. One of these
was Malachy, or Melachlin, the Ard-Reagh and head of the O'Neills, the
same Malachy celebrated by Moore as having "worn the collar of gold
which he won from the proud invader." The other, Brian Boroimhe,
commonly known to English writers as Brian Boru, a chieftain of the
royal Dalcassian race of O'Brien, and the most important figure by far
in Irish native history, but one which, like all others, has got so
fogged and dimmed by prejudice and misstatement, that to many people his
name seems hardly to convey any sense of reality at all.
Poor Brian Boru! If he could have guessed that he would have come to be
regarded, even by some who ought to know better, as a sort of giant
Cormoran or Eat-'em-alive-oh! a being out of a fairy tale, whom nobody
is expected to take seriously; nay, as a symbol, as often as not, for
ridiculous and inflated pretension. No one in his own day doubted his
existence; no one thought of laughing at his name. Had they done so,
their laughter would have come to a remarkably summary conclusion!
Brian Boroimhe, Boruma, or Boru--his name is written in all three
ways--was not only a real man, but he was, what was more important, a
real king, and not a mere simulacrum or walking shadow of one, like most
of those who bore the name in Ireland. For once, for the only time as
far as its native history is concerned, there was some one at the helm
who knew how to rule, and who, moreover, did rule. His proceedings were
not, it must be owned, invariably regulated upon any very strict rule of
equity. He meant to be supreme, and to do so it was necessary to wrest
the power from the O'Neills upon the one hand, and from the Danes on the
other, and this he proceeded with the shortest possible delay to do.
He had a hard struggle at first. Munster had been overrun by the Danes
of Limerick, who had defeated his brother, Mahon, king of Munster, and
forced him to pay tribute. Brian himself, scorning to submit to the
tyrants, had taken to the mountains with a small band of followers.
Issuing from this retreat, he with some difficulty induced his brother
once more to confront the aggressors. An important battle was fought at
Sulcost, near Limerick, in the year 968, in which the Danes were
defeated, and fled back in confusion to their walls, the Munster men,
under Brian, following fast at their heels, and entering at the same
time. The Danish town was seized, the fighting men were put to the
sword, the remainder fled or were enslaved.
[Illustration: BASE OF TCAM CROSS.]
Mahon being some years afterwards slain, not by the Danes, but by
certain treacherous Molloys and O'Donovans, who had joined themselves
with him, Brian succeeded to the sovereignty of Munster, and shortly
afterwards seized upon the throne of Cashel, which, upon the alternate
system then prevailing, was at that time reigned over by one of the
Euganian house of Desmond. Having avenged his brother's murder upon the
O'Donovans, he next proceeded to overrun Leinster, rapidly subdued
Ossory, and began to stretch out his hands towards the sovereignty of
the island.
In the meantime the over-king, Malachy, had defeated the Danes at the
battle of Tara, and was consequently in high honour, stronger apparently
then any of his predecessors had been. In spite of this Brian by degrees
prevailed. With doubtful patriotism he left the Danes for a while
unpursued, attacked Meath, overran and wasted Connaught, and returning
suddenly burnt the royal stronghold of Tara. After a long and wearisome
struggle, Malachy yielded, and allowed Brian to become Ard-Reagh in his
place, retaining only his own ancestral dominions of Meath. He seems to
have been a placable, easy-going many "loving," say the annalists, "to
ride a horse that had never been handled or ridden," and caring more for
this than for the cares of the State.
After this, Brian made what may be called a royal progress through the
country, receiving the submission of the chiefs and inferior kings, and
forcing them to acknowledge his authority. In speaking of him as king of
Ireland, which in a sense he undoubtedly was, we must be careful of
letting our imaginations carry us into any exaggerated idea of what is
meant by that word. His name, "Brian of the Tribute," is our safest
guide, and enables us to understand what was the position of even the
greatest and most successful king under the Celtic system. It was the
exact opposite of the feudal one, and this difference proved the source
in years to come of an enormous amount of misconception, and of fierce
accusations of falsehood and treachery flung profusely from both sides.
The position of the over-king or Ard-Reagh was more nearly allied to
that of the early French suzerain or the German emperor. He could call
upon his vassal or tributary kings to aid him in war times or in any
sudden emergency, but, as regards their internal arrangements--the
government, misgovernment, or non-government of their several
sub-kingdoms--they were free to act as they pleased, and he was not
understood to have any formal jurisdiction.
For all that Brian was an unmistakable king, and proved himself to be
one. He defeated the Danes again and again, reducing even those
inveterate disturbers of the peace to a forced quiescence; entered
Dublin, and remained there some time, taking, say the annalists,
"hostages and treasure." By the year 1002 Ireland had a master, one
whose influence made itself felt over its whole surface. For twelve
years at least out of its distracted history the country knew the
blessings of peace. Broken by defeat the Danish dwellers of the seaport
towns began to turn their energies to the milder and more pacific
activities of trade. The ruined monasteries were getting rebuilt;
prosperity was beginning to glimmer faintly upon the island; the chiefs,
cowed into submission, abstained from raiding, or confined their raids
to discreeter limits. Fortresses were being built, roads made, and
bridges repaired in three at least of the provinces. Another twenty
years of Brian's rule and the whole future history of Ireland might have
been a different one.
[Illustration: Doorway of Killeshin Church, Co. Carlow. (_From a
Photograph_.)]
It was not to be however. The king was now old, and the work that he had
begun, and which, had he been followed by a successor like himself,
might have been accomplished, was destined to crumble like a half-built
house. The Danes began to stir again. A rebellion had sprung up in
Leinster, the coast-line of which was strong-holded at several points
with Danish towns. This rebellion they not only aided with their own
strength, but further appealed for assistance to their kinsmen in
Northumbria, Man, the Orkneys, and elsewhere, who responded by sending a
large force under Brodar, a Viking, and Sigurd Earl of Orkney to
their aid.
This force Brian gathered all his energies to oppose. With his own
Munster clansmen, aided by all the fighting men of Meath and Connaught,
with his five sons and with his old rival, King Malachy of Meath,
fighting under his banner, he marched down to the strand of Clontarf,
which stretches from the north of Dublin to the out-jutting promontory
of Howth, and there, upon Good Friday, 1014, he encountered his Leinster
rebels and the Viking host of invaders, ten thousand strong it is said,
and a great battle was fought, a battle which, beginning before the
dawn, lasted till the sun was beginning to sink.
To understand the real importance of this battle, we must first fully
realize to ourselves what a very old quarrel this was. For three long
weary centuries Ireland had been lying bound and broken under the heel
of her pagan oppressors, and only with great difficulty and partially
had escaped within the last fifteen or sixteen years. Every wrong,
outrage, and ignominy that could be inflicted by one people upon another
had been inflicted and would most assuredly be inflicted again were this
battle, now about to be fought, lost.
Nor upon the other side were the motives much less strong. The Danes of
Dublin under Sitric stood fiercely at bay. Although their town was still
their own, all the rest of the island had escaped from the grasp of
their race. Whatever Christianity they may occasionally have assumed was
all thrown to the winds upon this great occasion. The far-famed pagan
battle flag, the Raven Standard, was unfurled, and floated freely over
the host. The War-arrow had been industriously sent round to all the
neighbouring shores, peopled largely at that time with men of Norse
blood. As the fleet swept south it had gathered in contingents from
every island along the Scotch coast, upon which Viking settlements had
been established. Manx men, too, and men from the Scandinavian
settlements of Angelsea, Danes under Carle Canuteson, representatives,
in fact, of all the old fighting pagan blood were there, and all
gathered together to a battle at once of races and of creeds.
On the Irish side the command had been given by Brian to Morrogh, his
eldest son, who fifteen years before had aided his father in gaining a
great victory over these same Dublin Danes at a place called Glenmama,
not far from Dunlaven. The old king himself abstained from taking any
part in the battle. Perhaps because he wished his son--who already had
been appointed his successor--to have all the glory and so to fix
himself yet more deeply in the hearts of his future subjects; perhaps
because he felt that his strength might not have carried him through the
day; perhaps--the annalists say this is the reason--because the day
being Good Friday he preferred praying for his cause rather than
fighting for it. Whatever the reason it is certain that he remained in
his tent, which was pitched on this occasion not far from the edge of
the great woods which then covered all the rising ground to the
north-west of Dublin, beginning at the bank of the river Liffy.
The onset was not long delayed. The Vikings under Sigurd and Brodar
fought as only Vikings could fight. Like all battles of that period it
resolved itself chiefly into a succession of single combats, which raged
all over the field, extending, it is said, for over two miles along the
strand. The Danish women, and the men left to guard the town, crowded
the roofs, remaining all day to watch the fight. Sigurd of Orkney was
killed in single combat by Thorlogh, the son of Morrogh, and grandson of
Brian; Armud and several of the other Vikings fell by the hand of
Morrogh, but in the end the father and son were both slain, although the
latter survived long enough to witness the triumph of his own side.
Late in the afternoon the Northmen broke and fled; some to their ships,
some into the town, some into the open country beyond. Amongst the
latter Brodar, the Viking, made for the great woods, and in so doing
passed close to where the tent of the king had been fixed. The
attendants left to guard Brian had by this time one by one slipped away
to join the fight, and the old man was almost alone, and kneeling, it is
said, at the moment on a rug in the front of his tent. The sun was low,
but the slanting beams fell upon his bent head and long white beard. One
of Brodar's followers perceived him and pointed him out to his leader,
saying that it was the king. "King, that is no king, that is a monk, a
shaveling!" retorted the Viking. "It is not, it is Brian himself," was
the answer.
Then Brodar caught his axe and rushed upon Brian. Taken unawares the
king nevertheless rallied his strength which in his day had been greater
than that of any man of his time, and still only half risen from his
knees he smote the Viking a blow across the legs with his sword. The
other thereupon lifted his battle-axe, and smote the king upon his head,
cleaving it down to the chin, then fled to the woods, but was caught the
next day and hacked into pieces by some of the infuriated Irish.
So fell Brian in the very moment of victory, and when the combined
league of all his foes had fallen before him. When the news reached
Armagh, the bishop and his clergy came south as far as Swords, in Meath,
where they met the corpse of the king and carried it back to Armagh,
where he was buried, say the annalists, "in a new tomb" with much
weeping and lamentation.
[Illustration: CORMAC'S CHAPEL AND ROUND TOWER, ROCK OF CASHEL.]
IX.
FROM BRIAN TO STRONGBOW.
Whatever lamentations were uttered on this occasion were certainly not
uncalled for, for a greater disaster has rarely befallen any country or
people. Were proof wanted--which it hardly is--of that notorious
ill-luck which has dogged the history of Ireland from the very
beginning, it would be difficult to find a better one than the result of
this same famous battle of Clontarf. Here was a really great victory, a
victory the reverberation of which rang through the whole Scandinavian
world, rejoicing Malcolm of Scotland, who without himself striking a
blow, saw his enemies lying scotched at his feet, so scotched in fact,
that after the defeat of Clontarf they never again became a serious
peril. Yet as regards Ireland itself what was the result? The result was
that all those ligaments of order which were beginning slowly to wind
themselves round it, were violently snapped and scattered to the four
winds. As long as Brian's grasp was over it Ireland was a real kingdom,
with limitations it is true, but still with a recognized centre, and
steadily growing power of combined and concerted action. At his death
the whole body politic was once more broken up, and resolved itself into
its old anarchic elements again.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF CORMAC'S CHAPEL, CASHEL. (_From a Drawing by
Miss M. Stokes_.)]
It would have been better far for the country had Brian been defeated,
so that he, his son Morrogh, or any capable heir had survived, better
for it indeed had he never ruled at all if this was to be end. By his
successful usurpation the hereditary principle--always a weak one in
Ireland--was broken down. The one chance of a settled central government
was thus at an end. Every petty chief and princeling all over the island
felt himself capable of emulating the achievements of Brian. It was one
of those cases which success and only success justifies. Ireland was
pining, as it had always pined, as it continued ever afterwards to pine,
for a settled government; for a strong central rule of some sort. The
race of Hy-Nial had been titular kings for centuries, but they had never
held the sovereignty in anything but name. Pushing their claims aside,
and gathering all power into his own hands Brian had acted upon a small
stage the part of Charlemagne centuries earlier upon a large one. He had
succeeded, and in his success lay his justification. With his death,
however, the whole edifice which he had raised crumbled away, and
anarchy poured in after it like a torrent. A struggle set in at once for
the sovereignty, which ended by not one of Brian's sons but the deposed
King Malachy being set upon the throne. Like his greater rival he was
however by this time a very old man. His spirit had been broken, and
though the Danes had been too thoroughly beaten to stir, other elements
of disorder abounded. Risings broke out in two of the provinces at once,
and at his death the confusion became confounded. As a native
rhyme runs:
"After Malachy, son of Donald,
Each man ruled his own tribe,
But no man ruled Erin."
Henceforward throughout the rather more than a century and a half which
intervened between the battle of Clontarf and the Norman invasion,
Ireland remained a helpless waterlogged vessel, with an unruly crew,
without rudder or compass, above all, without a captain. The house of
O'Brien again pushed its way to the front, but none of Brian's
descendants who survived the day of Clontarf seem to have shown a trace
even of his capacity. A fierce feud broke out shortly after between
Donchad, his son, and Turlough, one of his grandsons, and each
successively caught at the helm, but neither succeeding in obtaining the
sovereignty of the entire island. After the last-named followed
Murhertach also of the Dalcassian house, at whose death the rule once
more swung round to the house of Hy-Nial and Donald O'Lochlin reigned
nominally until his death in 1121. Next the O'Connors, of Connaught,
took a turn at the sovereignty, and seized possession of Cashel which
since its capture by Brian Boroimhe had been the exclusive appanage of
the Dalcassians. Another O'Lochlin, of the house of O'Neill, then
appears prominently in the fray, and by 1156, seems to have succeeded in
seizing the over-lordship of the island, and so the tale goes on--a
wearisome one, unrelieved by even a transitory gleam of order or
prosperity. At last it becomes almost a relief when we reach the name of
Roderick O'Connor, and know that before his death fresh actors will have
entered upon the scene, and that the confused and baffling history of
Ireland will, at all events, have entered upon a perfectly new stage.
[Illustration: ROUND TOWER AT DEVENISH.]
X.
THE ANGLO-NORMAN INVASION.