and the life of wisdom, were following their steady course in camp and
school. We may call up a very interesting witness to the whole condition
of Ireland during this epoch: Alfred king of the Northumbrian Saxons,
who spent several years traveling through the land and studying in the
schools. On his departure, he wrote an ode of acknowledgment to the
country he was leaving, in the verse of the native Irish tongue. From
this ode we may quote a few picturesque lines, taking them from a
version which preserves something of the original rhythm:
"I traveled its fruitful provinces round,
And in every one of the five I found,
Alike in church and in palace hall,
Abundant apparel and food for all.
Gold and silver I found, and money,
Plenty of wheat and plenty of honey;
I found God's people rich in pity;
Found many a feast and many a city....
I found in each great church moreo'er,
Whether on island or on shore,
Piety, learning, fond affection,
Holy welcome and kind protection....
I found in Munster unfettered of any
Kings and queens and poets a many,
Poets well skilled in music and measure;
Prosperous doings, mirth and pleasure.
I found in Connacht the just, redundance
Of riches, milk in lavish abundance;
Hospitality, vigor, fame,
In Crimean's land of heroic name....
I found in Ulster, from hill to glen,
Hardy warriors, resolute men.
Beauty that bloomed when youth was gone,
And strength transmitted from sire to son....
I found in Leinster the smooth and sleek,
From Dublin to Slewmargy's peak,
Flourishing pastures, valor, health,
Song-loving worthies, commerce, wealth....
I found in Meath's fair principality
Virtue, vigor, and hospitality;
Candor, joyfulness, bravery, purity--
Ireland's bulwark and security.
I found strict morals in age and youth,
I found historians recording truth.
The things I sing of in verse unsmooth
I found them all; I have written sooth."
The modern form of the names used by the translator gives this version a
slightly misleading tone. Ulster, Munster, Leinster were still known by
their old names: Ulad, Mumain and Lagin. The Danish termination by which
we know them had not been added. In like manner, Dublin in those days
and far later was still called At-Cliat, the Ford of the Hurdles. Yet
the tribute which the Saxon king paid to Ireland has a true ring. It
thoroughly supports what we have said: that incessant tribal warfare
rather expressed than detracted from the vigor of the nation's life. It
had this grave defect, however: it so kindled and cherished the instinct
of separateness that union in face of a common foe was almost
impossible. Long years of adverse fate were needed to merge the keen
individual instinct of old into the common consciousness of to-day.
Modern historians generally write as if the onslaught of the Northmen
had had this unifying effect; as if it had been a great calamity,
overwhelming the country for several centuries, and submerging its
original life under a tide of conquest. Here again the history of the
time, as recorded year by year in the Annals, leads us to a wholly
different conclusion. We find inroads of the Northmen, it is true; but
they are only interludes in the old national life of storm and struggle.
That enduring tribal conflict, of which we have already seen so much,
did not cease even for a year. Nor can it have greatly mattered to the
dwellers in some remote valley whether they were sacked, their cattle
driven off, and their children taken captive by strangers or by men of
their own land.
There was one chief difference: the foreigners, being still heathens,
did not spare the churches and the schools. The golden or silver
reliquaries, the jeweled manuscript-cases, the offerings of precious
stones and rich ornaments laid on the altars: these things proved an
irresistible temptation to the roving sea-kings. They often burned or
cast away the manuscripts, eager only to take the jeweled coverings, and
in this way many monuments of the olden time have been lost, and many
gaps in the history of the nation made irreparable. Yet it would seem
that even the loss of manuscripts has been exaggerated, since such
lavish abundance remains to us from the times before the first northern
raiders came. Many a remote shrine was never even approached by the
northern wanderers; and, in the long times of peace between raid and
raid, one school had time to gain from another copies of the books which
were lost. We may hope that the somewhat rigid views of copyright
expressed in the matter of St. Finian's Psalter were not invariably
adhered to. We have Chronicles kept with unbroken regularity year by
year through the whole of the epoch of Northern raids, and they by no
means indicate a period of national depression, nor justify us in
thinking of these raids as much more than episodes in the general
fighting of the nation,--the martial state through which every modern
country has passed before emerging to homogeneous life.
To come to the events themselves, as they appeared to the men who
witnessed them. We find the first record of the Northern raiders under
the year 795: "The burning of Lambay by the Gentiles. The shrines were
broken and plundered." This Lambay is an island of considerable extent,
off the Dublin coast, some six or seven miles north of Howth. It rises
gradually from the south extremity into a purple cliff of porphyry
facing the northern sea, and on the sheltered slope under the sun a
little church colony with schools and dwelling-houses had been built.
Against this peaceful solitude the raiders came, burning and plundering,
and when they rowed away again in their long ships towards the north, a
smoldering black ruin bore testimony that they were indeed Gentiles,
unblessed by Christian baptism.
Three years later the little island of St. Patrick, six miles north of
Lambay, met with a like fate. It was "burned by the Gentiles," as the
Chronicles say. And from that time forth we hear of their long ships
again and again, hovering hawk-like around the coasts of Ireland and
Scotland. In 802, and again in 806, the Scottish Iona of Colum of the
Churches was raided, and the next year we find the pirates making a
descent upon Inismurray, off the Sligo coast, between the summit of
Knocknarea and the cliffs of Slieve League. This last settlement of
saints and scholars was founded by Molaise,--he who had pronounced
sentence of exile on Colum of the Churches, the banishment that was the
beginning of grace for the northern Picts. His oratory still remains on
the island, beside the Church of the Men, the Church of the Women and
the circular stone fort, which was very likely built to guard against
new attacks, after this first raid. There are holy wells and altars
there also, and Inismurray, better than any other place, gives us a
picture of the old scholastic life of that remote and wonderful time.
Five years later, the Northern raiders made their way further round the
coast, under the shadow of the western mountains and the great cliffs of
Achill; we read of "a slaughter of the people of Connemara by the
Gentiles" in that year, and the year following, other battles with
Gentiles are recorded in the same part of Ireland.
In 818, if we are to believe the Annalist, a singular thing happened:
"An army was led by Murcad, having the Ui-Neill of the North with him.
Concobar king of Ireland with the Ui-Neill of the South and the
Leinstermen came from the South on the other hand. When they came to one
place, it happened, through a miracle of God, that they separated from
each other for that time without slaughter or one of them spilling a
drop of the other's blood." That entry better than any other shows the
restless spirit of the times. It shows, too, that the first shock of
Norse invasion had not in any sense warned the people and chieftains of
Ireland of coming danger, nor had it in any degree checked the steady
course of the nation's growth through storm and strife to personal
consciousness, as the stepping-stone to the wider common consciousness
of the modern world.
The year following we read of "a plundering of Howth by the Gentiles,
who carried off a great prey of women." These captives were doubtless
the first to bring the Message of the New Way to the wild granite lands
of the north, where the mountains in their grandeur frown upon the long
inlets of the fiords. They taught to their children in those wild lands
of exile the lessons of grace and holiness, so rudely interrupted when
the long ships of the Norsemen were sighted from the Hill of Howth.
A year later, in 820, the raiders had found their way to the
southernmost extremity of the island; to Cape Clear, off the coast of
Cork. This once again brings to our notice the position of so many of
the early religious settlements,--on rocky islands off the coasts, well
out of the turmoil of tribal strife which raged uninterrupted on the
mainland. St. Patrick's Island and Lambay on the east, Clear Island on
the south, and Inismurray on the northwest, so well protected by the sea
from disturbance at home, were, by that very isolation, terribly exposed
to these foreign raiders from the sea. Howth, Moville and Bangor, all on
peninsulas, all by the seashore, enjoyed a like immunity and were open
to a like danger. Therefore we are not surprised to find that, two years
later, Bangor was "plundered by the Gentiles."
It will be remembered that St. Patrick's first church was built on land
given him by Dicu, chieftain of the district round Downpatrick, a name
which commemorates the presence of the Messenger. Two sons of this same
Dicu had been held as hostages by Laogaire the king, and their marvelous
escape from durance was recorded in the name, Dun-da-lath-glas, the
Dwelling of the Two Broken Fetters, given to Downpatrick. The place was
of old renown. Known to Ptolemy as Dunum, it was, during Concobar's sway
at Emain of Maca, the fortress of the strong chief, Celtcar, whose huge
embattled hill of earth still rises formidable over the Quoyle River. In
the year 823, we read, Dundalathglas was plundered by the Gentiles; but
the story does not stop here, for we are further told that these same
Gentiles were beaten by the Ulad armies not far from the great fort of
Celtcar. This is the first entry of this tenor. Hitherto, the Northmen
seem to have fallen only on outlying religious communities, in remote
islands or on the seashore; but this last raid brought them to one of
the very few church-schools which had been built close to a strong
fortress, with the result that the Northmen were beaten and driven back
into their ships.
Three years later the Gentiles plundered Lusk on the mainland opposite
Lambay, but in that same year they were twice defeated in battle, once
by Cairbré son of Catal, and once by the king of Ulad. The raids of the
Norse warriors grow more frequent and determined from this time; in
itself a testimony to the wealth and prosperity of the country, the
abundance of gold and of accumulated riches, whether cattle or corn,
ornaments or richly dyed stuffs, red and purple and blue. Word seems to
have been carried to the wild hills and fiords of frozen Scandinavia
that here was booty in abundance, and the pirate hordes came down
in swarms.
Thus we read that Armagh, the center of St. Patrick's work, and the
chief home of learning, was thrice plundered in 830, the raiders sailing
up Carlingford Lough and then making a dash of some fifteen miles across
the undulating country separating them from the city of churches. This
is the first time they ventured out of sight of their boats. Two years
later they plundered Clondalkin, nine miles inland from the Dublin
coast, where the Round Tower still marks the site of the old church and
school. To the growing frequency of these raids, it would seem, the
building of Round Towers is to be attributed; they were at once belfries
and places of refuge. We find, therefore, that the door is almost always
many feet above the ground, being reached by a ladder afterwards drawn
up by those inside. The number of these Round Towers all over the
country, and the perfect preservation of many of them, show how
universal this precaution was, and how effective were the refugees thus
provided. It is instructive to read under this same year, 832, that "a
great number of the family of Clonmacnoise were slain by Feidlimid king
of Cashel, all their land being burned by him up to the door of the
church." Thus the progress of tribal struggle was uninterrupted by the
Gentile raids.
Four years later, a fleet of sixty Norse fighting galleys sailed up the
Boyne. Sixty long ships entered the Liffey in the same year, and a year
later they captured the fortress of the Ford of the Hurdles,
At-Cliat,--the old name of Dublin. Three years later we find the king of
Munster plundering Meath and West Meath, showing that no sense of common
danger disturbed the native kings. This strengthens the view we have
already taken: that the attacks of the Norse sea-kings were only an
interlude in the incessant contests between the tribes of province and
province; contests perfectly natural and normal to the development of
the land, and through which every country has at some period passed.
[Illustration: Round Tower, Antrim.]
It would seem that the Northmen who captured the Ford of the Hurdles
departed from their former usage. Fortifying themselves, or
strengthening the existent fortress, they determined to pass the winter
in Ireland, instead of returning, as they had always done up to this
time, before the autumn storms made dangerous the navigation of the wild
northern seas. Their presence in this fort gave the native powers a
center upon which to concentrate their attack, and as a result the year
846 was marked by a signal victory over the Northmen, twelve hundred of
those at At-Cliat being slain. Four other successful contests with the
raiders are recorded for the same year, and we can thoroughly trust the
Annalists who, up to this time, have so faithfully recorded the
disasters of their own race.
About the same time the Northmen gained a second point of vantage by
seizing and fortifying a strong position where the town of Cork now
stands. Indeed their instinct of seamanship, their knowledge of good
harbors and the conditions which make them, led them to fix their first
entrenchments at Dublin, Cork and Limerick,--which remained for
centuries after the great ports of the country on the east, south and
west; and the Norse flavor still lingers in the names of Carlingford,
Wexford and Waterford, the Fiords of Cairlinn, Weis and Vadre. A
wonderful side-light on the whole epoch is shed by this entry for 847:
"In this year sevenscore ships of the Gentiles from abroad fought
against the Gentiles in Ireland." It would seem that the earlier comers,
who had drawn up their long ships on the beach, and thrown up earthworks
round their camp, instantly resented the attempt of later arrivals to
poach on their preserves, and that a fierce fight was the result. During
the whole of the following century we find signs of like rivalry between
different bands of raiders, and it becomes evident that they were as
much divided amongst themselves as were the native tribes they
fought against.
Two years later a further light is shed on this mutual strife when we
are told that "Dark Gentiles came to At-Cliat and slaughtered the Fair
Gentiles, plundering their fort and carrying away both people and
property." The next year saw a new struggle between the Dark Gentiles
and the Fair Gentiles, with much mutual slaughter. This leads us to
realize that these raiders, vaguely grouped by modern writers under the
single name of Danes, really belonged to several different races, and
doubtless came from many parts of the Baltic coasts, as well as from the
fiords of the great Scandinavian peninsula. The Dark Foreigners are
without doubt some of that same race of southern origin which we saw,
ages earlier, migrating northwards along the Atlantic seaboard,--a race
full of the spirit of the sea, and never happier than when the waves
were curling and breaking under their prows. They found their way, we
saw, as far northwards as the coast of Scotland, the Western Isles, and
distant Norway over the foam, where the long fiords and rugged
precipices gave them a congenial home. We find them hovering over the
shores of Ireland at the very dawn of her history; and, in later but
still remote ages, their power waned before the De Danaan tribes. This
same dark race returning now from Norway, swooped hawk-like upon the
rich shrines of the Irish island sanctuaries, only to come into hostile
contact once more with sons of that golden-haired race which scattered
the dark Fomorians at Mag Tuiread of the North. For the Fair Gentiles of
our mediaeval Chronicle are no other than the golden-haired
Scandinavians; the yellow-locked Baltic race that gave conquerors and a
new ideal of beauty to the whole modern world. And this Baltic race, as
we saw in an earlier epoch, was the source and mother of the old De
Danaans, whose hair was like new-smelted gold or the yellow flag-lilies
of our lakes and rivers. Thus after long ages the struggle of Fomor and
De Danaan was renewed at the Ford of the Hurdles between the Dark and
Fair Strangers, rivals for the plunder of the Irish religious schools.
Though the personalities of this age do not stand forth with the high
relief of Cuculain and Concobar, though we can hardly quote poems to
equal the songs of Find son of Cumal and Ossin of the golden tongue, yet
genuine inspiration never failed in the hearts of the warriors and on
the lips of the bards. Thus in 860 did a poet lament the death of
a king:
"Mournfully is spread her veil of grief over Erin
Since Maelseaclain, chieftain of our race has perished,--
Maelseaclain of the flowing Shannon.
Many a moan resounds in every place;
It is mournful news among the Gael.
Red wine has been spilled into the valley:
Erin's monarch has died.
Though he was wont to ride a white charger.
Though he had many steeds,
His car this day is drawn by a yoke of oxen.
The king of Erin is dead."
Four years afterwards the contest between the raiders and the chieftains
grew keener, more centered, more like organized war. "A complete muster
of the North was made by Aed Finnliat, so that he plundered the
fortresses of the foreigners, wherever they were in the north; and he
carried off their cattle and accoutrements, their goods and chattels.
The foreigners of the province came together at Lough Foyle. After Aed
king of Ireland had heard that this gathering of strangers was on the
borders of his country, he was not negligent in attending to them. For
he marched towards them with all his forces, and a battle was fought
fiercely and spiritedly between them. The victory was gained over the
foreigners, and a slaughter was made of them. Their heads were collected
to one place, in the presence of the king, and twelve-score heads were
reckoned before him, which was the number slain in that battle, besides
the numbers of those who were wounded and carried off by him in the
agonies of death, and who died of their wounds some time afterwards."
A renewal of tribal warfare in the second year after this, when this
same Aed the king was attacked by Flann the lord of Breag in Meath,
called forth certain battle-verses full of the fire and fervor of
the time.
A poet sang:
"At Kiladerry this day the ravens shall taste sips of blood:
A victory shall be gained over the magic host of the Gentiles
and over Flann."
The mother of Flann sang:
"Happiness! Woe! Good news! Bad news! The gaining of a great
triumphant battle.
Happy the king whom it makes victorious; unhappy the king who
was defeated.
Unhappy the host of Leat Cuin, to have fallen by the sprites
of Slain;
Happy the reign of great Aed, and unhappy the loss of Flann."
Aed the victorious king sang:
"The troops of Leinster are with him, with the added men of
swift Boyne;
This shows the treachery of Flann: the concord of Gentiles
at his side."
After ten years, a bard thus sings the dirge of Aed:
"Long is the wintry night, with rough gusts of wind;
Under pressing grief we meet it, since the red-speared king
of the noble house lives not.
It is fearful to watch how the waves heave from the bottom;
To them may be compared all those who with us lament him.
A generous, wise, staid man, of whose renown the populous
Tara was full.
A shielded oak that sheltered the palace of Milid's sons.
Master of the games of the fair hilled Taillten,
King of Tara of a hundred conflicts;
Chief of Fodla the noble, Aed of Oileac who died too soon.
Popular, not forgotten, he departed from this world,
A yew without any blemish upon him was he of the long-flowing
hair."
Nor must it be thought that these repeated raids which we have recorded
in any way checked the full spiritual life of the nation. It is true
that there was not that quiet serenity from which came the perfect
beauty and art of the old Book of Kells, but a keenness and fire kindled
the breasts of those who learned the New Way and the Ancient Learning.
The schools sent forth a host of eminent men who over all western Europe
laid the intellectual basis of the modern world. This view of Ireland's
history might well be expanded almost without limit or possibility of
exaggeration. Receiving, as we saw, the learning and traditions of Rome
while Rome was yet mighty and a name of old imperial renown, Ireland
kept and cherished the classical wisdom and learning, not less than the
lore of Palestine. Then the northern garrisons of Rome were beaten back,
and Britain and Gaul alike were devastated by hordes from beyond the
Rhine. The first wild deluge of these fierce invaders was now over, and
during the lull of the storm teachers went forth from Ireland to
Scotland, as we have seen; they went also to Britain; to Belgium; to
northern, central and southern Gaul; and to countries beyond the Rhine
and in the south; to Switzerland and Austria, where one Irishman gave
his name to the Canton of St. Gall, while another founded the famous see
of Salzburg, a rallying-point through all the Middle Ages. It was not
only for pure spiritual zeal and high inspiration that these teachers
were famed. They had not less renown for all refined learning and
culture. The famous universities of Oxford, Paris and Pavia count among
the great spirits at their inception men who were worthy pupils of the
schools of Devenish and Durrow, of Bangor and Moville.
We have recorded the tribute paid by Alfred the Saxon king to the
Ireland of his day. Let us add to it the testimony of a great divine of
France. Elias, Bishop of Angoulême, who died in 875, wrote thus: "What
need to speak of Ireland; setting at nought, as it does, the
difficulties of the sea, and coming almost in a body to our shores, with
its crowd of philosophers, the most intelligent of whom are subjecting
themselves to a voluntary exile."
We have traced the raids of the Northmen for nearly a century. They
continued for a century and a quarter longer. Through all this time the
course of the nation's life was as we have described it: a raid from the
sea, or from one of their seaboard fortresses by the Dark Gentiles or
the Fair; an assembling of the hosts of the native chieftains against
them; a fierce and spirited battle against the pirates in their
mail-coats and armed with great battle-axes. Sometimes the chosen people
prevailed, and sometimes the Gentiles; but in either case the heads of
the slain were heaped up at the feet of the victor, many cattle were
driven away as spoil, and young men and maidens were taken into
captivity. It would seem that at no time was there any union between the
foreigners of one and another seaboard fortress, any more than there was
unity among the tribes whom they raided and who defeated them in their
turn. It was a strife of warring units, without fusion; small groups
round chosen leaders, and these merging for awhile in greater groups.
Thus the life of the times, in its warlike aspect. Its spiritual vigor
we have sufficiently shown, not less in the inspirations of the saints
than in the fiery songs of the bards, called forth by battles and the
death of kings. Everywhere there was fierce force and seething energy,
bringing forth fruit of piety or prowess.