 Publisher's Preface of a Popular History of Ireland, Book 1. A Popular History of Ireland from the earliest period to the Emancipation of the Catholics, Book 1 by Thomas Darcy McGee. Publisher's 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 five hundred years her life has been apparently extinguished. The fiercest whirlwinds of oppression that ever in the wrath of God was poured upon the children of a 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, is it not strange that political philosophy, at all times too sagacian in its principles, should ask with a sneer, could these dry bones live? The fullness 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. With the transmitted qualities of her glorious children, who were giants in intellect, virtue, and arms for fifteen hundred 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 sermons of the grave may be hanging upon her, but lose 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 Darcy 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 Scotia unfurled the sacred banner. How Brian and Malachi contended for empire. How the pirate of the north scourged the Irish coast. The glories of Terra and the piety of Columba. The cowardice of James and the scourge of Sarsfield. How Dothi, the fearless, sounded the Irish war cry in far alpine passes, and how the Geraldine forade lynster. The deeds of O'Neill and O'Donnell. The march of Cromwell, the destroyed angel. Ireland's sun sinking in dim eclips. The dark night of woe in Arran for a hundred years. Eighty-three. Ninety-eight. Forty-eight. Sixty-eight. Ireland's sun in rising 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. 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 Arran, 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, shown 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 five hundred thousand of the flower of 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 addition 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 Darcy 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 Emmett or Fitzgerald, to inspire men with high ideals of patriotism and devotion. Cameron and 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 7th, 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 Spark 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. End of Publishers' Preface Chapter 1 Of A Popular History of Ireland This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. A Popular History of Ireland, from the earliest period to the Emancipation of the Catholics, Book 1, by Thomas Darcy McGee. Chapter 1 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 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, Lenster 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 Loch Corib, and the Ban, which carries off the surplus waters of Loch 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 two hundred and forty thousand acres in the very heart of the country. It is called the Bog of Alien, 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 in 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 storytellers have handed down to us concerning Ireland before it became Christian. The first story they tell us is that about three hundred years after the universal deluge, Parthalan of the stock of Deput 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 Parthalan, they tell us, was a double parasite, having killed his father and mother before leaving his native country, for which horrible crimes, as the bards very morally conclude, his posterity were faded 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 Nemed, 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 Firmorians, 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 Firmorians 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 Furbolgs, or Belge, or the Third Immigration. They were victorious under the chiefs, the Five Sons of Della, and divided the island into five portions. But they lived in days when the earth, the parts of it known 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. Later expedition, claiming descent from the common ancestor, Nemed, arrived to contest their supremacy. These last, the Fourth Immigration, are depicted to us as accomplished Seussayers 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 Didanans, and by their supernatural power, as well as by virtue of the Liephal, 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, Melisians, from the immediate projector of their immigration, or Scoti, from Scotia, the mother of Melisius. They came from Spain, under the leadership of the Sons of Melisius, 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 tempests and terrors. In vain they reduced it in size so as to be almost invisible from sea. Amergin, one of the Sons of Melisius, 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, priests, and prophet. Yet when his warlike brethren divided the island between them, they left the poet out of the reckoning. He was finally drowned in the waters of the river Avoka, 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 the earth, the coasts and harbors of Aaron 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, 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. End of Chapter 1. Chapter 2 of a popular history of Ireland, Book 1. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Read by Betsy Bush in Marquette, Michigan, January 2008. A popular history of Ireland, from the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics, Book 1, by Thomas Darcy McKee. Chapter 2. 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 storytellers, 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, we'll struggle to see who can get the largest share. So we find in those First Ages a constant secession of armed struggles for power. The petty princes who divided the island between them were called Rai, a word which answers to the Latin Rex and the French Roi. And the chief king or monarch was called Ardri, or High King. The eldest nephew, or son of the king, was the usual heir of power and was called the Tannist, or successor. Although any of the family of the prince, his brother's cousins, or other kinsmen, might be chosen Tannist, 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 secession any serious accident entailed deposition, though we find the names of several princes who managed to evade or escape the singular penalty. It will be observed, besides of the Tannist, that the habit of appointing him seems to have been less a law than a custom, but it was not universal in all the provinces, that in some tribes the secession alternated between a double line of princes, and that sometimes, when the reigning prince obtained the nomination of a Tannist to please himself, the choice was set aside by the public voice of the clansmen. The successor to the Ardri, or monarch, instead of being simply called Tannist, had the more sounding title of Roidamna, or King's successor. The chief offices about the kings, in the first ages, were all filled by the druids, or pagan priests. The brihans, or judges, were usually druids, as were also the bards, the historians of their patrons. Then came the physicians, the chiefs who paid the 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 Fian, or Militia of Leinster, sometimes the royal guard of Terra, at others in Exile and Disgrace, the clan de Gaide, of Munster, and the Fian of Canat. The last force was largely recruited from the Belgic race, who had been squeezed into that western province by their Malaysian conquerors, pretty much as Cromwell endeavored to force the Malaysian-Irish into it, many hundred years afterwards. Each of these bands had its special heroes, its godfrees and Orlandos celebrated in Song. The most famous name in Ulster was Suchulian, so called from Suh a Hound, or Watchdog, and Ulian, the ancient name of his province. He lived at the dawn of the Christian era, of equal fame with Thin, the father of Osayan, and the fingle of modern fiction, who flourished in the latter half of the second century. Gaul, son of Morna, the hero of Canat, one of the few distinguished men of Belgic origin whom we hear of through the Malaysian bards, flourished a generation earlier than Thin, and might fairly compete with him in celebrity if he had only had an Osayan to sing his praises. The political boundaries of different tribes expanded or contracted with their good or ill fortune in battle. One 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's name. Thus in the north we have the High Neel race, in the south the Eugenian race, so called from Neel and Egan, their mutual ancestors. We have already compared the shape of Aron to a shield in which the four provinces represented the four quarters. Some shields have also bosses or centerpieces, and the federal province of Mith was the boss of the old Irish shield. The ancient Mith included both the present counties of that name, stretching south to the Liffey and north to Armagh. It was the mensel de Mesna, or board of the king's table. It was exempt from all taxes, except those of the Ard Rhye, 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 Moth of the Boine, the line being notched here and there by the royal de Mesna of Mith. Ulster 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 Moth of the Shannon composed Munster, the present county of Clare and all west of the Shannon north to Sligo, and part of Cavern going with Canat. The chief seats of power in those several divisions were Terra for federal purposes, Emania near Armog for Ulster, Linen for Lienster, Casual for Munster, and Crucian, now Wrath-Krogan in Raskamen, for Canat. 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 Aron is much the same as the rest, but some leading facts we do know. Their religion in pagan times was what the moderns called Druidism, but what they called it themselves we know not. It was probably the same religion anciently professed by Tyr and Sidon by Carthage and their 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 was permitted to survive in the old Irish language, we see that Belis or Chrom, the god of fire, typified by the sun, was its chief divinity, that two great festivals were held in his honor on days answering to the 1st of May and last of October. There were also particular gods of poets, champions, officers, 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. While age revered them, women worshipped them, warriors paid court to them, youth trembled before them, princes and chieftains regarded them as elderly brethren. So numerous were they in Aaron and so celebrated that the alters of Britain and Western Gaul left desolate by the Roman legions were often served by hero-fans from Aaron, 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 brians 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 bruis or farmers, though possessing central 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 marketplaces of Britain. The task of the herdsmen, like that of the farm laborer, seems to have devolved on the bondsmen, while the kerne and the shuttle were left exclusively to the hands of the bondswomen. We need barely mention the names of the first Malaysian kings, who were remarkable for something else than cutting each other's throats in order to hasten on to the solid ground of Christian tombs. The principal names are Heber and Haraman, the crowned sons of Malaysians. They at first divided the island fairly, but Haraman soon became jealous of his brother, slew him in battle, and it established his own supremacy. Iriel the prophet was king, and built seven royal fortresses, Tiranmas, in his reign, and the arts of dying in colors were introduced, and the distinguishing of classes by the number of colors they were permitted to wear was decreed. Olama, the wise, established the convention of Tara, which assembled habitually every ninth year, but might be called Offener. It met about the October festival in honor of Belis or Kram. Iked invented or introduced a new species of wicker boats called Kasa, and spent much of his time upon the sea. A solitary queen named Macha appears in the secession from whom Armagh takes its name. Except Mab, the mythological queen of Canat, she is the sole female ruler of Aran in the first ages. Owen, or Eugene Moore, the great, is remembered as the founder of the notable families who rejoice in the common name of Eugenians, Leery of whom the fable of Midas is told with variations, Angus, whom the after-princes of Alba, Scotland, claimed as their ancestor, Iked, the tenth of that name, in whose reign are laid the scenes of the chief mythological stories of Aran, such as the story of Queen Mab, the story of the sons of Asna, the death of Kuchulian, a counterpart of the Persian tale of Rustam and Saurab, the story of Fergus, son of the king, of Conor of Ulster, of the sons of Dairy, and many more. We next meet with the first kings who led an expedition abroad against the Romans and crimson, surnamed Nianari, or Nair's hero, from the good genius who accompanied him on his foray. A well-planned insurrection of the conquered Belge cut off one of the crimpians' immediate successors with all his chiefs and nobles at a banquet given on the Belgian plain, Moibolk in Cavern, 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, Tuthwal, surnamed the Legitimate. It was Tuthal who imposed the special tax on Leinster, of which we shall often hear, under the title of Boruah, or Tribute. The Legitimate was succeeded by his son, who introduced the Roman Lex Talianus, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, into the Brion Code. Soon after, the Eugenian families of the South, strong in numbers, and led by I II Owen Mor, 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. Oliad, 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 Olah, 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, rivaling in wisdom and excelling in justice the best of his ancestors. Some of his maxims remained to us, and challenged 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 crimson eclipsed the fame of his ancestor and namesake, Neil, called of the hostages, was slain on a second or third expedition into Gaul, A.D. 405, while Dathi, Nethio and successor to Neil, was struck dead by lightning in the passage of the Elbs, A.D. 428. It was in one of Neil's Gaelic expeditions that the illustrious captive was brought into Aaron, 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. End of chapter two. Chapter three of A Popular History of Ireland, book one. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For further information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. A Popular History of Ireland, from the earliest period to the Emancipation of the Catholics, book one by Thomas Darcy McGee. Chapter three. 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 arriving from abroad in Christian Ireland, who would abolish the Church's convents and Christian schools, decry and bring into utter disuse the Decalogue, the Scriptures, and the Sacraments. You face 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 higher places and in every place the gloomy groves of the Church. 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 affected a revolution to the full as complete as such a counter-revolution in favour of paganism. 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 Erinn on one of King Nile'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 Milko, a chief of Dariada, whose flocks he tended for seven years as a shepherd on the mountain called Slemish, in the present county of Antrim. The date of Nile's death and the consequent return of his last expedition is set down in all our annals at the year 405, as Patrick was the first to arrive in the last expedition, is set down in all our annals at the year 405. As Patrick was 16 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 61 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 laps 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 Downe, where he made few converts, and celebrated mass in a barn. Proceeding northward, he found himself rejected with scorn by his old master Milko of Slamish. 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 learnt that the monarch Liri, Lariiri, in Irish, 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 bark at the mouth of the boy. Taking leave of the boatman, 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 boy 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 baptised, especially marking out a fine child named Beenan, called by him Benignus from his sweet disposition, who was destined to be one of his most efficient co-agitors, and finally his successor in the primatial sea of Armar. It was about the second or third day, when, traveling probably by the northern road, poetically called the Slope of the Chariots, the Christian adventurers came in sight of the roofs of Tara. Haunting on a neighbouring eminence, they surveyed the citadel of ancient era, 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 birthday, measuring from north to south 360 feet in length by 40 feet wide. South of this hall was the king's wrath 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 wrath of the reigning king, and yet farther south the wrath 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 Nunaur, from which all the wraths 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 Mith 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 Curtis' 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 boine before they blend into one, the hills of Cavern to the far north, with the royal hill of Talcian in the foreground, the wooded heights of slain and screen, 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 defense 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 a man and had died for man. His name alone was sufficient to heal all diseases, to raise the very dead to life. Such we learned 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 thought 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 25 years longer, AD 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 expugated 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 with all he never consented to be baptized, and only two years before his disease 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 Erinn. Patrick and his disciples were advancing from conquest to conquest. Amar and Kashel came in the wake of Tara and Kruachan was soon to follow. Driven from the high places the obdurate priests of Baal 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 born in a chariot. The pious magnificence of the successors of Leery 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, a 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 boine 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. Paramond 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 son 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 Armar, 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 to 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. And of Chapter 3, Chapter 4 of A Popular History of Ireland, Book 1. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For further information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. A popular history of Ireland from the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics, Book 1 by Thomas Darcy McGee, Chapter 4, 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 St. 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 everyone, 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, chessboards and chessmen, 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 ardori 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 son 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 boine, fruit from the Isle of Man, cresses from the Brosna River, venison from Nass, and to drink the water of the well of Tala. 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 Lienster 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 al mine, to drink the ale of Cullen, and to preside over the games of Carmen, Wexford. His colleague of Munster was prohibited from encamping a whole week at Kilani, or on the Sur, and from mustering a marshal-host on the Lienster border at Gauron. He was privileged to pass the six weeks of Lent at Casual, in three quarters, to use fire and force in compelling tribute from North Lienster, and to obtain a supply of cattle from Conort, at the time of the singing of the cuckoo. The Conort 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, three quarters in Marisk in the same neighbourhood, and to marshal his border-host at Athlone to confer with the tribes of Mith. 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 rite of mustering his border army in the plains of Louth, three quarters in Armagh for three nights for his troops before setting out on an expedition, and to confine his hostages in Dunseveric, 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 Rites established Christianity as the law of the land. All national usages and customs not conflicting with this supreme law were recognised and sanctioned by it. The internal revenues in each particular province were modelled upon the same general principal, with one memorable exception, the special tribute which Lindster 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, to a hull, the legitimate, was restored to the throne of his ancestors after the successful revolt of the Belgic bondsmen. Lindster seems to have clung longest to the Belgic Revolution and to have submitted only after repeated defeats. To a hull, 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 Conort, 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 Lindster, 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 High Nile, the same family as the O'Neils. All the kings of the sixth and seventh centuries were of that line. In the eighth century, from 709 to 742, the Southern Analysts, Stael Cahal King of Munster, Ardrii. In the ninth century, 840 to 847, they give the same high title to Filim 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 High Nile and their co-relatives of Meath, called the Southern High Nile, 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-third seems to have sufficed. If the candidate had the north in his favour and won province of the south, he was considered entitled to take possession of Tara. If he were a Southern, he should be seconded either by Connaut or Ulster, before he could lawfully possess himself of the supreme power. The benediction of the Archbishop of Armar 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. A 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 Arryn. The time of meeting was the great pagan feast of Sawin, the first 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 olive or ricorda, whose duty it was to preserve the muster role 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 to 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 Oliol, who succeeded Leary, we cannot say with certainty that he was a Christian. His successor, Louis, son of Leary, we are expressly told was killed by lightning, AD 496, for having violated the law of Patrick, that is probably for having practiced some of those pagan rites forbidden to the monarchs by the revised constitution. His successor, Murkatach, 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 incidence of his spiritual advisor, but whom he had not the courage, though brave as a lion in battle, to keep away, AD 527. Tuahal, the rough, succeeded and reigned for seven years, when he was assassinated by the tutor of Dermid, son of Kerbal, a rival whom he had driven into exile. Dermid immediately seized on the throne AD 534, and for twenty eventful years bore sway over all Eryn. 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 Louis or Lyrie. He kept druids about his person, despised the rite of sanctuary, claimed by the Christian clergy, and observed, with all the ancient superstitious ceremonial, the national games at Taltine. 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 offense, the crowning act of a series of aggressions on the immunities claimed by the clergy, the saint whose name was Ruadan, and the sight of whose sanctuary is still known as Temple Ruadan in Tiberary, proceeded to Tara, accompanied by his clergy, and walking round the royal wrath, 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 Mith, at Taltine, at the hill of Usna, and on the margin of the beautiful Loch Enel, near the present castle Pollard, 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 patchimony near Armar, or on the celebrated hill of Al-Yakh. 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 10 years of the death of Dermid. And then we come to the really interesting and important reign of Hugh II, which lasted 27 years, AD 566 to 593, and was marked by the establishment of the independence of the Scotto-Irish colony in North Britain, and by other noteworthy events. But these 27 years deserve a chapter to themselves. Chapter 5 The Rain of Hugh II The Irish colony in Scotland obtains its independence. Twenty-seven years is a long reign, and the events of King Hugh II were marked with striking events. One religious and one political occurrence, however, through all others into the shade, the conversion of the highlands and islands of Scotland, then called Alba, or Albin by the Gale, and Caledonia by the Latins, and the formal recognition, after an exciting controversy, of the independence of the Malaysian colony in Scotland. 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 25 miles wide. Other adventurers followed at intervals, but it is a fact to be deplored, that no passages in all our own and in all other histories have been so carelessly kept as the records of immigration. 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 Rossshire, 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 Lachau is still a lowland proverb, and Lachau was in the very heart of that old Irish settlement. The earliest immigrants 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 savior himself. Parishes in Cantire, Islay, and Carrick still bear the name of St. Kieran as a patron. But no systematic attempt, none at least of historic memory, was made to convert the remote Argyle and the other races then inhabiting the Alba, the Picts, the Britons, and Scandinavians until the year of our era 565. Columba, or Columquil, a bishop of the race of Nial, undertook that task on a scale commensurate with its magnitude. This celebrated man has always ranked with St. Patrick and St. Bridget as the most glorious triad of the Irish calendar. He was, at the time he left Ireland, in the prime of his life, his forty-fourth 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 King of the Scottish Colony, his kinsmen, received the crown from him on their accession. The Islet of Eye, or Ionia, was 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 Ionia was as the growth of the grain of a 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 Thibiad, 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 labor and the study and transcribing of the sacred scriptures. He and his disciples, says the venerable bead, in whose age Ionia still flourished, neither thought of nor loved anything in this world. Some writers have represented column kills, culties, which in English simply means servants of God, as a married clergy, so far as 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. Four, said the holy woman, 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 Ossary 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 Ossary and Terra 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 twelve hundred in Mieh and Ulster alone. They claimed all the old privileges of free quarters on their travels and free holdings at home, which were freely granted their order when it was in its infancy. Those chieftains who refused them anything, however extravagant, they lampooned and libeled, 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 Column Kill, 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, Dalin Forgale, 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 interdited terra, but for the monarch's convenience a site farther north was chosen, the hill of Dromketh in the present county of Denney. Here came, in rival state and splendor, 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 attacks upon her colony were sustained by the profound learning of the venerable name of St. Colman, Bishop of Dromor, one of the first men of his order. When Column Kill 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 until his return to Ionia. He was accompanied by an imposing train of attendance by Aden, Prince of Argyle, so deeply interested in the issue, and a suite of over one hundred persons, twenty of them abbots or bishops. Column Kill spoke for his companions, for already, as in Bede's time, the abbots of Ionia 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 Dromor stated the arguments in favour of colonial taxation, with learning and effect. Hugh himself impeached the Bards for their licentious and lawless lives. Column Kill 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 Coleman 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 loose attendance was 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 Ionia 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 Column Kill 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 learned 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. Column Kill, 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. Column Kill, rising in the assembly, declared the Albanians forever 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 after the magnets 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 Osary. Five years afterwards, A.D. 595, King Hugh fell in an attempt to collect the special tribute from Al Lentster, 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 Tyre 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 prescribed, were finally subjected to the laws, over which they had at one time insolently domineered. Ireland's only colony, unless we accept the immature settlement on 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, Malcolm, meaning servant of Cullum or Cullumkill, but the memory of the sainted statesmen 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 more words 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 five ninety-six. Death found him at the ripe old age of almost forescore, 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, Dermot, 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 Bathon finish the rest. Just after Matan, on the Sunday morning, he passed peacefully 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 and eminence every evening at sunset to look over towards the coast of his native land. This 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 lovable character of which such tales could be told and cherished from generation to generation. Both education and nature had well-fitted column kill 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 a prince he stood on equal terms with princes. As a 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 rigor 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 OF A POPULAR HISTORY OF IRELAND BOOK I This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. RECORDING by Sharon Bautista A popular history of Ireland from the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics, BOOK I, by Thomas Darcy McGee. 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 AD 599 and reigned for several years. Two other kings of small account reigned seven years. Donald II, AD 624, reigned 16 years. Connell and Kellock, brothers, AD 640, reigned jointly 16 years. They were succeeded, AD 656, by Dermid and Blothmuck, brothers who reigned jointly seven years. Shinasag, son of the former, reigned six years. Kinfala IV, Finachta, the hospitable, 20 years, and Loinxec, AD 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 Alidia, which comprised little more than the present county of Down, to be recognized as prince of all Ulster. Now the High Nile 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 ascendancy to be disputed. The ancestors of the present pretender, Congol, 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. Congol had recruited numerous bands of Saxons, Britons, Picks, and Argyle Scots, who poured into the larbers of Down for months, and were marshaled on the banks of the lagoon 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 Congol's host and who served under them. Conspicuous above all, the ancient banner of the red-branched knights, a yellow lion wrought on green satin, floated over Congol's host. On the other side, the monarch commanded in person, accompanied by his kinsmen, the sons of Hugh III. The red hand of Tyrowan, the cross of Turkannal, the eagle and lion of Anishoan, 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 Congol 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 Blothmuck, 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 laborers and cares of state. In their reign that terrible scourge, called in Irish the Yellow Plague, after ravaging a great part of Britain, broke out with undiminished virulence in Aron, 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 Bell 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 monster 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 accept those who formed a contingent of Congo's army at Moira, occurred in the time of the hospitable Finacta. 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 in-road 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 Malaysian Irish oppressed their Belgic predecessors, and as the Normans, in turn, will be found oppressing both Celts and Saxons 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 recognize as their apostles Saint Aden and Saint 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 Wilfred was maintaining, with a willful and unscrupulous king, a struggle not unlike that which Beckett maintained with Henry II. This prince, Egfrid by name, was constantly engaged in wars with his Saxon contemporaries or the Picts and Scots. In the summer of 683 he sent an expedition under the command of Björt, one of his earls, to ravage the coast of Leinster. Björt landed probably in the Boine 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 Columnkill 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 Abbott Adamnen, to whom Ireland and Scotland are equally indebted for his admirable writings, and who might also dispute with Bede himself the title of father of British history. Adamnen 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 Bjorth'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. Aden, the apostle of Northumbria, had refused the late Egfrid's father's absolution on one occasion until he solemnly promised to restore their freedom to certain captives of this description. In the same spirit, Adamnen 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 Mith, the tent of the Abbot of Iona was pitched on the wrath of Tara, a fact which would seem to indicate that already, in little more than a century since the interdict had fallen, the edifices which made so fine a show in the days of Patrick were ruined and uninhabitable. Either at Tara or some of the royal residences, Adamnen on this visit procured the passing of a law, AD 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 Kolomkyl. It is curious here to observe that it was not until another hundred years had passed, 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 Finakta, the hospitable, who may, for his many other virtues, be also called 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 St. Molling, of the royal house of Leinster, and bishop of Fernamore, now Ferns. In the early part of his reign, Finakta 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 forever. The tribute was, at this period, enormous, fifteen thousand head of cattle annually. The decision must have been made about the time that Abbott Adhamnan was in Ireland, AD 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 St. Molling's solemn settlement prevented it from being reinforced for any length of time, except as a political or military inflection. Fernakta fell in battle in the twentieth year of his long and glorious reign, and is commemorated as a saint in the Irish calendar. St. Molling survived him three years, and St. Adhamnan so intimately connected with his reign ten years. The latter revisited Ireland in 697 under the short reign of Loinxec, and concerned himself chiefly in endeavouring to induce his countrymen to adopt the Roman rule as to the tauncher and the celebration of Easter. On this occasion there was an important sign out of the clergy under the presidency of Fland, 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. Rwadan's curse drove the kings from Tara. St. Columbquil had established the independence of Alba and preserved the bardic order. St. Molling 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 habeas corpus of that rude age, and for the maintenance and spread of sound Christian principles. Chapter 7 of A Popular History of Ireland, Book 1 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. A Popular History of Ireland, from the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics, Book 1 by Thomas Darcy McKee. Chapter 7 Kings of the Eighth Century The Kings of the Eighth Century are Congol II, surnamed Ken Mayer, who reigned seven years. Fergal, who reigned ten years. Farkata, Kenneth, Flaherty, respectively one, four, and seven years. Hugh V, surnamed Allen, nine years. Donald III, who reigned AD 739 to 759, twenty years. Neal II, surnamed Neal of the Showers, seven years. And Donach I, who reigned thirty-one years. AD 766 to 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, AD 722, we have the terrible battle of Al-Main, between Leinster and the Monarch, in which thirty thousand men were stated to have engaged, and seven thousand to have fallen. The Monarch, who had doubled the number of the Leinster Prince, was routed in 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 Hindu Brahmins. It seems that some of King Fergal'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 Kilin. 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 fulfillment. The malediction of men dedicated to the service of God has often routed hosts as gallant as were marshaled on the field of Al-Main. Fergal'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 our ma. The heavy birthing which he had cheerfully laid down was taken up by a prince, who combined the twofold character of poet and hero. Hugh the Fifth, surnamed Allen, the son of Fergal, 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 Rowan, prince of the troublesome little principality of Alidia, 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 Allen, 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 Folgaard, and marched back again, his host chanting a war song composed by their leader. In this reign died St. 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 Malaysian 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 Allen 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 fratri, of the Roman fratria, or gents, of the Germanic and Anglo-Saxon guild, and of the medieval 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 Sened fully atoned for the day of All-Main. 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 records abound with bright names and great achievements, as we shall find when we come to consider the educational and omissionary fruits of Christianity in the eighth century. While on a pilgrimage to Duro, a famous Colombian foundation in Meath, and present King's County, Donald III departed this life and in Duro, by his own desire, his body was interred. Neil II, surnamed of the Showers, son to Fergal 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 suberquette, 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, Neil 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 aisle, 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 contemporaries, who had made the same election. We learn in this same century that Kellach, son of the king of Conacht, died in holy orders, and that Beck, prince of Alidia and Artgal, son of a later king of Conacht, had taken the cross-staff of the pilgrim, either for Iona or Arma, 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 Saint Ademnan's work on the situation of the holy places, of which Bede gives an abstract. The reign of Dunnock I is the longest and the last among the kings of the eighth century, AD 776-797. The kings of Ireland had now not only abandoned Tara, but one by one the other royal residences in Meith as their usual place of abode. As a consequence a local sovereignty sprung up in the family of Omelechlein, 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 Dunnock, 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 croisiers 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 Donach preferred negotiation to war we may infer by his course towards Leinster and Munster, in the beginning of his reign, and his kingly parlay at a later period, AD 783, with Fyachna of Allidia, son of that over-exacting Hugh Rowan, whose head was taken from his shoulders at the church door of Fogard. This kingly parlay was held on an island off the methion shore, called afterwards Kings 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 Donach 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 fares 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 earthquakes were also felt, and round towers and sycopene masonry were strewn in fragments upon the ground. These visitations first occurred in the second year of Donach, 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 Donach, A.D. 797, they returned in greater force and swept rapidly along the coast of Mith. 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 missionaries abroad. Otherwise how could we estimate all that is at stake for Aaron and for Christendom in the approaching combat with the devotees of Odin, the deadly enemies of all Christian institutions? End of Chapter 7