 Chapter 6 of A Popular History of Ireland, Book II. Chapter 6 Brian Ardrey, Battle of Clontarf By the deposition of Malachy II and the transfer of supreme power to the long excluded line of Heber, Brian completed the revolution which time had wrought in the ancient Celtic constitution. He threw open the sovereignty to every great family as a prize to be won by policy or force and no longer an inheritance to be determined by usage and law. The consequences were what might have been expected after his death the O'Connor's of the West competed with both O'Neill's and O'Brien's for supremacy, and a chronic civil war prepared the path for strong bow and the Normans. The term Kings with Opposition is applied to nearly all who reigned between Brian's time and Roderick O'Connor's, meaning thereby Kings who were unable to secure general obedience to their administration of affairs. During the remainder of his life, Brian wielded with a custom vigour the supreme power. The High Niles were, of course, his chief difficulty. In the year 1002 we find him at Balisader in Sligo, challenging their obedience. In 1004 we find him at Arma offering twenty ounces of gold on Patrick's altar, staying a week there and receiving hostages. In 1005 he marched through Cano, crossed the river Arne at Balishanen, proceeded through Ter Canal and Tyroen, crossed the ban into Antrim, and returned through Down and Dundalk about Lamas to Tara. In this and the two succeeding years, by taking similar circuits, he subdued Ulster without any pitched battle, and caused his authority to be feared and obeyed nearly as much at the giant's causeway as at the bridge of Athlone. In his own house of Kinkora, Brian entertained at Christmas three thousand guests, including the Danish lords of Dublin and Mann, the fugitive Earl of Kent, the young king of Scots, certain Welch princes, and those of Munster, Ulster, Leinster, and Cano besides his hostages. At the same time Malachy, with the shadow of independence, kept his unfrequented court in Westmeth, amusing himself with wine and chess, and the taming of unmanageable horses, in which last pursuit, after his abdication, we hear of his breaking a limb. To support the hospitality of Kinkora, the tributes of every province were rendered in kind at his gate on the first day of November. Cano sent eight hundred cows and eight hundred hogs, Ulster alone five hundred cows and as many hogs, and sixty loads of iron, Leinster three hundred bullocks, three hundred hogs, and three hundred loads of iron, Ulsterie, Desmond, and the smaller territories in proportion. The Danes of Dublin one hundred fifty pipes of wine and the Danes of Limerick three hundred sixty-five of red wine. The Delcasians, his own people, were exempt from all tribute and taxation, while the rest of Ireland was thus catering for Kinkora. The Lyric poets, in then nature courtears and given to enjoyment, flocked of course to this bountiful palace, the harp was seldom silent night or day, the strains of penizuric were as prodigal and incessant as the falling of the Shannon over Kililow. Among these eulogiums none is better known than that beautiful allegory of the poet Macleg, who sung that a young lady of great beauty adorned with jewels and costly dress, might perform unmolested a journey on foot through the island, carrying a straight wand on the top of which might be a ring of great value. The name of Brian was thus celebrated as in itself a sufficient protection of life, chastity and property, in every corner of the island. Not only the poets, but the more exact and simple analysts applauded Brian's administration of the laws and his personal virtues. He labored hard to restore the Christian civilization so much defaced by two centuries of pagan warfare. To facilitate the execution of the laws he enacted the general use of surnames, obliging the clans to take the name of a common ancestor with the addition of Mac or O, words which signify of or son of, a forefather. Thus the northern high-niles divided into O'Neill's, O'Donnell's, McLaughlin's, etc. The Sil Murray took the name of O'Connor and Brian's own posterity became known as O'Brien's. To justice he added munificence, and of this the churches and schools of the entire island were the recipients. Many a desolate shrine he adorned, many a bleak chancel he hung with lamps, many a long silent tower had its bells restored. Monasteries were rebuilt, and the praise of God was kept up perpetually by a devoted brotherhood. Those in bridges were repaired, and several strong stone fortresses were erected to command the passes of lakes and rivers. The vulnerable points along the Shannon and the Sewer, and the lakes as far north as the foil, were secured by forts of clay and stone. Thirteen royal houses in Munster alone are said to have been by him restored to their original uses. What increases our respect for the wisdom and energy thus displayed is the fact that the author of so many improvements enjoyed but five short years of peace after his accession to the monarchy. His administrative genius must have been great when, after a long life of warfare, he could apply himself to so many works of internal improvement and external defense. In the five years of peace just spoken of, from 1005 to 10010, Brian lost by death his second wife, a son called Donald, and his brother Markon, called in the annals head of the clergy of Munster. Hugh, the son of Mahon, also died about the same period. His favorite son and heir, Moreau, was left, and Moreau had at this time several children. Other sons and daughters were also left him, by each of his wives, so that there was every prospect that the posterity for whom he had so long sought the sovereignty of Ireland would continue to possess it for countless generations. But God disposes of what man only proposes. The Northmen had never yet abandoned any soil on which they had once set foot, and the policy of conciliation which the veteran king adopted in his old age was not likely to disarm men of their stamp. Every intelligence of the achievements of their race in other realms stimulated them to new exertions, and shamed them out of peaceful submission. Rollo and his successors had, within Brian's lifetime, founded in France the great dukedom of Normandy, while Swain had swept irresistibly over England and Wales, and prepared the way for a Danish dynasty. Pride and shame alike appealed to their warlike compatriots not to allow the fertile Iberania to slip from their grasp, and the great age of its long-dreaded king seemed to promise them an easier victory than here to fore was possible. In 1012 we find Brian at Lelfoyle repelling a new Danish invasion and giving freedom to Patrick's churches. The same year an army under Marot and another under Malachy was similarly engaged in Leinster and Meath, the former carrying his arms to Kilmanham on the south side of Dublin, the other to Houth on the north. In this year also the Gentiles, or pagan Northmen, made a descent on Cork and burned the city, but were driven off by the neighbouring chiefs. The great event, however, of the long war which had now been waged for full two hundred years between the men of Aaron and the men of Scandinavia was approaching. What may fairly be called the last field day of Christianity and paganism on Irish soil was near at hand. A taunt thrown out over a game of chess at Cancora is said to have hastened this memorable day. Melmure, Prince of Leinster, playing or advising on the game, made or recommended a false move upon which Marot, son of Brian, observed it was no wonder his friends, the Danes, to whom he owed his elevation, were beaten at Glen Mama if he gave them advice like that. Melmure, highly incensed by this illusion, all the more severe for its bitter truth, arose, ordered his horse, and rode away in haste. Brian, when he heard it, dispatched a messenger after the indignant guest, begging him to return, but Melmure was not to be pacified and refused. The next tear of him, as concerning with certain Danish agents, always open to such negotiations, those measures which led to the great invasion of the year one thousand fourteen, in which the whole Scanian race from Anglesea to Mann, north to Norway, bore an active share. Brian, when he heard it, dispatched a messenger after the indignant guest, begging him to return, but Melmure was not to be pacified and refused. We next tear of him, as concerning with certain Danish agents, always open to such negotiations, those measures which led to the great invasion of the year one thousand fourteen, in which the whole Scanian race from Anglesea to Mann, north to Norway, bore an active share. These agents, passing over to England and Mann, among the Scottish Isles, and even to the Baltic, followed up the design of an invasion on a gigantic scale. Swibny, Earl of Mann, entered warmly into the conspiracy and sent the war arrow through all those out-islands which obeyed him as Lord. A yet more formidable potentate, secured of the Orkneys, next joined the League. He was the fourteenth Earl of Orkney of Norse origin, and his power was, at this period, a balance to that of his nearest neighbour, the King of Scots. He had ruled since the year nine hundred ninety-six, not only over the Orkneys, Shetland, and Northern Hebrides, but the coasts of Caithness and Sutherland, and even Ross and Moray rendered him homage and tribute. Eight years before the Battle of Clontarf, Malcolm II of Scotland had been feigned to purchase his alliance by giving him his daughter in marriage, and the kings of Denmark and Norway treated with him unequal terms. The hundred inhabited Isles which lie between Yell and Mann, Isles which, after their conversion, contained three hundred churches and chapels, sent in their contingents to swell the following of the renowned Earl's Sigurd. As his fleet bore southward from Kirkwall, it swept the subject coast of Scotland and gathered from every lough its galleys and its fighting men. The rendezvous was the Isle of Mann where Subny had placed his own forces under the command of Brodar or Broderick, a famous leader against the Britons of Wales and Cornwall. In conjunction with Sigurd the Manxmen sailed over to Ireland where they were joined in the Liffey by Carl Knutson, Prince of Denmark, at the head of fourteen hundred champions clad in armour. Citric of Dublin stood or affected to stand neutral in these preparations, but Malmura of Leinster had mustered all the forces he could command for such an expedition. He was himself the head of the powerful family of Oberne and was followed in his alliances by others of the descendants of K. R. Moore. O'Noland and O'More were the truer sense of duty fought on the patriotic side. Brian had not been ignorant of the exertions which were made during the summer and winter of the year one thousand thirteen to combine an overwhelming force against him. In his exertions to meet force with force it is gratifying to every believer in human excellence to find him actively supported by the prince whom he had so recently deposed. Malachy during the summer of one thousand thirteen had indeed lost two sons in skirmishes with Citric and Malmura and had therefore his own personal wrongs to avenge, but he cordially cooperated with Brian before those occurrences and now loyally seconded it all his movements. The lords of the southern half-kingdom, the lords of Desis, Firmoy, Inchekeen, Corkabaskin, Kinomiki, Cary, and the lords of Hymeny and Hyfushera in Cano hastened to his standard. O'More and O'Noland of Leinster and Donald, Stuart of Marr in Scotland were the other chieftains who joined him before Klontarf, besides those of his own kindred. None of the northern high-nail took part in the battle, they had submitted to Brian, but they never cordially supported him. Klontarf, the lawn or meadow of bulls, stretches along the crescent shaped north strand of Dublin harbour from the ancient salmon weir at Ballybow Bridge toward the promontory of Houth. Both horns of the crescent were held by the enemy, and communicated with his ships. The inland point terminating in the roofs of Dublin, and the seaward marked by the lion-like head of Houth. The meadowland between sloped gently upward and inward from the beach, and for the myriad duels which formed the ancient battle, no field could present less positive, vantage ground to combatants on either side. The invading force had possession of both wings, so that Brian's army which had first encamped at Kilmenham must have crossed the Liffey for higher up, and marched round by the present drum-condra in order to reach the appointed field. The day seems to have been decided on by formal challenge, for we are told Brian did not wish to fight in the last week of Lent. But a pagan oracle having assured victory to Brodar, one of the northern leaders, if he engaged on a Friday, the invaders insisted on being led to battle on that day. And it so happened that, of all Fridays in the year, it fell on the Friday before Easter, that awful anniversary when the altars of the church are veiled throughout Christendom, and the dark stone is rolled to the door of the mystic sepulcher. The forces on both sides could not have fallen short of twenty thousand men. Under Carl Knutson fought the ten hundred in armor, as they are called in the Irish annals, or the fourteen hundred as they are called in northern chronicles. Under Brodar the Manxman and the Danes of Anglesea and Wales, under Sigurd the men of Orkney in its dependencies, under Melmura of Leinster his own tribe and their kinsmen of Ophelie and Cullen, the modern Kildare and Wicklow, under Brian's son Meroe were the tribes of Munster, under the command of Malachy those of Mith, under the Lord of Hymeny, the men of Knull, and the steward of Marr had also his command. The engagement was to commence with the morning so that as soon as it was day, Brian, crucifix in hand, harangued his army. On this day Christ died for you, was the spirit stirring appeal of the venerable Christian king. At the entreaty of his friends, after this review, he retired to his tent, which stood at some distance and was guarded by three of his aides. Here he alternately prostrated himself before the crucifix or looked out from the tent door upon the dreadful scene that lay beyond. The sun rose to the zenith and took his way towards the west, but still the roar of the battle did not abate. Sometimes as their right hands swelled with the sword-hills, well-known warriors might be seen falling back to bade them in a neighboring spring and rushing again into the melee. The line of the engagement extended from the Semenware towards Houth not less than a couple of miles so that it was impossible to take in at a glance the probabilities of victory. Once during the heat of the day one of his servants said to Brian, A vast multitude are moving toward us. What sort of people are they, inquired Brian? They are green-naked people, said the attendant. Oh, replied the king, they are the Danes in armor. The utmost fury was displayed on all sides. Segerd Earl of Orkney fell by Thurlow, grandson of Brian, and Enrudd, one of the captains of the men in armor, by the hand of his father, Moro, but both father and son perished in the dreadful conflict. Melmura of Leinster with his lords fell on one side and Conning, nephew of Brian, O'Kelly, O'Hane, and the steward of Mar on the other. Hardly a nobly born man escaped, or sought to escape. The ten hundred in armor and three thousand others of the enemy, with about an equal number of the men of Ireland, lay dead upon the field. One division of the enemy were toward sunset retreating to their ships when Brodar, the Viking, perceiving the tent of Brian standing apart without a guard, and the aged king on his knees before the crucifix, rushed in, cut him down with a single blow, and then continued his flight. But he was overtaken by the guard and dispatched by the most cruel death they could devise. Thus on the field of battle, in the act of prayer, on the day of our Lord's crucifixion, fell the Christian king in the cause of native land and Holy Cross. Many elegy's have been dedicated to his memory, and not the least noble of these strains belonged to his enemies. In death as in life he was still Brian of the tributes. The deceased hero took his place at once in history, national and foreign. On hearing of his death, Melmura, Archbishop of Armaul, came with his clergy to swords in Meath and conducted the body to Armaul, where with his son and nephew and the Lord of Desi's he was solemnly interred in a new tomb. The fame of the event went out through all nations. The Chronicles of Wales, of Scotland, and of man. The annals of Atamar and Marianas. The sagas of Denmark and the Isles all record the event. In the Orcades of Thermodus Torpheus, a whale over the defeat of the Islesmen is heard, which they call Orkney's Woe and Randvar's Bane. The Norse settlers in Caithness saw terrific visions of Alhalla the day after the battle. In the Nyala saga, a Norwegian prince is introduced as asking after his men, and the answer is they were all killed. Malcolm of Scotland rejoiced in the defeat and death of his dangerous and implacable neighbor. Brian's battle as it is called in the sagas was in short such a defeat as prevented any general northern combination for the subsequent invasion of Ireland. Not that the country was entirely free from their attacks till the end of the eleventh century, but from the day of Qantas forward, the long cherished northern idea of a conquest of Ireland seems to have been gloomily abandoned by that indomitable people. End of chapter six. Chapter seven of a popular history of Ireland, book two. 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 two by Thomas Darcy McGee. Chapter seven effects of the rivalry of Brian and Malachi on the ancient Constitution. If a great battle is to be accounted lost or one as it affects principles rather than reputations, then Brian lost at Clontar. The leading ideas of his long and political life were evidently centralization and an hereditary monarchy to beat back for an invasion to conciliate and to enlist the Irish-born Danes under his standard were preliminary steps. For Murag, his firstborn, and for Murag's descendants, he hoped to found an hereditary kinship after the type universally copied throughout Christendom. He was not ignorant of what Alfred had done for England, Herald for Norway, Charlemagne for France, and Otto for Germany, and it was inseparable from his imperial genius to desire to reign in his posterity, long after his own brief term of life's way should be forever ended. A new center of royal authority should be established on the banks of the great middle river of the island, itself the best bond of union, as it was the best highway of intercourse. The Dalgaes dynasty should there flourish for ages and the descendants of Brian and of the tributes through after centuries eclipse the glory of the descendants of Neal of the hostages. It is idle enough to call the projector of such a change and usurper and a revolutionist. Usurper he clearly was not, since he was elevated to power by the action of the old legitimate electoral principle, revolutionist he was not, because his design was defeated at Klontarf in the death of his eldest son and grandson. Not often have three generations of princes of the same family been cut off on the same field. Yet at Klontarf it so happened. Hence when Brian fell and his heir with him and his heirs heir, the projected Dalgaes dynasty, like the royal oak at Adair, was cut down and its very roots destroyed. For a new dynasty to be left suddenly without indisputable heirs is ruinous to its pretensions and partisans. And in this the event of the battle proved destructive to the Celtic constitution. Not from the Anglo-Norman invasion, but from the day of Klontarf we may date the ruin of the old electoral monarchy. The spell of ancient authority was effectually broken and a new one was to be established. Time which was indispensable was not given. No prince of the blood of Brian succeeded immediately to himself. On Klontarf Morag and Morag's heir fell in the same day and hour. The other sons of Brian had no direct title to the succession and naturally enough the deposed Maliki resumed the rank of monarch without the consent of Munster, but with the approval of all the princes who had witnessed with ill-conceived envy the sudden ascendancy of the sons of Kennedy. While Macleg was lamenting for Brian by the Cascade of Killaloe, the laureate of Terra in an elegy over a lord of Brefne was singing, joyful are the race of Khan after Brian's fall in the battle of Klontarf. A new dynasty is rarely the work of one able man. Designed by genius it must be built up by a secession of politic princes before it becomes an essential part of the framework of the state. So all history teaches and Irish history after the death of Brian very clearly illustrates that truth. Equally true is that when a nation breaks up of itself or from external forces and is not soon consolidated by a conqueror, the most natural result is the aggrandizement of a few great families. Thus it was in Rome when Julius was assassinated and in Italy when the Empire of the West fell to pieces of its own weight. The kindred of the late sovereign will be sure to have a party, the chief of innovators will have a party and there is likely to grow up a third or moderate party. So it fell out in Ireland. The high neals of the North deprived of the secession rallied about the princes of Aliach as their head. Maoth, left crownless, gave room to the ambition of the sons of Malachy, who under the name of Omeklin, took provincial rank. Osary, like Issachar, long groaning beneath the burdens of Terra and of Cachal, cruelly revenged on the Dalgaes, returning from Qantar, the subjection to which Mehan and Brian had forcibly reduced that borderland. The Eugenians of Desmond withdrew and discussed from the banner of Donaco Brian because he had openly proclaimed his hostility to the alternate secession and left his surviving clansmen as easy prey to the enraged Osorians. Lenster soon afterwards passed from the house of Obern to that of McMurah. The O'Brien's maintained their dominant interest in the South, as after many local struggles the O'Connor's did in the West. For a hundred and fifty years after the death of Malachy II, the history of Ireland is mainly the history of these five families, O'Neill's, Omeklin's, McMurro's, O'Brien's and O'Connor's. And for ages after the Normans enter on the scene, the same provincial spirit, the same family ambitions, feuds, hates and coalitions, with some exceptional passages, characterize the whole history. Not that there will be found any want of heroism or piety or self-sacrifice, or of any virtue or faculty necessary to constitute a state, save and accept the power of combination alone. Thus judged by what came after him and what was happening in the world abroad, O'Brien's design to recentralize the island seems the highest dictate of political wisdom, in the condition to which the Norwegian and Danish wars had reduced it, previous to his elevation to the monarchy. Malachy II, of the events of whose second reign some mention will be made hereafter, held the sovereignty after O'Brien's death until the year 1023, when he died in edifying death in one of the islands of Loch Enel, near the present Mullengar. He is called in the annals of Clon McNoise, the last king of Ireland, of Irish blood that had the crown. An ancient quatrain, quoted by Geoffrey Keating, is thus literally translated, after the happy Melliglin, son of Donald, son of Dana, each noble king ruled his own tribe, but Aaron owned no sovereign lord. The annals of the 11th and 12th centuries curiously illustrate the workings of this anarchical constitution. To employ a phrase first applied to the Germanic Confederation. After Malachy's death, says the quaint old analyst of Clon McNoise, this kingdom was without a king twenty years, during which time the realm was governed by two learned men, one called Kahn O'Loughlin, a well-learned temporal man and chief poet of Ireland, the other Corcoran cleric, a devote and holy man that was anchored of all Ireland, whose most dividing was at Lismore. The land was governed like a free state and not like a monarchy by them. Nothing can show the headlessness of the Irish Constitution in the 11th century clearer than this interregnum. No one prince could rally strength enough to be elected, so that two arbitrators, an illustrious poet and a holy priest, were appointed to take cognizance of national causes. The associating together of a priest and a layman, a southerner and a northerner, is conclusive proof that the bond of Celtic unity, frittered away during the Danish period, was never afterwards entirely restored. Kahn O'Loughlin, having been killed in Teffia after a short jurisdiction, the Holy Corcoran exercised his singular jurisdiction until his decease, which happened at Lismore, AD 1040. His death produced a new paroxysm of anarchy, out of which a new organizer arose among the tribes of Lester. This was Dermid, son of Duna, who died AD 1005, when Dermid must have been a mere infant, as he does not figure in the annals till the year 1032, and the acts of young princes are seldom overlooked in Gaelic chronicles. He was the first McMurray who became King of Lester, that royalty having been in the O'Burn family until the son of Melmoura of Clontarf was deposed by O'Neill in 1035, and retired to a monastery in Cologne, where he died in 1052. In 1036 or 1037, Dermid, captured Dublin and Waterford, married the granddaughter of Brian, and by 41 was strong enough to assume the rank of ruler of the southern half-kingdom. This dignity he held with a strong and warlike hand thirty years, when he fell in battle at Ova in Miethe. He must have been at that time full of three score years and ten. He is described by the Elagic Bards as a ready complexion, with teeth laughing in danger and possessing all the virtues of a warrior king, whose death, as the lamentation, brought scarcity of peace with it, so that there will not be peace, there will not be armistice between Miethe and Lester. It may well be imagined that every new resort to the two-third test in the election of Ardrig should bring scarcity of peace to Ireland. We can easily understand the ferment of hope, fear, intrigue, and passion which such an occasion caused among the great rival families. What canvassing there was in Kinkora and Cashel, at Kruaken and Aliak, and at Fenimore, what piecing and patching of interests, what libels on opposing candidates, what exultation in the succession, what discontent in the defeated camp. The successful candidate for the southern half-kingdom after Dermid's death was Thurlow, grandson of Brian, and foster son of the late ruler. In his reign, which lasted thirty-three years, the political fortunes of his house revived. He died in peace at Kinkora, eighty, ten, eighty-seven, and the war of succession again broke out. The rival candidates at this period were Murrow O'Brien, son of the late king, whose ambition was to complete the design of Brian, and Donald, prince of Aliak, the leader of the northern high Niows. Two abler men seldom divided a country by their equal ambition. Both are entered in the annals as kings of Ireland, but it is hard to discover that during all the years of their contest, either of them submitted to the other. To chronicle all the incidents of the struggle would take too much space here, and as it was to be expected, a third party profited most by it. The West came in, in the person of O'Connor, to lord it over both north and south, and to add another element to the dynastic confusion. This brief abstract of our civil affairs after the death of Brian presents us with the extraordinary spectacle of a country without a constitution working out the problem of its stormy destiny, in despite of all internal and external dangers. Everything now depended on individual genius and energy, nothing on system, usage or prescription. Each leading family and each province became in turn the head of the state. The supreme title seems to have been fatal for a generation to the family that obtained it, for in no case is there a lineal descent of the crown. The prince of Aliak, or Kinkora, naturally preferred his permanent patrimony to an uncertain tenure of terror. An office not attached to a locality became, of course, little more than an arbitrary title. Hence the titular king of Ireland might for one lifetime reign by the shannon, in the next by the bond, in the third by Loch Harib. The supremacy thus came to be considered a merely personal appearance, was carried about in the old king's tent, or on the young king's cropper, deteriorating and decaying by every transportation it underwent. Herein we have the origin of Irish disunion with all its consequences, good, bad and indifferent. Are we to blame Brian for this train of events against which he would have provided a sharp remedy in the hereditary principle? Or on the other hand, are we to condemn Malachi, the possessor of legitimate power, if he saw in that remedy only the ambition of an inspiring family already grown too great? There's was in fact the universal struggle of reform and conservatism. The reformer and the heirs of his work were cut off on clontarth. The abuses of the elective principle continued unrestrained by ancient, salutary usage and prejudice, and the land remained attempting prey to such adventurers, foreign or native, as dare undertake to mold power out of its chaotic materials. End of chapter seven. Chapter eight of a popular history of Ireland, book two. 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 two, by Thomas Darcy McGee. Chapter eight. Ladder Days of the Northmen in Ireland. Though Ireland dates the decay of Scandinavian power from Good Friday, 1014, yet the north did not wholly cease to send forth its warriors, nor were the shores of the Western Isles less tempting to them than before. The second year after the Battle of Clontarth, Canute founded his Danish dynasty in England, which existed in no little splendor during 37 years. The Saxon line was restored by Edward the Confessor in the forty-third year of the century, only to be extinguished forever by the Norman conquest twenty-three years later. Scotland, during the same years, was more than once subject to invasion from the same ancient enemy. Malcolm II and the brave usurper Macbeth fought several engagements with the northern leaders, and generally with brilliant success. By a remarkable coincidence, the Scottish Chronicles also date the decadence of Danish power on their coasts from 1014, though several engagements were fought in Scotland after that year. Malachi II had promptly followed up the victory of Clontarth by the capture of Dublin, the destruction of its fort, and the exemplary chastisement of the tribes of Lentster, who had joined Malmura as allies of the Danes. Citric himself seems to have eluded the suspicions and vengeance of the conquerors by a temporary exile, as we find in the secession of the Dublin Vikings, one hymen and usurper entered as ruling part of a year while Citric was in banishment. His family interest, however, was strong among the native princes, and whatever his secret sympathies may have been, he had taken no active part against them in the battle of Clontarth. By his mother, the lady Gormley of Offaly, he was half O'Connor, by marriage he was son-in-law of Brian and uterine brother of Malachi. After his return to Dublin, when in 1018 Brian, son of Malmura, fell prisoner into his hands, as if to clear himself of any lingering suspicion of an understanding with that family, he caused his eyes to be put out, a cruel but customary punishment in that age. This act procured for him the deadly enmity of the warlike mountaineers of Wicklow, who, in the year 1022, gave him a severe defeat at Delgany. Even this he outlived, and died seven years later the acknowledged lord of his town in Fortress. Forty years after his first secession to that title he was succeeded by his son, grandson, and great-grandson during the remaining half-century. The kingdom of Lentster, in consequence of the defeat of Malmura, the incapacity of Brian, and the destruction of other claimants of the same family, passed to the family of Mechmura, another branch of the same ancestry. Dermid, the first and most distinguished king of Lentster of this house, took Waterford, AD 1037, and so reduced its strength, that we find its host no longer formidable in the field. Those of Limerick continued their homage to the house of Kinkora, while the descendants of Citric recognize Dermid of Lentster as their sovereign. In short, all the Dano-Irish from thence forward began to knit themselves kindly to the soil, obeying the neighboring princes, to march with them to battle, and to pursue the peaceful calling of merchants upon sea. The only peculiarly Danish undertaking we hear of, again in our annals, was the attempt of a united fleet, equipped by Dublin, Wexford, and Waterford, in the year 1088, to retake court from the men of Desmond, when they were driven with severe loss to their ships. Their few subsequent expeditions were led abroad, into the Hebrides, the Isle of Man, or Wales, where they generally figure as auxiliaries or mercenaries in the service of several local princes. They appear in Irish battles only as contingents to the native armies, led by their own leaders, and recognized as a separate but subordinate force. In the year 1073 the Dublin Danes did homage to the monarch Thurlow, and from 1095 until his death, 80, 1119, they recognized no other Lord, but Merkartek, Moore O'Brien. This king, at their own request, had also nominated one of his family as Lord of the Danes and Welsh of the Isle of Man. The wealth of these Irish Danes, before and after the time of Brian, may be estimated by the annual tribute which Limerick paid to that prince, a pipe of red wine for every day in the year. In the year 1029 Olaf, son of Citric of Dublin, being taken prisoner by O'Regan, the Lord of East Meath, paid for his ransom twelve hundred cows, seven score British horses, three score ounces of gold, sixty ounces of white silver as his feather-ounce, the sword of Carlos, besides the usual legal fees, for recording these profitable formalities. Being now Christians, they also began to found and endow churches, with the same liberality which their pagan fathers had once enriched the temples of Uppsala and Trondheim. The oldest religious foundations in the seaports they possessed owe their origin to them, but even as Christians they did not lose sight of their nationality. They contended for and obtained Dano-Irish bishops, men of their own race, speaking their own speech, to preside over the seas of Dublin, Waterford and Limerick. When the Irish synods or primates asserted over them any supervision which they were unwilling to admit, except in the case of St. Malachy, they usually invoked the protection of the sea of Canterbury, which after the Norman conquest of England became by far the most powerful archbishopric in either island. In the third quarter of this century there arose in the Isle of Man a fortunate leader who may almost be called the last of the sea kings. This was Goddard Crovin, the white-handed son of an Icelandic prince, and one of the followers of Harold Harfugger and Earl Tosti in their invasion of Northumbria, A.D. 1066. Returning from the defeat of his chiefs, Goddard saw and seized upon man as the center of future expedition of his own, in the course of which he subdued the Hebrides, divided them with the gallant summer-lead, ancestor of the McDonalds of the Isles, and established his son Lagman, afterwards put to death by King Magnus Barefoot, as his viceroy in the Orkneys and Shetlands. The weakened condition of the Danish settlement at Dublin attracted his ambition, and where he entered as a mediator he remained as a master. In the succession of the Dublin Vikings he is assigned a reign of ten years, and his whole course of conquest seems to have occupied some twenty years, A.D. 1077 to 1098. At length the star of this Viking of the Irish sea paled before the mightier name of a king of Norway, whose brilliant ambition had a still shorter span. The story of this Magnus, called it is said from his adoption of the Scottish Kilt, Magnus Barefoot, forms the eleventh saga in the Chronicles of the Kings of Norway. He began to reign in the year 1093, and soon after undertook an expedition to the south, with many fine men and good shipping. Taking the Orkneys on his way he sent their earls prisoners to Norway, and placed his own son Sigurd in their stead. He overran the Hebrides, putting Lagman, son of Godard-Crowin, to death. He spared only the Holy Island, as Ionia was now called, even by the Northmen, and there, in after years, his own bones were buried. The Isles of Man and Anglesey and the Coast of Wales shared the same fate, and thence he retraced his course to Scotland, where born in his galley across the isthmus of Cantier to fulfill an old prophecy he claimed possession of the land on both sides of Lakao. It was while he wintered in the southern Hebrides, according to the saga, that he contracted his son Sigurd with the daughter of Merkertak O'Brien, called by the Northmen by Adminia. In summer he sailed homeward, and did not return southward till the ninth year of his reign, A.D. 1102, when his son, Sigurd, had come of age, and bore the title of King of the Orkneys and Hebrides. He sailed into the West Sea, says the saga, with the finest men who could be God in Norway. All the powerful men of the country followed him, such as Sigurd Hannousson and his brother Ulf, Vid Cunner Johnson, Dog Ellison, Sorker of Sagan, Evind Ulberg, the King's Marshall, and many other great men. On the intelligence of this fleet, having arrived in Irish waters, according to the annals, Merkertak and his allies marched forth to Dublin, where, however, Magnus made peace with them for one year, and Merkertak gave his daughter to Sigurd with many jewels and gifts. That winter Magnus spent with Merkertak at Kinkora, and towards spring both kings went westward with their army, all the way to Ulster. This was one of those annual visitations which kings, whose authority was not yet established, were accustomed to make. The circuit, as usual, was performed in about six weeks, after which the Irish monarch returned home, and Magnus went on board his fleet at Dublin, to return to Norway. According to the Norse account, he was on the coasts of Ulidia, down, where he expected cattle for ship provision, which Merkertak had promised to send him, but the Irish version would seem to imply that he went on shore to seize the cattle per force. It certainly seems incredible that Merkertak should send cattle to the shore of Stranford, Laos, from the pastures of Thomand, when they might be more easily driven to Dublin, or the mouth of the Boeing. The cattle had not made their appearance on the eve of Bartholomew's mass. August 23, AD 1103 says the saga, so when the sun rose in the sky, King Magnus himself went on shore with the greater part of his men. King Magnus continues the scald, had a helmet on his head, a red shield, in which was inlaid a gilded lion, and was girt with the sword of Legbiter, of which the hilt was of ivory, and the hand-grip wound about with gold thread, and the sword was extremely sharp. In his hand he had a short spear and a red silk short cloak over on which both bore four and behind was embroidered a lion in yellow silk, and all men acknowledged that they had never seen a brisker, stately or man. A dust cloud was seen far inland, and the Northmen fell into order of battle. It proved, however, by their own account to be the messengers with the promised supply of cattle, but after they came up and while returning to the shore they were violently assailed on all sides by the men of down. The battle is described with true Homeric vigor of Sturluson. The Irish, he says, shot boldly, and although they fell in crowds there came always two in place of one. Magnus with most of his nobles were slain on the spot, but Vidcunner Johnson escaped the shipping with the king's banner and the sword leg-biter, and the saga of Magnus Barefoot concludes thus. Now when King Sigurd had heard that his father had fallen he set off immediately, leaving the Irish king's daughter behind and proceeding directly to Norway. The analysts of Ulster barely record the fact that Magnus, King of Lachlan and the Isles, was slain by the Ulidians with a slaughter of his people about him, while on a predatory excursion. They placed the event in the year 1104. Our account with the Northmen may here be closed. Born along by the living current of events we leave them behind, high up on the remote channels that are subject to no more. They have taken wing to their native North, where they may croak yet a little while over the cold and crumbling alters of Odin and Acethor. The bright light of the Gospel has penetrated even to those last taunts of paganism, and the fierce but not ungenerous race with which we have been polite from those of their works which have yet been made public. All connection between the two races had long ceased before the first scholars of the North began to investigate the earlier annals of their own country, and then they were content with a very vague and general knowledge of the Western Island for which their ancestors had so fiercely contended throughout so many generations. The relations with Norse names are shown. Answering to Locke's Foil, Swilly, Lawn, Strangford and Carlingford, the provincial lines of Ulster and Cannot are rudely traced, and the situation of Inniskillen, Tera, Dublin, Glendalic, Waterford, Limerick, Swearvik accurately laid down. It is thought that all those places were the same, as the Plunkett's, McIvers, Archbold's, Harald's, Stax's, Skiddy's, Cruises and McAuliffe's are derived from the same origin. During the contest we have endeavored to describe, three hundred and ten years had passed since the warriors of Laughlin first landed on the shores of Arron. Ten generations of powerful on-sea first burst upon the shield-shaped Isle of Saints. At the close of the eighth century we cast back a grateful retrospect on the Christian ages of Ireland. Can we do so now at the close of the eleventh? Alas, far from it. Bravely and in the main successfully, as the Irish have borne themselves, they come out of that cruel, treacherous, interminable war with many rents and third-Christian century. Odin has not conquered, but all the worst vices of warfare, its violence, its impiety, discontent, self-indulgence, and contempt for the sweet paths of peace and mild consoles of religion, these must and did remain long after Dane and Norwegian have forever disappeared. End of Chapter 8 End of a popular history of Ireland from the 19th century, by Thomas Darcy McGee.