had been taken, as we have seen, in the reigns of Hugony and Tuathal,* to confirm the right of succession to one royal family only. The frequent intrusion, however, of usurpers among the successors of these monarchs, shows how little even the strong feeling of the Irish in favour of the legitimate blood could avail against the blind zeal of popular factions, and the reckless ambition of the provincial chiefs. Far more successful, in his provisions for the descent of the monarchy, was the great O'Niell of the Nine Hostages; whose will, bequeathing his hereditary possessions to the descendants of his eight sons, was adhered to with such remarkable fidelity, that, for more than 500 years, with but one single exception, all the monarchs of Ireland were chosen from the Hy-Niell race. Through the very same causes, however, by which the power of this illustrious house was perpetuated, it was also weakened and divided. In providing for his innumerable royal descendants such means of aggrandizement,† both in the north and in the south, he was, as it were, launching so many brands of discord into future times; for the four great families, or clans, into which, under the denominations of North Hy-Niells and South Hy-Niells, his posterity was subdivided, never ceased to disturb the kingdom by their conflicting pretensions, rendering the contests for the crown as stormy as its possession was insecure. And thus the discord and mutual enmity of the kindred clans who enjoyed a right to the succession, were added to the jealous and hostile feelings of those who were by law excluded from it.

Besides these fertile sources of weakness and division, the monarchy had also to cope with a rival power in the provincial kingdom of Munster; a power, the foundation of which had been laid in earlier ages, but which had now for a long time been growing formidable to the weakened throne of Tara,t and at last usurped upon it, to the utter overthrow of the old Tuathalian constitution. The origin of this kingdom in Munster, which extended over the greater part of the south of Ireland, is to be sought in that ancient division of the island into two equal parts, northern and southern, called Leath Con, or Con's Half, and Leath Mogh, or Mogh's Half. The greater portion of the territory included in this latter moiety constituted the kingdom of Munster; and this kingdom was again subdivided into two principalities, North and South Munster, which, by the will of Ŏlill-Ollum, an acient king of the province, were bequeathed to the descendants of his two eldest sons, Eogan and Cormac Cas. From the former, whose kingdom of Desmond, or South Munster, comprehended the present counties of Waterford, Cork, and Kerry, the people of these districts were called Eoganacths, or Eugenians; while from Cas, whose descendants held, as their patrimony, Thomond, or North Munster, including the counties of Clare, Limerick, and the country about Cashel, as far as the mountains of Sliablama in Ossory,-the people of this principality derived the name so memorable in Irish warfare, of Dalgais, or Dalcassians. By an arrangement, complex, and, like most other of the rules of succession in Ireland, pregnant with the seeds of strife, it was settled that the crown of all Munster, or Leath Mogh, should be enjoyed alternately by these two kindred families; and that, while one exercised its turn of dominion over the whole province, the other was to rule only over that portion which formed its own separate patrimony. For instance, when the Eugenians succeeded to their alternate right of giving a sovereign to Leath Mogh, the Dalcassians were confined to their principality of Thomond, or North Munster; and, in like manner, when it came to the latter family to furnish the sovereign of Leath Mogh, the Eugenians relapsed into their subordinate state of kings, or dynasts, of South Munster.

See chap. vii. pp. 73. 77, of this Work.

"His (Niell's) posterity, the Hy-Niells, or Nelideans, distinguished into South and North, were descended from his eight sons, four of whom remained in Meath, which, by a decree of King Tuathal, belonged always to the reigning monarch, until it was divided among the sons of King Niell. The other four went to Ulster."O'Flaherty Ogygia, part iii. c. 85. In the same place, he gives an account of the different territories assigned respectively to the eight sons.

The first encroachment of the power of Munster on the rights of the monarchy was the act of Olliol-Olim, an early king of that province, in forcing the princes and states of Leinster to pay to him, instead of to the monarch, the fine, or mulct, called the Tribute of Eidirsgeol, which had been imposed upon them by the monarch, Conary More. In the Psalter of Cashell, as cited in those Munster annals from which Vallancey drew his materials, it is said, of Luig Meann, a successor of Olliol-Olim, that he was not only King of Leath Mogh, but was considered equal to the monarch of Ireland in power and influence over the natives.

To such a height had the power of the Kings of Munster attained, at the time when the Leabhar na Cceart, or Book of Rights, was drawn up (Transact. of the Iberno Celtic Society, art. St. Benin,) that, as appears from that curious document, they then assumed a right, which had been exercised originally only by the monarch, of subsidising and demanding tribute from the other pentarchs and provincial princes. Vallancey himself, who has traced historically the progress of the power of this province, yet seems unable to believe in its assumption of such rights: "which subsidies, however (he says,) I do not suppose to have been given or received as a mark of superiority in the King of Munster over the other pentarchs."-Law of Tanistry

illustrated.

"The bounds fixed between these two halves (says Vallancey) were from Athcliath na Mearuidhe, now called Clarin's Bridge, near Galway, to the ridge of mountains called Eisgir-Riada, on which Cluainmacnoiss and Cluainirard are situated, and so on to Dublin."-Law of Tanistry illustrated.

I have been anxious to explain clearly, even at the risk of falling into tediousness, the complex nature of the form of government by which the affairs of this province were administered, both because it affords a striking instance of the mode in which kingship was, in those times, subdivided and complicated, and because, from the prominent part taken by the princes of Munster, in most of the transactions about to be narrated, some knowledge of the territorial relations of these dynasts to each other is absolutely necessary towards a clear understanding of the course of the general history.

While such as has been just described was the complex system by which that moiety of the island called Leath Mogh was governed, the control over the northern portion, or Leath Cuinn, was all that remained, and, in some respects but nominally remained,in the hands of the monarch, whose power of asserting his supreme rights, or even of maintaining the decent dignity of the crown, had been, from other causes, considerably diminished at this period. Those royal demesnes which, under the designation of the Mensal Lands of the House of Tara, had been, in early times, set apart for the support of the monarchy, were again, after the lapse of a few centuries, diverted from that purpose; and, at last, the district of Meath itself, the ancient appendant to the crown, came to be partly, if not entirely, severed from it,* leaving little more, perhaps, of the original royal demesnes than the lands immediately surrounding Temora, or Tara. To Niell the Great, as we have seen, the mischievous policy which dictated this dismemberment of the royal territory, is to be attributed;—that prince having parcelled out the state lands, in order to provide for and aggrandize some of those numerous branches of the Hy-Niell race, both northern and southern, which had then spread themselves over the whole island, weakening that noble stock by their diffusion.

Among the various other causes, therefore, which had combined, at this crisis, to enfeeble the Irish monarchy, and adduce a power, at all times more imposing than efficient, to little better than a mere shadow of sovereignty, is to be numbered this diminution of his fiscal resources, leaving no other support for the maintenance of the regal power and state, than in those contributions and military supplies derived from the provincial princes, and furnished in general with a feeling of reluctance which only force could

overcome.

From the foregoing statements, though too much partaking, I fear, of the inherent complexity of their subject, it may be collected that the government of Ireland, though originally a pentarchy, and still nominally retaining that form,† had, by the course of events, become divided into two great rival sections, or kingdoms, between which a struggle was, at the period we have now reached, carrying on, which ended in the triumph of the throne of Munster, and the downfal of Tara's ancient dynasty.

The name of the monarch who filled the throne at the time when the Northmen made

their first serious incursions was Aidus, or Aedan, a son of the king Niell Tras- A. D. sach; and during his long reign the incursions of these pirates increased in fre- 795. quency and violence. Landing on the north-west coast of Ireland, they penetrated as far as Roscommon, laying waste all the surrounding country, and giving to the inhabitants of the interior their first bitter foretaste of the desolation and misery that were yet in store for them. The ravagers, previously to this expedition, had twice visited the sainted island of Iona, and, with that feeling of hatred to all connected with Christianity which marked their fierce career, had set fire to the monastery of Icolumbkill, and caused a great number of its holy inmates to perish in the flames. The results of their second attack were no less disastrous; and but a small proportion, it is said, of the monks of that famous fraternity were left alive. Whatever spot, indeed, had been most distinguished by popular reverence, thither these spoilers bent their course. Even the small island, Inis-Patrick, the supposed residence of the Irish apostle, did not escape their unholy rage; and an Irish geographer of that period,|| in describing the waste and desolation

* Proofs of this separation of Meath from the monarchy occur continually in the annals of the eighth and ninth centuries. Thus, Annal. Ult. ad an. 863, we are told that Lorcan, the King of Meath, was deprived of his eyes by Aodh, King of Temora, i. e. the monarch. In the IV. Mag. ad an. 769, another monarch of the same name is stated to have divided Meath between the two sons of his royal predecessor, Donchad. Meath itself, indeed, appears to have been partitioned in these times into almost incredibly small principalities, as we find not only kings for the two chief divisions of that district, namely, North Brigia and South Brigia, but even a "king of the half of South Bregia."-Annal. Ult. ad an. 814.

"Hy-Niellia (South,) another name for the whole territory of Meath, after it was possessed by the posterity of Neill-Mor, King of Ireland, and was divided into many inferior territories."-Ware.

†Thus, in Annal. IV. Mag, ad ann. 838, Connaught is called the fifth part, Choice, or Coige. "This word," says O'Brien, "being prefixed to the names of the five different provinces of Ireland, as they are esteemed each a fifth part of the kingdom, though they are not all of equal extent."-in voce, Coige.

Ware, Antiq. chap. xxiv. ad ann. 807.

Annals of Ulster, ap. Johnstone, Antiq. Scando-Celt.

Dicuil, who flourished in the latter part of the eighth and beginning of the ninth century. His geogra. phical work is entitled, "A Survey of the Provinces of the Earth."

they left behind them, says, that, in many of the smaller islands of these seas, not even a hermit was to be found.

At length rousing themselves from the state of panic and dismay into which visitations so new and alarming had at first thrown them, the natives ventured to front their A. D. invaders in the field; and, in two or three instances, with complete success. In 810. the year 810 the annals of Ulster record a slaughter of the Gals, or foreigners, in that province. The year following, they are said to have been defeated by an army of Thomonians, under the “ king of the Lake of Killarney ;" and, in 812, a sanguinary battle took place, of sufficient importance to be mentioned by foreign chroniclers,* one of whom states that the Northmen, after losing a considerable part of their force, were compelled to betake themselves to a disgraceful flight, and return to their own country. Among those usurpations on the historical fame of the Irish, which, under cover of the ambiguous title of Scots, their descendants in North Britain have so often and dexterously practised, must be numbered the claim set up by Scottish antiquarians to the honour of an alliance of some kind, at this period, between one of their kings and Charlemagne;t whereas, it was with Ireland that this league, whatever may have been its extent or object, was formed,-the name of Scotia not having been extended to the Irish settlement of Albany for nearly two centuries after this period. We have already seen by how many learned and eminent Irishmen the schools of France and Italy were, in the reign of Charlemagne, adorned; and it appears from a passage in the life of that prince by Eginhart, that, in addition to this literary intercourse, some understanding also of a political nature had been at that time entered into between France and Ireland. In referring to instances of the extended fame of Charlemagne, his secretary says, "So devoted to his will had he rendered the kings of the Scots, by his munificence, that they never addressed him otherwise than as their lord, and declared themselves his faithful subjects and vassals." He adds, that there were letters extant, addressed by these kings to the emperor, in which their submission and allegiance were in express terms announced. There is yet another proof adduced of this alliance, which, if not convincing, is at least curious. We know that the historians of the Norman conquest have found materials for their task in the tapestry of Bayeux; and, in like manner, a confirmation of the account of this league between Charlemagne and the Irish has been sought for in an ancient piece of tapestry at Versailles, where the King of Ireland is represented as standing in a row of princes all in amity with Charlemagne, and is drawn, as a mark of distinction, with the Irish harp by his side.§

Constant as was the state of alarm in which these incursions had kept every part of the kingdom, still this harassing scourge from without had no effect whatever in suspending their mutual animosities within. Twice in one month, as we are told by the annalists, the lands of the Lagenians, or people of Leinster, were laid waste by the monarch;the resistance made by them to the old Boarian tax being assigned as the cause of this infliction ;-though it seems even then to have been felt how disgraceful and melancholy was all this waste of the national strength in discord, as a verse cited by the Four Masters says, in reference to a battle fought on one of these occasions, "The poet sung not the slaughter of that field, for he came away from it with sadness in his heart."||

It was in proceeding upon one of these expeditions against Leinster that an occurrence is recorded to have taken place, affecting materially the discipline and privileges of the Irish clergy. According to the practice, for some time prevalent in Ireland, of

Rhegino, Hermannus Contractus, Eginhart. The last of these chroniclers thus records the event:"Classis Nordmannorum Hiberniam, Scotorum insulam, aggressa, commissoque cum Scotis prælio, parte non modicâ Nordmannorum interfectâ, turpiter fugiendo domum reversa est."

+ To their king, Eocha IV., or Achaius, the Scotch attributed this league; and the double tressure in the Scottish arms was supposed to have originated in the event. But one of their own countrymen, Lord Hailes, and, before him, a learned German, Schoepflen, have abundantly exposed the utter groundlessness of the pretension. See Pinkerton, also, on the subject, Inquiry, part iv. c. v. " It is certain," says this writer, in another part of the same work, "that the Irish alone are the Scots of Eginhart, and that the correspondence he mentions between Charlemagne and the reges Scottorum, King of the Scots, refers solely to Ireland. That emperor procured learned men from Ireland, but did not probably know even of the existence of the Dalreudini, or British Scots."

"Scotorum quoque Reges sic habuit ad suam voluntatem per suam munificentiam inclinatos, ut eum nunquam aliter, quam dominum seque subditos ac servos ejus pronuntiarent. Extant Epistolæ ab eis ad illum missæ, quibus hujusmodi affectus eorum erga illum indicatur."-Eginhart, de Vit. et Gest. Carol. Magni.

Kennedy, Genealog. Stuart. That there existed a tradition of some of the Irish kings having made their appearance at the court of Charlemagne, seems not improbable, from the introduction of Oberto, il re d'Ibernia," by Ariosto, and the account he gives of this young Irish prince having been brought up in France.-Orlando Furioso, canto xi. 61.

|| IV. Mag. ad. ann. 799.

"Ni ran an tetri tad cach, con do farcaibh im brogh nu."

A. D.

summoning bishops and abbots to attend the kings in their martial enterprises, the monarch, on the present occasion, was accompanied by Conmach, archbishop of Armagh, and the abbot Fothadius; the latter of whom, on account of his great knowledge of the canons of the church, was called Fothadius de Canonibus. Arrived on the frontiers of Leinster, the clergy in attendance having represented to the monarch how great was the injury to ecclesiastical discipline arising from the custom of requiring 799. persons of their profession to attend on military expeditions, besought, for themselves and their successors, an exemption from the duty. The king, appealing to the authority of Fothadius, professed himself ready to abide wholly by his decision ;* and that learned canonist, having drawn up a treatise in favour of the claims of the clergy, of which the title alone is preserved,† they were declared to be thenceforth exempt from all military service.

CHAPTER XVI.

Traditions of the Northmen respecting Ireland.-Achievements of the Sea-king, Ragnar Lod. brog.—Arrival of Turgesius with a large fleet in Ireland.-Hatred of the Northmen to Christianity. Persecution of the Saxons, its cause.—Reign of the Monarch Concobar.— Depredations of the Danes.-Dissensions of the Irish among themselves.-Life and Triumphs of Feidlim, King of Munster.-Death of Turgesius, and expulsion of the Foreigners.

THOUGH the Northmen had been taught by those frequent and signal defeats, which at length forced them to quit the country, that they had an enemy to deal with of no ordinary stamp, and who wanted but concert and coalition to be unconquerable, they had been also, on the other side, made too fully acquainted with the disunited state of the people among themselves to abandon the hope of being able ultimately to master them. They were likewise sensible, it is clear, of the weakening effects of their own scattered mode of warfare. Acting in detached expeditions, each under its own separate chief, there was wholly wanting among them that concentration of means which alone produces great and permanent effects; nor had any names sufficiently eminent to descend to posterity been as yet placed at the head of their rude desultory enterprises.

Among the adventures told of their romantic hero, Ragnar Lodbrog, it is related that, after a series of victories in England, he carried his arms into Ireland; where, having slain the king of that country, whose name, as given by the Danish historians, was Maelbric, be honoured Dublin for a whole year with his heroic presence.t In the famous Death-Song, attributed to this champion, his adventures in Ireland are, with peculiar pride commemorated; his combat with "Marstein, Erin's king, who, whelmed by the iron-sleet, allayed the hunger of the eagle and wolf;" his "stubborn struggle against three kings in Leinster, when few, we are told, "went joyous from the conflict;" and when "Erin's blood, streaming from the decks, flowed on the deep beneath."||

These romantic accounts of the great northern heroes resemble, in so far, the ancient

* Annal. ult. ad an. 803. From a circumstance related with reference to this treatise of Fothadius, it is concluded that Engus, the martyrologist, was his contemporary. The latter having lent, as we are told, his metrical works to Fothadius, the canonist returned the compliment by communicating to the poet his own Treatise on the Rights of the Clergy. (Rer. Hib. Script. Ep. Nunc) The name of Angus, however, appears to have been common to more than one hagiologist about this period; and hence arises some confusion as to their respective dates.

† Opusculum pro Cleri defensione et immunitate.

Cumque in Anglia annum victor exegisset, arma in Hiberniam transtulit; occisoque insulæ rege Melbrico per integrum annum Dublini commoratus est."-Torfæus, lib. iii. c. 10. Thus, too, in another of the Danish historians, it is said of Lodbrog," Post hoc in Hiberniam arma movit cujus rege occiso Dubliniam civitatem obsedit et cæpit."-Thomas Gheysmer, Compend. Hist. Dan. See also Langebek's Script. Rer. Danic. for the Chronicon. Erici Regis, and the Chronicle of Peter Olaus, in both of which the same fable is, in much the same terms, repeated. The original source, however, of all these fictions respecting Ragnar's Irish adventures, is to be found in Saxo Grammaticus, lib. ix.

Lodbrokar Quida, translated by the Rev. James Johnstone.

"The fertile Erin was long the great resort of the Scandinavians, who, from the internal dissensions of the natives, gained considerable footing. They, however, met with a stubborn resistance. Hence, the Islandic authors represent the Irish as most profuse of life, and the Ira far was no less terrible to the sons of Lochlin, than the 'furor Normannorum' to the rest of Europe. Some of the Norwegian kings were fond of imitating the Irish manners, and one of them could speak no language perfectly but the Calic. Several Runic pillars are inscribed to Swedes who fell in Erin."-Lodbrokar Quida. Note by the Translator.

Greek traditions, that they may be depended upon for the reality of the events which they relate far more than for that of the personages to whom they attribute them: and, in like manner as the genius of Grecian fable has collected round the head of one deified Hercules the scattered glory of various achievements performed by different heroes at different periods, so in the northern Sages and songs, for the purpose of glorifying one great national champion, events that chronology would have widely separated, tradition has, without scruple, brought together; and the single life of their royal sea-rover, Ragnar Lodbrog, is made to condense within its compass the achievements of many a heroic career, spread over a long tract of time. In a similar way, the adventures celebrated in the supposed Death-Song of the same hero, are probably but a series of poetical glimpses of the Danish warfare in these seas, and therefore little to be trusted as authority for the actual agency of Ragnar himself in those scenes.

It is clear that the Danes had, up to this period, considered Ireland but as a temporary field for their depredations; and the bitter hatred of the Christian creed, which so strongly marked their whole career, could not have been gratified more appropriately than in thus desolating a country which had become so distinguished for Christian zeal, as to have been styled by the nations of Europe the Island of Saints. When they came to be acquainted, however, with the interior of the kingdom, and saw all its means and resources, experienced the mildness of the climate, and the great fertility of the soil, it was natural that a wish for the permanent possession of so fine a country should arise forcibly in their minds; and the scale of their subsequent expeditions to its shores evinced a resolution to see that wish accomplished. They were fully, it is evident, aware, that a more extended and combined plan of invasion was now called for, as well by the difficulty as by the value of the conquest. Accordingly, about the year 815, as the common accounts state, but, according to other authorities, later in the century, the Norwegian chief, Turges, or Turgesius, arriving with a large fleet of ships and a considerable force, made a descent upon this island; and having succeeded, no less through the treacherous alliance of the Irish themselves than by means of reinforcements poured in from the north, in establishing settlements on the coasts, continued, through thirty long years of tyranny and persecution, to retain possession of the country.

In addition to the naturally fierce character of these Scandinavians, and their habitual recklessness of the lives of others, as well as of their own, they were also stung into still more savage animosity against those countries in which Christianity flourished, by the remembrance, still fresh in the hearts of themselves and their fellow Northmen, of the cruelties inflicted on them by professed champions of that creed:† and such a visitation, following so quick upon the wrong,-even where, as in this case, the penalty lights upon the innocent,-is one of those dispensations full of warning to the world, as showing that the bolt of offended justice will fall somewhere; and thus rendering responsible, by a sort of frank-pledge, the whole community of nations for all such outbreaks of violence, civil or religious, in any one of its members, as may be likely to lead to so desperate and indiscriminate a reaction.

It is to be recollected that, from kindred descent, similarity of language, and long habits of confederation, the Danes, or Normans, and the Saxons, were become as one

Thus, while in some of these northern histories it is said that Ragnar was killed in Ireland in the ninth century, others state that one of his sons was the first founder of the city of London. "Quin si vera sunt (says Torfæus) quæ nostrates de conditâ per Lodbrochis filium urbe Londinensi referunt, istum Lodbrochem a duobus aliis diversum esse oportet." Lib. iii. c. 12. The confusion that has arisen between the Ragnar Lodbrog of romance, and a chief of the same name supposed to have flourished in the ninth century, is explained thus by Mallet:-"A l'égard des autres merveilleuses aventures que Saxon met sur le compte de ce prince, il faut observer que selon toutes les apparences, elles doivent appartenir en grande partie à un autre Regner également surnommé Lodbrog, qui n'a vecu que vers la fin du neuvième siècle, et qui n'a jamais regné à Danemarc, quoiqu 'il descendit peut-être du roi ce nom."

The open avowal of the persecuting spirit, in the following monkish verses, cited by Mallet from the Acessiones Historia of Leibnitz, amounts, in its boldness, almost to the sublime :

"Hinc statuit requies illis (Saxonibus) ut nulla daretur

Donec, Gentili cultu rituque relicto,

Christicolæ fierent, aut delerentur in ævum.

O pietas benedicta Deo!

Sicque vel invitos salvari cogeret ipsos."

I have preferred using, in general, the term Danes, as being at once precise and sufficiently comprehen. sive. The term Ostmen, employed by so many of the writers on Irish history, is of comparatively recent introduction, and not found in any of our native annals. In Johnstone's Extracts, indeed from the Annals of Ulster, the Danes are called Ostmen (ad an. 799,) but without any authority from the text.

A distinction between Danes and Normans is thus drawn by M. Thierry:-"Appelés Danois ou Normands selon qu'ils venoient des isles de la mer Baltique ou de la câte montagneuse de Norwège."-Hist. de la Conquete de l'Angleterre. "The Northmen," says Sir F. Palgrave," whom our historians usually term Danes, were Anglo-Saxons under another name."