It would be undoubtedly not the least interesting fact in our history at this period, could it be well ascertained that the great Alfred (as some English chroniclers have alleged) was sent by his father for religious instruction to Ireland, and there confided to the care of a female of high reputation for Christian knowledge, named Modwenna.* The religious woman of this name, best known in our ecclesiastical annals, is in general supposed to have flourished in the seventh century; but their exist probable grounds for assigning her to the ninth, which would remove one at least of the few difficulties that stand in the way of so interesting an episode in the great hero's life.

In the list of the authors of the ninth century must not be forgotten the name of Cormac, King of Munster; who, to his compound designation of prelate-king, superadds another, not, I fear, less incongruous, that of poet-historian. Whether there be still extant any copy of his famous Psalter of Cashel,t-a work containing, as we are told, besides other matter, all the details of the Milesian romance, as then brought together and methodized by his pen,-appears a point by no means easy to be ascertained; nor, except as a subject of mere antiquarian curiosity, can it be accounted much worth the trouble of inquiry. The small and beautiful chapel erected by him, on the Rock of Cashel, and still bearing his name, is assuredly, as an index of the progress of the useful and elegant arts at this period, a much more important object of interest and research.

By some of the inquirers into our antiquities it has been asserted, that neither in domestic or ecclesiastical architecture was stone and cement of lime used by the native Irish, at any period antecedent to the twelfth century; while others, on the contrary, maintain that there existed structures of this kind for religious purposes as far back as the fifth and sixth centuries; and some have even been of opinion that both the Round Towers, and the ancient churches near which they stand, were alike the work of the Christian Irish in those ages.

About half-way, perhaps, between these two widely different views may be found, as in most such disputes respecting Irish antiquities, the point nearest to the truth. That it was an unusual practice in Ireland, even so late as the twelfth century, to erect structures of stone for any purpose, domestic or ecclesiastical, may be concluded from one or two authentic anecdotes of that period. When the celebrated archbishop, Malachy, undertook, on his return from Rome to Ireland, to build, at Banchor, a small stone oratory, after the fashion of those he had seen in other countries, considerable wonder was ex

"If it be true, as some chroniclers intimate, that infirm health occasioned his father, in obedience to the superstition of the day, to send him to Modwenna, a religious lady in Ireland, celebrated into sanctity, such an expedition must, by its new scenes, have kept his curiosity alive, and have amplified his information."Turner's Hist. of the Anglo-Saxons, book ii. chap. viii. Mr. Turner cites as the authorities for this supposition, Hist. Aurea Johann. Tinmuth. MSS. in Bib. Bodl., and the chronicler Higden. He might have found others, and still stronger, in the following passage of Usher:-" Ut de Polydoro Vergilio et Nicolao Harpsfeldio nihil dicam, qui nono post Christum seculo Modvennan et Ositham floruisse volunt, illos secuti auctores, qui Alfredum filium regis Anglorum a Monennâ vel Modwennâ nostrâ gravi quo laborabat morbo liberatum magnum illum Aluredum, &c. &c."-De Brit. Eccles. Primord. The cure, here said to have been performed on Alfred by Modwenna, is mentioned also by Hanmer. Unluckily Asser, in his Life of Alfred, a work worthy of its noble subject, makes no mention of the visit of his hero to Ireland; and it is most probable that some confusion between the great Alfred and a king of the Northumbrian Britons, named Aldfrid, who really did pass some years of exile in Ireland (see p. 144, of this Work,) may have given rise to the tradition mentioned in the text. There is still extant an Irish poem, said to have been written by the Northumbrian king during his banishment, which the reader, curious in such matters, may find in Hardiman's Irish Minstrelsy, vol. ii. notes; though of the genuineness of this poem, it is right to add, Dr. O'Connor gives the following cautious opinion:-" Ego minime asseram genuinum esse Alfredi fœtus."-Annotat. &c.

"This was a collection (says Mr. O'Reilly) of Irish records, in prose and verse, transcribed from more ancient documents, such as the Psalter of Tarah, &c. It contained also many original pieces, some of them written by Cormac himself. This book was extant in Limerick in the year 1712, as appears by a large folio MS. in the Irish language, preserved in the library of Cashel, written in Limerick in that year, and partly transcribed from the original Psalter of Cashel." The writer adds:-"The original Psalter of Cashel was long supposed to be lost, but it is now said to be deposited in the British Museum."-Transactions of the IbernoCelt. Society. In the time of Sir James Ware this work was, according to his account, "yet extant, and held in high esteem;" and that some manuscript, professing to be this Psalter, was in the hands of Mr. Astle, appears from his own declaration:-"The oldest Irish MS. which we have discovered is the Psalter of Cashel, written about the end of the tenth century."-Origin of Writing. For other particulars respecting this celebrated Psalter, see Nicholson, Irish Hist. Lib., Charles O'Connor's Reflections, &c. (Collectan. de Reb. Hib., vol. iii) and Stillingfleet, Orig. Britann. 274, 275, &c.

Thus Harris, in speaking of St. Malachy; "He built a stone oratory at Banchor, which is said to be the first of the sort that was erected in Ireland." (Ware's Bishops, at Malachy O'Morgair.) In the Annals of Ulster, however, for the year 788, there is express mention of a stone oratory at Armagh; and a stone church is said, by the Four Masters, to have been built at Clonmacnois by the monarch, Flann Siona, in 904. In the following century the instances of such architecture are numerous; and a large church of Armagh is described, in 1020, as being not only constructed of stone, but having a leaden roof," In Damliace mor con a thuighi do luaighe."-Annal. Ult.

§ Historical and Critical Inquiry into the Origin and Primitive Use of the Irish Pillar Tower, by Colonel Hervey de Montmorency-Morris. Sir Richard Hoare, too, in speaking of Cormac's chapel, says, " Its masonry, architecture, and ornaments, are certainly the production of a very early age; and the Round Tower was probably erected at or near the same period." See for notice of this very untenable hypothesis respecting the Round Towers, p. 39, of this Work.

pressed by the people at the unusualness of the sight, stone buildings being then a novelty in that part of the country. A few years later, too, (1161,) when Roderic O'Connor, King of Connaught, erected a palace or castle of stone at Tuam, so much surprise did the building excite in the natives, that it became celebrated among them under the name of the Wonderful Castle.

Notwithstanding all this, the remains still existing in Ireland of stone structures, manifestly of great antiquity, leave not a doubt that the art of building with cemented stone was, however rarely, yet very early practised in this country. Without laying much stress on the instance afforded in the ancient Damliag, or House of Stone, said to have been erected by St. Kienan as early as the fifth century, some of the ruins in the valley of Glendalough, and parts of the small church of St. Doulach, near Dublin, present features of remote antiquity which prove them to be of a much earlier date than the chapel of Cormac at Cashel; this latter structure being clearly a specimen of the more ornate stage of that old, circular style of architecture (called Saxon, but evidently a corruption of the Roman, or Greciant) which, in the church of St. Doulach, is seen in its ruder and yet undecorated form. It may be remarked, as peculiar to these ancient Irish churches, that their roofs are of stone; and that the crypts, instead of being subterranean, as in the ancient British churches, are situated aloft between the ceiling and the angular roof of stone.

A certain perverse school of antiquarians, who take pleasure in attributing the credit of Ireland's remains to any other race of people than her own, finding it in vain to deny that buildings of cemented stone were existing among them in the ninth century, have, without a shadow of proof, ascribed all these early structures to the Danes. How entirely groundless is the supposition that the Round Towers were the work of these foreign marauders, has already been sufficiently shown; and the hypothesis, assigning to them the curious stone-roofed chapels, the mysterious sculptures in Glendalough, and other such early ecclesiastical remains, is to the full as gratuitous and absurd. It appears to be questionable, indeed, whether there exist any vestiges of stone buildings at present in Ireland that can, on any satisfactory grounds, be ascribed to the Northmen; and it is probable that those raths, or earthern-works, raised as military defences, in the construc. tion of which they took for models the artificial mounds used as fortresses by the natives, are the only remains of any description that can, with tolerable certainty, be ascribed to Danish workmanship.

In the life of King Cormac there occur some circumstances connected with the ecclesiastical affairs of his time, which might justify a brief review of the condition of the Irish church at this period. But, as a more fitting occasion will be found for such an inquiry, I shall here content myself with calling attention, for a short space, to a peculiar body of ecclesiastics called Culdees, who about this time make their first appearance in Irish history; though, in order to serve the purposes of religious party, it has been pretended by some writers that they took their rise in North Britain as early as the beginning of the fourth century; while others, by a somewhat more plausible hypothesis, place the time of their origin about the middle of the sixth.

With respect to the first of these wholly ungrounded assumptions, nothing farther need

• "Visum est Malachiæ debere construi in Benchor oratorium lapideum instar illorum quæ in aliis regionibus extructa conspexerat. Et cum cœpisset jacere fundamenta, indtgenæ quidem mirati sunt, quod in terrâ illâ necdum ejusmodi ædificia invenirentur."-S. Bernard in Vit. Malach.

"That the species of building which we call Saxon, or Anglo-Norman, and of which this island (England) possesses the most magnificent examples, was, in fact, intended as an imitation of Roman architecture, can. not be doubted."- Whittington on Gothic Architecture. Another writer, well acquainted with ecclesiastical architecture, says of the heavy, circular manner of building. "It is called the Saxon style, merely because it prevailed during their dynasty in Britain; but, in fact, it is the Grecian or Roman style, having the essen. tial characters of that style, though, in consequence of the general decline of the arts, rudely executed."Milner's Treatise, &c

The following tribute to the ecclesiastical antiquities of Ireland comes from an authority of high value on such subjects:-"The stone chapel of Cormac at Cashel is no where to be surpassed, and is itself a host in point of remote and singular antiquity; and though her monastic architecture may fall short, both in design and execution, and be obliged to yield the palm of superiority to the sister kingdoms, yet Ireland, in her store roofed chapels, Round Towers, and rich crosses, may justly boast of singularities unknown and unpossessed by either of them "-Sir R. C. Hoare, Tour in Ireland. Of the two crosses at Monasterboyce, the same writer says," They are by far the finest examples, and the richest in their sculpture, of any I have ever yet seen."

"There are at present scarcely any traces of stone buildings which can, with a satisfactory calculation of correctness, be ascribed to a Danish origin..... and the examiner who is averse to the indulgence of conjecture in antiquarian inquiries, will perhaps believe that the only military vestiges, satisfactorily attributed to the Dines, are the earth-works usually denominated Raths "-Brewer's Beauties of Ireland.

"Some of these high moats, (says the late Mr. William Tighe,) particularly those that have any appearance of a fence round the summit, may be properly attributed to the Danes; and one of these seems to derive its name from them,-that of Lister lin, Fort of the Easterlins or Danes."-W. Tighe's Survey of the County of Kilkenny, 631.

be said to mark its true character and object, than that it came from the same mint of fiction which sent forth the forty counterfeit kings of Scotland; being obviously invented to provide for that series of imaginary monarchs a no less shadowy array of priesthood under the denomination of Culdees. But the weak fable of the Forty Kings having been in the course of time abandoned, the date of the origin of the Culdees was in like manner relinquished, or rather was shifted, more conveniently, to about the middle of the sixth century, when the celebrated Irish saint, Columba, was assumed as the founder of their order. Among a select body of believers surrounding this holy man at Iona, were preserved pure, as we are told, from the flood of Romanism which was then inundating all the rest of the British Isles, not only the primitive doctrines and principles of Christianity, but also, according to some upholders of the hypothesis, the orthodox system of church government, as prescribed and established in the pure apostolic times.

It is almost needless to say, that, for all this crude speculation of there having existed, so early as the sixth century, any distinct body of ecclesiastics called Culdees, holding doctrines different, in any respect, from those of the clergy in general of Ireland and North Britain, there is not the slightest foundation in fact;-the polemic object of the fiction being the only part of it that is at all consistent or intelligible. How vague and shallow were the grounds on which the whole scheme rested, may be judged from the fact that while, by one party or section of its upholders, the Culdees of Iona were claimed as models of presbyterianism, they were held up by another party, with equal confidence, as most exemplary episcopalians. It may be added also, as conclusive against the existence of any authority for this fable, that neither in Adamnan's Life of Columba, nor in any other of the numerous records of that saint, is the slightest mention made of Culdees, or of any religious body answering to their description; and that Bede, who refers so frequently to the affairs of Iona, and the proceedings of the Columbian monks, not only is silent as to the existence of Culdees at that period, but has said nothing whatever that can be interpreted as in the remotest degree implying their existence.

As far as certainty can be attained in the history of this community, which, like many other such objects of research, owes its chief fame and interest to the obscurity still encircling it, the Culdees appear to have been one of those new religious orders or communities which a change of discipline, either general, or in particular churches, was from time to time the means of introducing; and it seems pretty certain that neither in Scotland nor in Ireland did they make their appearance earlier than the ninth century. With respect to their functions, they were evidently secular clergy, attached to the cathedrals of diocesses, and performing the office of dean and chapter to the episcopate; and while in North Britain they in general superseded those communities of monks by which the

"The first author of it," says Bishop Lloyd, "is one that was much given to such things, John of Fordun." In the Scotichronicon of this fabler is to be found the source as well of the Forty Kings as of the pretended antiquity of the Culdees; and, in both fictions, he is followed by his countryman, Buchanan, who refers the origin of this latter community to no less early a period than the time of Dioclesian-Rer. Scot. lib. iv.

From a mistaken notion that Columba and his successors did not consider bishops necessary for the ordaining of priests, the later Scotch writers, improving on the original fiction, converted all their Columbian Culdees into presbyterians; while Ledwich, and others of his school, claim this imaginary sect with which they have peopled the cells of By, as sound episcopalians. To crown all, the venerable Dr. O'Connor, who allowed himself to be haunted too much by Druidism in his antiquarian speculations supposes the Culdees to have been the remains of that ancient priesthood, retaining still, in their Christian profession, some vestiges of paganism, and by the austerity of their lives, and occasional display of false miracles, deluding and dazzling the credulous multitude. His only foundation for this fancy appears to have been a record in the Annals of the Four Masters, for the year 806 (the earliest mention, I believe, of Culdeeism in our history,) where it is said, that "a Culdee had arrived, in that year, from beyond the sea, and with dry feet, though he had not come in any ship; and that, at the same time, there had come down a written proclamation from heaven."

While such have been the inventions broached on this subject, it is right to add, that by two learned divines, Dr. Lloyd, the celebrated Bishop of St. Asaph, and, in our own times, Dr. Lanigan, the subject has been treated in a manner combining at once sound learning and common sense; -both the protestant prelate and the Roman catholic priest having contributed successfully their joint efforts to demolish the silly and dishonest fictions that had been conjured up out of this antiquarian topic.

In the whole history of the tricks of controversy. there can be found few more coolly audacious than that which the Rev. Dr. Ledwich has practised (Antiq. of Ireland.) in assuming the authority of Bede as expressly sanctioning his own favourite hypothesis, respecting the identity of the Columbian monks and the Culdees. Himself, as it appears, being satisfied of this identity, he makes no scruple of applying to the latter body all that Bede has stated solely of the former. Accordingly, such passages as the following occur frequently in his argument:-" Bede, though closely attached to the see of Rome, yet with candour and truth confesses the merits of the Culdees:"-Bede, all the time, be it observed, having said nothing concerning Culdees whatso ever! How successfully, however, this air of confidence imposes on others, may be seen by reference to the article "Culdees," in Rees's Cyclopædia, where the writer, fed, it is clear, from this fountain of truth, thus plausibly improves on his original:-" Few writers have done justice to the Culdees.... even Bede, venerable as he was, though he bestows upon them great and just commendation, cannot avoid passing some cen. sure upon them, and seems to have regarded them as schismatics, in the worst sense of that word."

"Selden (says Lloyd) who is, for aught I know, the first that brought this instance of the Culdees into the controversy, yet acknowledges that in Bede there is no mention of them." Not willing to be left behind in any species of forgery, Macpherson, in his pretended Ossian, has turned St. Patrick into a Culdee.-Bee Transact. Royal Irish Academy for 1787.

cathedrals had hitherto been served, in Ireland the usual fidelity to old customs prevailed, and the monks were in but few instances displaced for the new Culdean chapters.*

There occurs more than once in the records of this century some mention of a law relating to ecclesiastical property, which, as much importance appears to have been attached to it, requires some passing notice. It would appear that the revenue arising from those dues, which had ever since the time of St. Patrick been paid to the church of Armagh, was, amidst the convulsions of this period, interrupted or withheld; and, in the year 824, we find the authority of the warlike Feidhlim, King of Munster, interposed in aid of Artrigius, Archbishop of Armagh, for the collection of this tax. A law had been established, indeed, about the year 731, by the King of all Ireland and the King of Munster in concert, to regulate the payment of the revenue of the pramatial see; and it is manifestly this regulation we read of, in the annals of the ninth century, as enforced under the name of " the Law of St. Patrick."

Among those bishops who held the see of Armagh during this century, there occurs one named Cathasach, who is styled Prince of Armagh;-a distinction traced by some writers to a practice which prevailed in the early ages, of calling bishops the Princes of the People, or of the Church. But there appears no reason why, upon this supposition, the title should not have been extended as well to every other bishop of the see. It seems, therefore, probable, that those so designated were really chieftains, as well as bishops, of Armagh; and that to the encroachments of these powerful dynasts, who, as lords of the soil, claimed a temporal right over the see,|| is to be ascribed the irreverent anomaly which, at a later period we shall have to record, of no less than eight laymen usurping in turn the primacy, and seating themselves intrusively in the hallowed chair of St. Patrick.

CHAPTER XIX.

Accounts of the Danish Transactions in Ireland, meager and obscure.-Confusion of Dates and Names.-Ragner Lodbrog.-Traditions concerning him.-Reign of the Monarch Niell Glundubh.-His successor, Donogh.-Heroic character of the Roydamna, Murkertach.His victories over the Danes.-Exploits of Callachan, King of Cashel.-Alliances between the Northmen and the Irish.-Their confederacy at the Great Battle of Brunanburh.Norse account of that Battle.-Irish mode of Fighting.-Triumphal progress of the Roy. damna through the kingdom.-Takes Callachan of Cashel prisoner.-Death of the Roy. damna.

THE extent and importance of the possessions of the Northmen in Ireland, and the footing maintained by them, with few interruptions for so many centuries, in all the strongest maritime cities of the island, gives them a claim on the notice of a historian of this country, which has but seldom been sufficiently regarded. One of the chief reasons of this neglect is to be found in the obscurity which involves the affairs of these foreigners, more especially at the early period of their settlement, when the meager knowledge of their transactions, gleaned from our annals, is confined to a list of their acts of outrage on the different monasteries and their holy inmates;-acts of more deep and immediate interest to the moukish writers of such records, than were any of those general events and movements by which posterity was to be affected.

Lanigan, Ecclesiast. Hist. chap. 31. Lloyd On Church Government, chap, 7. Chalmer's Caledonia, book iii. chap. 8. Usher, Eccles. Primord, p. 637, &c. tiv. Mag. ad ann. 822. 824.

Harris, on Ware's Bishops at Artrigius.

"St. Hilary, in his Commentary on St. Matthew's Gospel, expressly calls bishops Principes Populi, the Princes of the People; and St. Augustin, in his Commentary on the Forty-fourth Psalm, tells us that it grew into use in the early ages, to call all bishops Ecclesiæ Principes. But that the Archbishops of Armagh should be called so, might be owing to another reason, viz. because they sat in the principal metropolis, and were constituted over the rest of the clergy of the whole kingdom; as the supreme moderators of the Jewish church were called Principes Sacerdotum."-Harris on Ware, Bishops, at Catasach.

"This family was most probably that of the dynasts of the district of Armagh, whose ancestor Daire had granted to St. Patrick the ground on which the church and other religious buildings, &c, of that city, had been erected."-Lanigan, Eccles. Hist. c. xxii. § 13.

While thus our own sources of information let in so little light upon that period, the records of the Scandinavians themselves leave it no less involved and dark. The first adventurers from the shores of the Baltic to the British Isles, were all obscure and nameless sea-rovers; men who, born in the dawn of their country's history, have furnished materials only for legend and song. It was, indeed, out of the real achievements performed by these first adventurers during the eighth and ninth centuries,* that arose the fanciful tales of Icelandic chroniclers respecting the sea-king, Ragner Lodbrok, and his miraculous coat of mail, his fairy wife, who had been found cradled in a golden harp on the sea-shore, and his numerous sons sweeping the waters with their fleet of 2000 sail. Towards the close, however, of this century, when the submission of all the Northmen in Ireland to one common king of their own race, reigning in Dublin, had, if not conceнtrated, afforded a rallying point for their scattered force, the operations and policy of their chiefs become more distinctly traceable. Instead of a confused horde of invaders, they begin to assume the shape of a regular community; and their kings, reigning in due succession, and forming alliances and intermarriages, stand forth to the eye as authentic and responsible personages of history.

The chieftain, Ivar, known by his enterprises against North Britain, in conjunction with his brother Anlaf, is, in the record of his death preserved by the annalists of Ulster (A. D. 872,) described as king of all the Northmen of Ireland and of Britain. In conformity with this statement, we find the same Ivar represented by English historians as at that period wielding the sceptre of Northumberland, and assisting Ingwar and Ubbo, two of the sons of the hero Ragnar, in their enterprises against the Anglo-Saxons. But there is mixed up with most of these accounts of the warfare of the Danes in Northumbria, too much of the fabulous matter of the Sagas to entitle them to be received as history; and the union of the crowns of Northumbria and Dublin on the head of one Danish chief, wears all the appearance of being but an anticipation of what really, as we shall find, took place some years later. One chief cause of the frequent confusion, as well of periods as of persons, which occurs in the accounts of the transactions of the Danes in the British Isles, arises from the circumstance of so many of their distinguished chieftains having been called by the same names; the two most popular and frequent of these favourite names having been Ivar and Anlaf.

A. D.

In the second year of the tenth century the expulsion of the Danes from Dublin, by the people of Leinster, interrupted for a short time their possession of that seat of power. But, by means of the resources they could command from England, 902. from the Orkneys, and the other isles, they were soon enabled to regain all their former dominion. In the course of but a few years we find Godfred, the grandson of Ivar, taking possession of Dublin; and, shortly after, ranging with his fleet the southern coast of Ireland, and receiving hostages, in token of submission, from the native princes of that quarter.

The monarch who filled the throne of Ireland at the commencement of this century was, as we have already seen, Flan Siona, the second husband of the Princess Malmaria, Keneth Mac Alpine's daughter; and this lady, through the progeny of her double marriage, was the means of uniting the three most powerful branches of the Hy-Niells. Scarcely had Flan been seated upon the throne, when he availed himself of the aid of Danish mercenaries to attack and wantonly lay waste the province of Munster. After a long reign of thirty-seven years, this monarch was succeeded in the throne by A. D. Niell Glundubh,** a prince who may be regarded as the common father of the 917. family of O'Niell, so long celebrated in our annals; and his short reign, which was, for a wonder, unsullied by the disgrace of alliance with the foreigner, was termi

"Some of the apparent incongruities of the Sagas may be diminished by the supposition, that the exploits thus commemorated are traditionary accounts of the conquests really effected by the Angles on the eastern coast, and in Northumbria, exaggerated and confused by the fancy or invention of the Scalds."-Palgrave, English Commonwealth, c. 18.

His wife, Aslang. The tradition of this fable was as follows:-"Etenim tractus illius incolæ constanter referunt, seque à majoribus suis accepisse perhibent, inventam apud se in exiguo quodam sinu angulove maris citharam auream, cujus cavitati inclusa fuerit parvula virgo."-Series Reg. Dan. 1. iv. c. 4.

The various modes also of spelling the name Anlaf, add not a little to the confusion. Thus, in the Irish annals, it assumes the various forms of Amlain, Amlaiph, Amblaith, Olave, &c. In some of the Sagas it is Olafr; and, by the English chroniclers, it is made Aulaf, Anlaf, Anlavus, Analaph, and Onlaf. See Turner, book vi. c. 2. note 21.

§ Annal. Ult. ad an. 901 (902,) and Annal. Inisfall. ad an. 902.

Annal. Inisfall. 907.

Her first husband was Domnald Mac Aod, Prince of Alichia, in Inesowen.

** . . of the Black Knee.