THE INVASION OF IRELAND.

BY W. F. CARTER, ESQ., B.A.

February 27th, 1883.

PART I.-THE AUTHORITIES.

GIRALDUS CAMBRENSIS.

The only contemporary historian of the invasion of Ireland in the time of Henry the Second is Gerald de Barri, who was born in the year 1147, at the Castle of Manorbeer, in the county of Pembroke. To the fact of his being born in Wales or Cambria, he owes his Latin surname of Cambrensis, and also the epithet of "Silvester," i.e. "Savage," or "Man of the Woods," which for at least two centuries after the Norman Conquest, was commonly applied to the native Welsh. He was, as I shall show hereafter, related to the Fitz-Geralds and the Fitz-Henrys, who with his own family the de Barris, had taken a leading part under Earl Richard de Clare in the first invasion of Ireland in 1169. His uncle David Fitzgerald, Bishop of St. David's, had assisted with his wealth and influence that Dermot, king of Leinster, whose invitation first gave the English foothold in Ireland, and thus it will be seen that Giraldus had unusually good opportunities for acquiring a knowledge of his subject. His high birth, his literary powers, and his undeniable ability brought him into contact with the leading men of the English Court upon terms of equality; and he was thus able to speak of the great men of the time, their motives and characters, from personal observation; in short, to judge by his surroundings alone there could have been no more suitable historian of the Invasion of Ireland, than Gerald de Barri, and the independence of his nature is amply proved by his life, of

which a large part was spent in battling for the ecclesiastical independence of Wales against the King, the Pope, and the Welsh themselves. On the other hand, he combined in himself several qualities entirely opposed to the true historical genius; he was a man of violent likes and dislikes, and seems at least once or twice to have revenged himself upon a personal enemy by suppressing the full and fair account of his achievements; he was credulous not merely in respect of miracles and religious wonders, as became a pious ecclesiastic, but also in his acceptance of the thousand and one tales of Irish customs and Irish natural and unnatural curiosities with which his works are crowded * His credulity, however, has its limits; he seems to believe that St. Nannan banished fleas from a village (unnamed) in Connaught, and that St. Yvor expelled mures majores qui vulgariter "Rati" vocantur, "the larger mice commonly called rats," from Fernegin in Leinster; but on the other hand he considers it merely a flattering figment which ascribes to St. Patrick the expulsion of reptiles from Ireland, and thinks that their absence is caused by quodam naturali defectu, "some natural deficiency." He seems, however, to be perfectly serious in deciding that the Isle of Man belongs to England, because unlike Ireland it is infested by venomous reptiles. It is also significant of Giraldus' credulity that he quotes with all gravity the prophesies of Merlin Ambrosius, and Merlin of

Some of these are of course unfit for repetition, but many are exceedingly ludicrous, and their absurdity is often heightened by the religious precepts they are used to enforce. Thus Giraldus tells us that the bodies of kingfishers when dead and placed in a dry place, do not putrefy, but give out a pleasant odour, and so it is with saintly men, whose lives are as it were odorous. Storks hybernate, he tells us, at the bottom of rivers, and so remind us of the resurrection of the just. A fish was found at Carlingford with three golden teeth; this Giraldus considers typifies the golden days of the English Conquest. He has himself seen men skilled in magic arts selling at the fairs, what appeared to be fat pigs but of a red colour, and really made out of any material at hand. These pigs, however, upon crossing water vanished away into their true substance, and however carefully they were looked after,.only remained pigs for three days. Irish cocks crow differently from those of other nations The ravens of Glendalough keep a fast on St. Kevin's day. The teal dwelling round a Leinster lake so resent any insult offered to the church or a cleric, or to themselves, that they will fly off to a distant pool until satisfaction has been made, nor can they be boiled, nor preyed on by the kite or the fox

Celidon, informing his readers that he has been at considerable trouble in excising the additions of modern Welsh Bards. Giraldus seems to have accepted those that he considered genuine in perfect good faith, and no doubt his Welsh nationality prejudiced him in their favour it must, however, be ac*: knowledged that he probably attempted to suppress some of these prophesies in later editions, and that he only published a few words of his third Book, which was intended to deal fully with them. But the chief characteristic of Giraldus, and one that could not fail to affect him as an historian, was his vanity, a vanity of such stupendous and appalling proportions, that it amounted almost to insanity. It is displayed with the most artless simplicity in almost every page of his autobiography and his letters, and it would be necessary to give a full history of his life if it were desirable to fully develop this side of his character. Excessively proud of his noble descent and quasi-royal relationships, he seems to have considered the Barris and the Fitz-Geralds as almost the sole conquerors of Ireland, and as surpassing in vigour of mind and body, the united prowess of all the other invaders; nor would it be doing him an injustice to say that he regarded himself as the flower of that splendid flock.+

This marvellous vanity and credulity then are the weak points of Giraldus Cambrensis, but I do not think that to any great extent they depreciate the general value of his history. It is easy enough to see when he is simply repeating some wondrous tale as

*Two of these prophesies of Merlin of Celidon may be mentioned, as they seem to relate to armorial bearings. One was that a white knight on a white horse bearing birds on his shield, shall be the first to invade Ulster," this is applied to John de Courci, who was remarkably fair, rode a white horse, bore Argent, three eagles displayed gules, and led the invaders of Ulster in 1177. The other to the effect that "a knight with a parti shield shall be the first to invade Ireland,” is referred to Robert Fitz-Stephen, who bore Parti per pale Ermine and Gules a saltire counterchanged, and led the expedition of 1169.

A good example of Giraldus estimate of things nearly concerning himself, is to be found in his description of Manorbeer, his birth-place, of which he says, As Demetia is the fairest of all the seven cantreds of Wales, and Pembroke the fairest province of Demetia, and this spot the fairest of all Pembroke, it follows that Maenor Pyrr is the most pleasant spot in Wales."

it was told to him, it is easy enough to subtract a large portion of the adulation he lavishes on his relatives, and to transfer it to the share of those outside the favoured circle, and this done, I believe that the Expugnatio Hibernica is a valuable, a reliable, and an honest piece of workmanship. This is the opinion of Mr. Brewer * whose fascinating history of Giraldus' life is prefixed to the first Volume of the Rolls Series Edition of Giraldus' Works, but it is not the opinion of Mr. Dimock, who edited some subsequent volumes. I, therefore, cannot omit to notice that Mr. Dimock himself has formed a high estimate of Giraldus' powers of obser. vation giving as an instance that Giraldus had pointed out that the Irish hare is a distinct species from the English, a fact which has only been recognised by naturalists within the last 50 years + His observation also that strangers dwelling in Ireland soon became infected with what he considers the national vice of treachery, shows at least, that he had already discovered the power of absorbing and assimilating other races which the Irish possess in so remarkable a degree.§ Opinions must of course differ as to the fairness of Giraldus toward the Irish, I must confess that his criticisms seem to me unusually moderate, and even sympathetic, while his strong common sense and keen faculty of observation are often apparent. Take for instance his chapter on the Irish clergy he represents them as remarkable for the purity of their lives,

* See p. xlvi. of his preface to the Works of Cambrensis, where he says: "Events have been carefully gathered, examined, and arranged, battle-fields, sieges, and marches verified by ocular inspection of routes and localities, accounts on both sides tested. No personal labour has been spared by the historian in collecting, sifting, or placing his materials in their most lucid order; no efforts have been wanting which the most rigid historical fidelity could demand."

† See p. lxxii. of his Preface to Vol. V.

Giraldus' own view as to his position, may be gathered from the following sentence (see p. xlv. of Preface to Vol. I) :-I do not desire credence should be given to all that has been advanced in my work, as I do not myself give credence to those things except they have actually fallen within my own observation or might have so fallen. As for the rest I forbear to pronounce upon them affirmatively or negatively. I leave them to the reader's judgment. § Top. Hib., cap 24.

Ibid, cap. 27.

for devotion to their religious duties, and for their temperate eating, but qualifies his praise by asserting that they drink deeply at night; then with the utmost impartiality he points out that this deep drinking has no injurious effect upon their morals. It seems to me that even Charles Lever has not drawn the typical Irish Priest with a more charitable pencil.

Again, what a masterly description have we in the following sentence-For these people are unrestrained in most of their doings and in all matters of feeling most excitable; and for this reason, while their bad are as bad as possible, and nowhere are worse, yet it were vain to seek for more admirable characters than their good

On the whole I am almost content to accept Mr. Dimock's somewhat disparaging estimate of Giraldus' position. He says, "Recent Irish Scholars have quietly accepted Giraldus for what he is worth as an impetuous strongly biased writer, whose statements have generally more or less of truth in them, but with much unfair one-sidedness. They have seen that his abuse is not confined to Ireland and the Irish, but is almost equally as fully lavished upon his own Wales and the Welsh, that in fact he has praise for scarcely any thing or body except himself, and his near friends and relations."

One word more as to the Expugnatio Hibernica. Its literary value is lowered, and its narrative constantly interrupted by elaborate descriptions and ingenious parallels drawn between the principal characters, into whose mouths inflated classical orations are frequently put its Latinity is flowery and bombastic, but not being fettered by strict Ciceronian rules, it is effective and usually graphic. To understand this deliberate adoption of the pompous method, we must remember that the writer regarded himself as the writer of an Epic as well as of a History; and of this Epic-History his relations, the Fitz-Geralds, the Fitz-Stephens, and the De Earris, were the conspicuous heroes. Giraldus glorified his kinsmen as merely the conquerors of Ireland; how deeply would he have been

Ibid.