to that stage when they could be described as a united nation. It is vain to look back with regret on a state of things in which petty king warring with petty king could make alliances with the heathen invader. If national unity had been stronger than the clan and individual selfishness, of course the Danes never could have obtained a footing in the island. Though the Danish occupation led to the brief unity which expelled them the events leading up to the battle of Clontarf are such as could happen only in the very early stages of a people's growth. The wife of King Brian, Gormflaith, who had two other husbands alive, was at Kincora when Mælmurra, her brother, the King of Leinster, came to pay tribute. Mælmurra was also a vassal of the Danes who had helped him to his throne. His sister taunted him with being the vassal of her own husband, and a playful remark of his cousin acting on his mind like a spark on gunpowder, he left the palace in anger. Brian sent a messenger after him to pacify him, but the angry chief dashed out the brains of the messenger. His whole clan is roused to avenge an insult which no fire-eater of the time of duelling would have thought sufficient to warrant calling a man out. The O'Rourkes, the O'Niels, the O'Flahertys and the Kedrys promised to assist him. And mark what followed on a sharp word over a game of chess. O'Niel ravaged Meath. O'Rourke attacked Malachy and slew his grandson and heir. Soon afterwards Malachy defeated his assailants in a bloody engagement. He then divided his forces into three parties and plundered Leinster as far as Meath. Reprisals were made on each side; Irishman slaying Irishman and the Danes in the land, nay, fighting side by side with the Leinster men, until Malachy demanded the protection to which he was entitled from Brian, who clearly was not in the proper sense of the word King of Ireland. "Brian of the tribute" properly describes his position. Brian obeyed the summons. He " ravaged Ossory" and marched on Dublin, where he was joined by his son Murrogh, "who had devastated Wicklow, burning, destroying and carrying off captives until he reached Kilmainham." The siege of Dublin

See for the details, "Irish History," by M. F. Cusack, well known as "The Nun of Kenmare."

CLONTARF. THE DANES.

17

was raised during the winter, and Gormflaith, who is a sort of Irish Helen, exerts herself in collecting forces against her two husbands, Brian and Malachy. She despatched her son Sitric to bring foreign aid, and promised her hand and the kingdom of Ireland to each of two Vikings if they would come and help the Danes. In the spring Brian marched towards Dublin "with all that obeyed him of the men of Ireland." He "plundered and destroyed as usual," says the Nun of Kenmare, on his way to Dublin. After he had passed Fingal and burned Kilmainham, he sent his son Donough to plunder Leinster. A third of the forces on the Danish side were Leinster men under Mælmurra. Clontarf was a great battle, and on both sides prodigies of valour were performed. But what could save from conquest a people in the condition the events preceding the battle show the Irish to have been in? Even after the victory of Clontarf dissensions arose, and on their way from the field the clans separated and drew up in order of battle! Centuries afterwards we see the same defects break out when Baldearg O'Donnell, for a pension of £500, takes over to William's side a large following of Ulster Celts.

The Danes settled down in the seaport towns they had founded-Limerick, Dublin, Wexford and Waterford,—and paid tribute either to the Ard Righ or the local prince. They sometimes had to pay blackmail. In the year 1029 Olaf, the son of Sitric, wandering outside Dublin was taken prisoner by O'Regan, lord of Meath, who extorted for ransom twelve hundred cows, sevenscore British horses, threescore ounces of gold, and sixty ounces of silver. Now the Normans having conquered all the neighbouring nations turned their attention to Ireland. Let no one exclaim against the Irish for their want of union. We see the same thing in Greece. If the Irish had been allowed time they would have grown out of the clan into the nation. But the Irish Celtic nation was strangled in its cradle, and those conquerors with whom we have now to deal were neither Saxon nor English, but the fierce Scandinavian rovers, whose conquests extended from the Jordan to the Boyne, and under whose heavy hand the English

* Irish History, p. 130.

groaned for one hundred and fifty years. The Celtic blood already mixed with the Danish, and to some small extent with Saxon, was now mingled with the Norman tide, even as it was in after times in the south and west tinctured with that of Spain. With what we see going on before our eyes on the continent of Europe, it would be futile to discuss, even to-day, the morality of conquest. We have not yet arrived at that advanced stage of civilization, when nations can be expected to curb their greed and ambition, though it is as certain as human progress that the time will come when people will look back on the French and Germans, and the state of things leading up to Sedan, as barbarous. But if we could arraign the Normans before us they might plead that one of the Irish princes invited them to the country, and what is of still more significance, that the Irish princes paid no attention to the new comers. In the words of the Annals, they "set nothing by the Flemings." The kingdom had not the first element of defence-watchfulness against invasion. It seemed in the ordinary course of things that troops should be brought from a foreign country to reinstate a petty king. There is this excuse to be made for Roderic, that he had to enforce his claims in the south and north, and was busy "portioning Meath between his inseparable colleague O'Rourke and himself." He was busy in the still more useful work of founding lectorships at Armagh; for during the Danish period, the enlightenment, the religious zeal, and enthusiasm for knowledge, which had three centuries before" burned like a star," had given place to Pagan superstition. Dermot MacMurrough soon found himself at the head of three thousand men, and marched on Ossory which he subdued. The monarch summoned a hosting of the men of Ireland at Tara, and with an army collected by the lords of Meath, Olial, Ulidia, Breffni, and some northern chiefs, proceeded to Dublin. But dissension broke out in the Irish camp; the Ulster chiefs returned home, and MacMurrough's authority was acknowledged. Now, clearly here

The victims of Norman oppression fled in some cases to Ireland. McGee, 153. + D'Arcy McGee.

Ibid, p. 145; see also Froude, vol. i, p. 15.

we are in the presence of disunion which would paralyze the most heroic bravery. The country was thinly populated; public spirit was unknown; the only strong sentiment was the clannish; and disunited hosts could not be expected to stand against united hosts. We have shown that the Celt, like the Teuton and the Norman, comes from the Aryan stock; we have seen the Celt measure his sword, and not unsuccessfully, with that of Rome. As between the Irish and the Norman, it was a battle between an elder and a younger brother, and the elder brother one who had long been in training in the best fighting schools. The Prince of Thomond, Donnell O'Brien, who had married a daughter of Dermot, was in rebellion against Roderic, and was of course, willing to give his assistance to Dermot. The Normans, in fact, found the Irish princes engaged in a game of grab, and the blood of the people squandered by the caprices and ambitions of their chiefs, whose life, like that of the Gallic nobles in the first and second centuries, was spent in a "continual whirl of faction and intrigue."* The Danes, who remembered how impossible it was to expel themselves once they got a footing in the country, were alive to the necessity of resisting the Normans; and the Dano-Celts of Wexford and Waterford fought with great energy the uncle of Strongbow. Strongbow, on his arrival at a later period, laid siege to Wexford, where the Normans set a precedent for Drogheda. Having made the Dano-Celts of Waterford a fearful example, they turned their faces towards Dublin. The woods and defiles were well guarded, but the enemy made forced marches over the mountains, and reached, long before they were expected, the capital, a city at that time not the size of Hamilton to-day. Hosculf, the Danish governor of the city, encouraged by the presence of a force collected by the Irish monarch near Clondalkin, had determined to stand a siege. But when the "decision and military skill" of the invaders were recognised, and the reports of the massacre at Waterford came, it was determined to treat. The Danish governor fled with some of the principal citizens to the Orkneys, and Roderic, the nominal king of all Ireland, withdrew his

• M. Amedee Thierry.

forces to Meath to support his friend O'Rourke, "on whom he had bestowed a portion of that territory." Strongbow, on the death of Dermot MacMurrough, was abandoned by the Irish following of that prince, and a general rising having taken place, he threw himself into Dublin, but only to find himself surrounded by an army, and blockaded by a Danish fleet. While he was suffering from want of food, and negotiating with a view to capitulate, Donnell Cavanagh, an Irishman of rank, no less a person than the son of the late king of Leinster, stole into the city in disguise, and informed him that Fitzstephen was closely besieged in Wexford. It is then determined to force a passage through the besieging army. "The Irish army," says the Nun of Kenmare, "were totally unprepared for this sudden move; they fled in panic, and Roderic," the King and Commander-inChief, "who was bathing in the Liffey, escaped with difficulty." The Norman, Miles de Cogan, was again left governor of Dublin, and with the exception of an attack on him which he easily repulsed, "the Irish made no attempt against the common enemy, and domestic wars were as frequent as usual.”*

Now it is clear that if the Irish Celts at this time were not much behind their foes in civilization, it would be impossible to account for these events. They belonged to the same great Aryan stock as the Normans, and the disunion and incapacity shown by men whose fathers did, and whose descendants have done, such great things, are to be traced to this, that their civilization, as compared with the high organization of the Norman, was in a backward state, they having, in fact, retrograded from the intellectual advancement of the 8th century. The forces which came with Henry II. in 1171, should have been no more than a mouthful for the Irish. What should they not have done with Strongbow and his few followers? In Henry's train came those who were to be the fathers of well-known Irish families; and as we owe to the Danes the + Plunkets, McIvers, Archbolds, Harolds, Stacks, Skiddies, Cruises, McAuliffes, we owe to the Normans the Clanrickards, the Butlers, the Le Poers (Powers), and many others who came afterwards, such as the Talbots and

Cusack's History, p. 167.

+ McGee.