Ireland, Historic and Picturesque Part 11

We see the genius of the Nors.e.m.e.n suffering a like eclipse the year before: "1029: Olaf son of Sitric, lord of the Foreigners, was taken prisoner by Matgamain Ua Riagain lord of Breag, who exacted twelve hundred cows as his ransom, together with seven score British horses, three score ounces of gold, the sword of Carlus, the Irish hostages, sixty ounces of white silver as the ransom of his fetters, eighty cows for word and supplication, and four hostages to Ua Riagain as a security of peace."

Two generations later we read: "1088: Tigearnac Ua Briain, chief successor of Ciaran and Coman, died. He was a paragon of learning and history." The work of the paragon Tigearnac, a history of Ireland, is extant and writ in choice Latin, a monument at once of the cla.s.sical learning of our schools and of the historical spirit carried down from the days of the pagan heralds and bards. Tigearnac quotes abundantly from Greek and Latin authors, fortifying his conclusions with pa.s.sages from Eusebius, Orosius, Julius Africa.n.u.s, Josephus, Jerome and Bede.

A half-century later we get a quaint and vivid glimpse into the religious life of the time: "1145: A lime-kiln which was sixty feet every way was erected opposite Emain Maca by Gilla Mac Liag, the successor of Patrick, and Patrick's clergy in general." Here is the glow of that devotion through work which gave us the great mediaeval cathedrals, the fervor and artistic power, which in former times adorned the Gospels of the Book of Kells, now working out its way in lasting stone. The date of this lime-kiln lies indeed just half-way between the consecration of Cormac's Chapel at Cashel in 1134 and the foundation of the beautiful cathedral beside it by the lord of Tuaid-Muma or Th.o.m.ond in 1152. Cormac's Chapel is a very pure example of native style, untouched by foreign or continental influence.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Rock of Cashel, Ruins of Old Cathedral, King Cormac's Chapel and Round Tower,]

We can divine the figure of one of the great men of the religious world in the records for the year 1148: "A synod was convened at Saint Patrick's Isle by Maelmaedog, called also Malachias, successor of Patrick, at which were present fifteen bishops and two hundred priests, to establish rules and morals for all. Maelmaedog by the advice of the synod went a second time to Rome, to confer with the successor of Peter." A few months later we read this record of his death: "Malachias, that is, Maelmaedog Ua Morgair, Archbishop of the chair of Patrick, chief head of the piety of the West of Europe, legate of the successor of Peter, the only head whom the Irish and the Foreigners obeyed, chief paragon of wisdom and piety, a brilliant lamp which illumined territories and churches by preaching and good works, faithful shepherd of the church in general,--after having ordained bishops and priests and persons of every degree; after having consecrated many churches and cemeteries; after having performed every ecclesiastical work throughout Ireland; after having bestowed jewels and food upon the mighty and the needy; after having founded churches and monasteries, for by him was repaired in Ireland every church which had been consigned to decay and neglect, and they had been neglected from times remote;--after leaving every rule and every good moral in the churches of Ireland in general; after having been the second time in the legates.h.i.+p; after having been fourteen years in the primacy; and after the fifty-fourth year of his age, resigned his spirit to heaven on the second day of November, and was buried in the monastery of Saint Bernard at Claravallis in France."

This is the same worthy under whose influence was built the great lime-kiln over against the fort of Emain, where Concobar once ruled.

Even from the scant notices which we have quoted he stands forth clear and strong, full of spiritual and moral vigor, a great man in every sense, and one in whom we divine a lovable and admirable spirit. At that time there were four archbishoprics in Ireland, at Armagh, Cashel, Dublin and Tuam; the primacy belonging to the first, as the seat of the Damliag Mor or Great Stone Church, built by Saint Patrick himself. A sentence in the Annals shows how the revenues were raised: "A horse from every chieftain, a sheep from every hearth." A few pa.s.sages like these are enough to light up whole epochs of that mediaeval time, and to show us how sympathetic, strong and pure that life was, in so many ways.

We find, meanwhile, that the tribal struggle continued as of old: "1154: Toirdealbac Ua Concobar brought a fleet round Ireland northwards, and plundered Tir-Conaill and Inis Eogain. The Cinel Eogain sent to hire the fleets of the Hebrides, Arran, Cantyre and Man, and the borders of Alba in general, and they fell in with the other fleet and a naval battle was fiercely and spiritedly fought between them. They continued the conflict from, the beginning of the day till evening, but the foreign fleet was defeated." This records perhaps the only lesson learned from the Nors.e.m.e.n, the art of naval warfare. We may regret that the new knowledge was not turned to a more national end.

Four years later, "a wicker bridge was made by Ruaidri Ua Concobar at Athlone, for the purpose of making incursions into Meath. There was a pacific meeting between Ruaidri Ua Concobar and Tigearnan, and they made peace, and took mutual oaths before sureties and relics." This is our first meeting with a king as remarkable in his way as the great archbishop his contemporary. Ruaidri descendant of Concobar was king of Connacht, holding the land from the western ocean up to the great frontier of the river Shannon. Eager to plunder his neighbors and bring back "a countless number of cows," he undertook this wonderful work, a pile bridge across the river, seemingly the first of its kind to be built there, and in structure very like the famous bridge which Caesar built across the Rhine,--or like many of the wooden bridges across the upper streams of the Danube at the present day. We shall record a few more of this enterprising and large-minded prince's undertakings, following the course of the years.

In parenthesis, we find a clue to the standard of value of the time in this record: "1161: The visitation of Osraige was made by Flaitbeartac, successor of Colum Kill; the tribute due to him was seven score oxen, but he selected, as a subst.i.tute for these, four hundred and twenty ounces of pure silver." The price of an ox was, therefore, three ounces of silver. The old-time barter, an echo of which still lingers in the word "pecuniary" from the Latin name for "cattle," was evidently yielding to the more convenient form of exchange through the medium of the metals, which are easily carried and divided, and suffer no detriment from the pa.s.sage of time. With the wicker bridge and the lime-kiln, this change from a tribute in cattle to a payment in silver may remind us that we are on the threshold of the modern world.

In 1162 we find the king of Connacht in a new adventure: "An army was led by Muirceartac Ua Lochlain, accompanied by the people of the north of Ireland, the men of Meath, and a battalion of the Connacht men, to At-Cliat, to lay siege to the Foreigners and the Irish; but Ua Lochlain retired without battle or hostages after having plundered the Fair Strangers. A peace was afterwards concluded between the Foreigners and the Gaels; and six score ounces of gold were given by the Foreigners to Ua Lochlain, and five score ounces of gold were paid by Diarmaid Ua Maelseaclain to Ruaidri Ua Concobar for West Meath." Here again we see the "countless cows" giving place to counted gold in the levying of tribute. We note also, in the following year, that "a lime-kiln measuring seventy feet every way was made by the successor of Colum Kill and the clergy of Colum Kill in twenty days," in evident emulation of the work of the Armagh see.

The synod already recorded as having been held in the little island of Saint Patrick off the Dublin coast, gives us a general view of the church at that time, the number of sees and parishes, and the spirit animating them. We gain a like view of the civil state in the record of a great a.s.sembly convened in 1167 by the energetic and enterprising Connacht king: "A great meeting was called together by Ruaidri Ua Concobar and the chiefs of Leat Cuin, both lay and ecclesiastic, and the chiefs of At-boy,--the Yellow Ford across one of the streams of the Boyne in Meath. To it came the successor of Patrick, the archbishop of Connacht, the archbishop of Leinster, the lord of Breifne, the lord of Oirgialla, the king of Ulster, the king of Tara, and Ragnall son of Ragnall, lord of the Foreigners. The whole of their gathering and a.s.semblage was 19,000 hors.e.m.e.n, of which 6000 were Connachtmen, 4000 with the lord of Breifne, 2000 with the king of Tara, 4000 with the lord of Oirgialla and the king of Ulster, 2000 with the chief of Ui-Failge, and 1000 with the Foreigners of At-Cliat. They pa.s.sed many good resolutions at this meeting, respecting veneration for churches and clerics, and control of tribes and territories, so that women used to traverse Ireland alone; and a restoration of his prey was made by the chief of the Ui-Failge at the hands of the kings aforesaid. They afterwards separated in peace and amity, without battle or controversy, or without anyone complaining of another at that meeting, in consequence of the prosperousness of the king, who had a.s.sembled these chiefs with their forces at one place."

Here is a foreshadowing of the representative a.s.semblies of our modern times, and the same wise spirit is shown in another event of the same year, thus recorded: "A hosting and a mustering of the men of Ireland, with their chieftains, by Ruaidri Ua Concobar; thither came the lord of Deas-muma, the lord of Tuaid-muma, the king of Meath, the lord of Oirgialla and all the chieftains of Leinster. They arrived in Tir-Eogain, and allotted the part of it north of Slieve Gullion,--now the eastern part of Derry,--to Nial Ua Lochlain for two hostages, and allotted the part of the country of the clan to the south of the mountain to Aed Ua Neill for two other hostages. Then the men of Ireland returned back southwards over Slieve Fuaid, through Tir-Eogain and Tir-Connaill, and over a.s.saroe--the Cataract of the Erne--and Ruaidri Ua Concobar escorted the lord of Deas-muma with his forces southwards through Tuaid-muma as far as Cnoc-Aine--in Limerick--and the lord of Deas-muma departed with gifts of many jewels and riches."

While the Norse foreigners were a power at Dublin, Waterford, Cork and Limerick, there were not wanting occasions when one of the native tribes called on them for aid against another tribe, sharing with them the joys of victory or the sorrow of defeat, and, where fortune favored, dividing with them the "countless cows" taken in a raid. In like manner the Cinel Eogain, as we saw, hired the fleet of the Nors.e.m.e.n of the Western Isles of Scotland to help them to resist a raid of the Connachtmen. The example thus set was followed repeatedly in the coming years, and we find mention of Flemings, Welshmen and Saxons brought over to take one side or other in the tribal wars.

In the same year that saw the two a.s.semblings of the chieftains under Ruaidri Ua Concobar, another chieftain, Diarmaid son of Murcad brought in from "the land of the Saxons," as it was called, one of these bands of foreign mercenaries, for the most part Welsh descendants of the old Gaelic Britons, to aid him in his contest for "the kingdom of the sons of Ceinnsealaig." Two years later, Ruaidri Ua Concobar "granted ten cows every year from himself and from every king that should follow him for ever, to the Lector of Ard Maca, in honor of Patrick, to instruct the youths of Ireland and Alba in Literature."

For the next year, 1170, we find this record: "Robert Mac Stepni and Ricard Mac Gillebert--Iarl Strangbow--came from Saxonland into Erin with a numerous force, and many knights and archers, in the army of the son of Murcad, to contest Leinster for him, and to disturb the Gaels of Erin in general; and the son of Murcad gave his daughter to Iarl Strangbow for coming into his army. They took Loch Garman--Wexford--and Port Lairge--Waterford--by force; and they took Gillemaire the officer of the fortress and Ua Faelain lord of the Deisi and his son, and they killed seven hundred persons there. Domnall Breagac with numbers of the men of Breag fell by the Leinstermen on that occasion. An army was led by Ruaidri Ua Concobar with the lord of Breifne and the lord of Oirgialla against Leinster and the Foreigners aforesaid, and there was a challenge of battle between them for the s.p.a.ce of three days." This contest was indecisive. The most noteworthy event of the battle was the plundering and slaughter of the Danes of At-Cliat by the newcomers under Iarl Strangbow. The Danes had long before this given up their old pagan faith, converted by their captives and their Gaelic neighbors. Christ Church Cathedral in At-Cliat or Dublin was founded early in the preceding century by Sitric son of Olaf, king of the Danes of Dublin, and Donatus the first Danish bishop; but the oldest part of the present structure belongs to the time we are now speaking of: the close of the twelfth century. The transepts with their chevron mouldings and the princ.i.p.al doorway are of that period, and we may regard them as an offering in expiation of the early heathen raids on Lambay, Saint Patrick's Isle, and the early schools of the church.

The ambitious Diarmaid Mac Murcad died shortly after the last battle we have recorded, "peris.h.i.+ng without sacrament, of a loathsome disease;" a manifest judgment, in the eyes of the Chronicler, for the crime of bringing the Normans to Ireland. In the year that saw his death, "Henry the Second, king of the Saxons and duke of the Normans, came to Ireland with two hundred and forty s.h.i.+ps." He established a footing in the land, as one of many contesting powers, but the immediate results of his coming were slight. This we can judge from the record of three years later: "A brave battle was fought by the Foreigners under Iarl Strangbow and the Gaels under Ruaidri Ua Concobar at Thurles, in which the Foreigners were finally defeated by dint of fighting. Seventeen hundred of the Foreigners were slain in the battle, and only a few of them survived with the Iarl, who proceeded in sorrow to his home at Port Lairge--Waterford." Iarl Strangbow died two years later at Dublin.

Norman warriors continue to appear during the succeeding years, fighting against the native chieftains and against each other, while the native chieftains continue their own quarrels, just as in the days of the first Norse raids. Thus in the year of Iarl Strangbow's death, Kells was laid waste by the Foreigners in alliance with the native Ui-Briain, while later in the same year the Foreigners were driven from Limerick by Domnall Ua-Briain, who laid siege to them and forced them to surrender.

Two years later, four hundred and fifty of the followers of De Courcy, another great Norman warrior, were defeated at Maghera Conall in Louth, some being drowned in the river, while others were slain on the battlefield. In the same year De Courcy was again defeated with great slaughter in Down, and escaped severely wounded to Dublin. For At-Cliat, from being a fortress of the Danes and Nors.e.m.e.n, was gradually becoming a Norman town. The doorway of Christ Church Cathedral, which dates from about this time, is of pure Norman style.

In 1186 we find a son of the great Ruaidri Ua Concobar paying a band of these same Foreigners three thousand cows as "wages," for joining him in some plundering expedition against his neighbors. The genius of strife reigned supreme, and the newcomers were as completely under its sway as the old clansmen. Just as we saw the Dark Nors.e.m.e.n of the ninth century coming in their long s.h.i.+ps to plunder the Fair Nors.e.m.e.n of At-Cliat, and the Fair Nors.e.m.e.n not less vigorously retaliating, so now we find wars breaking out among the Normans who followed in the steps of the Nors.e.m.e.n. In 1205 the Norman chieftain who held a part of Meath under his armed sway, and who had already built a strong castle at Kells, was at war with the De Bermingham family, who at that time held the old Danish stronghold of Limerick. Two years later another contest broke out between the De Berminghams and William Marescal, and yet another struggle between Hugo de Lacy and De Bermingham, very disastrous to the retainers of the latter, for the Chronicler tells us that "nearly all his people were ruined."

Thus the old life of tribal struggle went on. The country was wealthy, full of cattle and herds, silver and gold, stored corn and fruit, rich dyed stuffs and ornaments. The chieftains and provincial kings lived in state within their forts, with their loyal warriors around them, feasting and making merry, and the bards and heralds recited for their delight the great deeds of the men of old, their forefathers; the harpers charmed or saddened them with the world-old melodies that Deirdre had played for Naisi, that Meave had listened to, that Crede sang for her poet lover.

The life of the church was not less vigorous and vital. There are many churches and cathedrals of that period of transition, as of the epoch before the first Norman came, which show the same fervor and devotion, the same faith made manifest by works of beauty. In truth no country in the world has so full and rich a record in lasting stone, beginning with the dwellings of the early saints who had seen the first Messenger face to face, and pa.s.sing down through age after age, showing the life and growth of the faith from generation to generation.

The schools, as we saw, carried on the old cla.s.sical tradition, bringing forth monuments like the Annals of Tigearnac; and there was the same vigor and vital force in every part of the nation's life. The coming of the Normans changed this in no essential regard. There was something added in architecture, the Norman modifying the old native style; the castle and keep gradually taking the place of the earthwork and stone fort. And in the tenure of land certain new principles were introduced.

But the sum of national life went on unbroken, less modified, probably, than it had been by the old Norse raids.

XII.

THE NORMANS.

A.D. 1250-1603.

When summing up each epoch of Irish history, we may find both interest and profit in considering what the future of the land and the people might have been had certain new elements not been added. Thus we may try to picture to ourselves what would have been our history had our life moved forward from the times of Cuculain and Concobar, of Find and Cormac son of Art, without that transforming power which the fifth century brought. We may imagine the tribal strife and stress growing keener and fiercer, till the whole life and strength of the people was fruitlessly consumed in plundering and destroying.

Or we may imagine an unbroken continuance of the epoch of saintly aspiration, the building of churches, the illumination of holy books, so dividing the religious from the secular community as almost to make two nations in one, a nation altogether absorbed in the present life, with another nation living in its midst, but dwelling wholly in the thought of the other world. Religion would have grown to superst.i.tion, ecstasy would have ruled in the hearts of the religious devotees, weakening their hold on the real, and wafting them away into misty regions of paradise. We should have had every exaggeration of ascetic practice, hermitages multiplying among the rocks and islands of the sea, men and women torturing their bodies for the saving of their souls.

The raids of the Nors.e.m.e.n turned the strong aspirations of the religious schools into better channels, bringing them to a sense of their ident.i.ty with the rest of the people, compelling them to bear their part of the burden of calamity and strife. The two nations which might have wandered farther and farther apart were thus welded into one, so that the spirit of religion became what it has ever since remained, something essential and inherent in the life of the whole people.

After the waning of the Nors.e.m.e.n, a period opened full of great national promise in many ways. We see the church strengthened and confirmed, putting forth its power in admirable works of art, churches and cathedrals full of the fire and fervor of devotion, and conceived in a style truly national, with a sense of beauty altogether its own. Good morals and generous feeling mark the whole life of the church through this period, and the great archbishop whose figure we have drawn in outline is only one of many fine and vigorous souls among his contemporaries.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Dunluce Castle.]

The civil life of the nation, too, shows signs of singular promise at the same time, a promise embodied in the person of the king of Connacht, Ruaidri Ua Concobar, some of whose deeds we have recorded. There was a clearer sense of national feeling and national unity than ever before, a recognition of the method of conciliation and mutual understanding, rather than the old appeal to armed force, as under the genius of tribal strife. We see Ruaidri convoking the kings, chieftains and warriors to a solemn a.s.sembly, presided over by the king and the archbishops of the realm, and "pa.s.sing good resolutions" for the settlement of religious and civil matters, and the better ordering of territories and tribes.

That a.s.sembly was convened a half-century before the famous meeting between King John and his barons, at Runnymead among the Windsor meadows; and the seed then sown might have brought forth fruit as full of promise and potency for the future as the Great Charter itself. The contrast between these two historic a.s.semblies is instructive. In the one case, we have a provincial king from the rich and beautiful country beyond the Shannon, gradually gaining such influence over the kings of the provinces and the chieftains of the tribes that he had come to be regarded as in a sense the overlord of the whole land, not through inherent sovreignty or divine right, but first as the chosen chief of his own tribe, and then as the elect of the whole body of chieftains, first among his peers. In this character we see Ruaidri settling disputes between two sections of the great Northern clan, and fixing a boundary between them; giving presents to the chieftains of the south for their support in this difficult decision, and exercising a beneficent influence over the whole people, a moral sway rather than a sovereign and despotic authority. It is pleasant to find the same king establis.h.i.+ng a college foundation for the instruction of the youth of Ireland and Scotland in literature.

This is what we have on the one hand. On the other, we have the Norman king surrounded by his barons, over whom he claimed, but could not exercise, despotic authority; and the Norman barons taking advantage of his necessity to extort promises and privileges for their own order rather than for the whole people. For we must remember that the Angles and Saxons had been reduced by conquest to a servile condition, from which they never wholly recovered. The ruling cla.s.ses of Britain at the present day are at least nominal descendants of those same Norman barons; and between them and the ma.s.s of the people--the sons of the Saxons and Angles--there is still a great gulf fixed. It is quite impossible for one of the tillers of the soil to stand on a footing of equality with the old baronial cla.s.s, and the gulf has widened, rather than closed, since the battle of Hastings and the final overthrow of the Saxon power.

We see here the full contrast between the ideal of kings.h.i.+p in Ireland and that which grew up among the Norman conquerors of the Saxons. The Irish king was always in theory and often in fact a real representative, duly elected by the free suffrage of his tribesmen; he was not owner of the tribal land, as the duke of the Normans was; he was rather the leader of the tribe, chosen to guard their common possessions. The communal system of Ireland stands here face to face with the feudal system of the Normans.

It would be a study of great interest to consider what form of national life might have resulted in Ireland from the free growth of this principle of communal chieftains.h.i.+p. There are many a.n.a.logies in other lands, all of which point to the likelihood of a slow emergence of the hereditary principle; a single family finally overtopping the whole nation. Had this free development taken place, we might have had a strong and vigorous national evolution, an abundant flowering of all our energies and powers through the Middle Ages, a rich and vigorous production of art and literature, equal to the wonderful blossoming of genius in the Val d'Arno and Venice and Rome; but we should have missed something much greater than all these; something towards which events and destiny have been leading us, through the whole of the Middle Ages and modern times.

From this point forward we shall have to trace the working of that destiny, not manifested in a free blossoming and harvesting of our national life, but rather in the suppression and involution of our powers; in a development arrested by pressure from without and kept thus suspended until the field was ready for its real work. Had our fate been otherwise, we might now be looking back to a great mediaeval past, as Spain and Austria look back; it is fated that we shall look not back but forwards, brought as we are by destiny into the midst of the modern world, a people with energy unimpaired, full of vigorous vital force, uncorrupted by the weakening influence of wealth, taught by our own history the measureless evil of oppression, and therefore cured once for all of the desire to dominate others. Finally, the intense inner life towards which we have been led by the checking of our outward energies has opened to us secrets of the invisible world which are of untold value, of measureless promise for all future time.

We have, therefore, to trace the gradual involution of our national life; the checking and restraining of that free development which would a.s.suredly have been ours, had our national life grown forward unimpeded and uninfluenced from without, from the days when the Norse power waned.

The first great check to that free development came from the feudal system, the principle of which was brought over by Robert FitzStephen, Richard FitzGilbert, the De Courcys, the De Lacys, the De Berminghams and their peers, whose coming we have recorded. They added new elements to the old struggle of district against district, tribe against tribe, but they added something more enduring--an idea and principle destined almost wholly to supplant the old communal tenure which was the genius of the native polity. The outward and visible sign of that new principle was manifested in the rapid growth of feudal castles, with their strong keeps, at every point of vantage gained by the Norman lords. They were lords of the land, not leaders of the tribe, and their lords.h.i.+p was fitly symbolized in the great gloomy towers of stone that everywhere bear witness to their strength, almost untouched as they are by the hand of time.

When the duke of the Normans overthrew the Saxon king at Hastings, he became real owner of the soil of England. His barons and lords held their estates from him, in return for services to be rendered to him direct. To reward them for supporting him, first in that decisive battle, and then in whatever contests he might engage in, they were granted the right to tax certain tracts of country, baronies, earldoms, or counties, according to the t.i.tle they bore. This tax was exacted first in service, then in produce, and finally in coin. It was the penalty of conquest, the tribute of the subject Saxons and Angles.

There was no pretence of a free contract; no pretence that the baron returned to the farmer or laborer an equal value for the tax thus exacted. It was tribute pure and simple, with no claim to be anything else. That system of tribute has been consecrated in the land tenure of England, and the cla.s.s enriched by that tribute, and still bearing the territorial t.i.tles which are its hall-mark, has always been, as it is to-day, the dominant cla.s.s alike in political and social life. In other words, the Norman subjugation of Saxon and Angle is thoroughly effective at this moment.

This principle of private taxation, as a right granted by the sovereign, came over to Ireland with the De Courcys and De Lacys and their like.

But it by no means overspread Ireland in a single tide, as in England, after Hastings was lost and won. Its progress was slow; so slow, indeed, that the old communal system lingers here and there at the present day.

The communal chiefs lived their lives side by side with the Norman barons, fighting now with the barons, now with each other; and the same generous rivalry, as we have seen, led to abundant fighting among the barons also. The principle of feudal owners.h.i.+p was working its way, however. We shall see later how great was its ultimate influence,--not so much by direct action, as in the quite modern reaction which its abuse provoked--a reaction from which have been evolved certain principles of value to the whole world.

Leaving this force to work its way through the centuries, we may turn now to the life of the times as it appeared to the men and women who lived in them, and as they themselves have recorded it. We shall find fewer great personalities; nor should we expect this to be otherwise, if we are right in thinking that the age of struggle, with its efflorescence of great persons, had done its work, and was already giving way before the modern spirit, with its genius for the universal rather than the personal. We shall have contests to chronicle during the following centuries, whether engendered within or forced upon us from without; but they are no longer the substance of our history. They are only the last clouds of a departing storm; the mists before the dawn of the modern world.

The most noteworthy of these contests in the early Norman age was the invasion under Edward Bruce, brother of the Scottish king, who brought a great fleet and army to Larne, then as now the Irish port nearest to the northern kingdom. The first sufferers by this invasion were the Normans of Heath, and we presently find these same Normans allied with Feidlimid son of Aed Ua Concobar and the Connachtmen, fighting side by side against the common foe. This was in 1315; two years later Robert Bruce joined his brother, and it was not till 1319 that Edward Bruce finally fell at Dundalk, "and no achievement had been performed in Ireland for a long time before," the Chronicler tells us, "from which greater benefit had accrued to the country than from this; for during the three and a half years that Edward had spent in it, a universal famine prevailed to such a degree that men were wont to devour one another."

A ray of light is thus shed on the intellectual and moral life of the time: "1398: Garrett Earl of Desmond--or Deas-muma--a cheerful and courteous man, who excelled all the Normans and many of the Irish in the knowledge of the Irish language, poetry, history and other learning, died after the victory of peace." We see that the Normans are already fallen under the same influence of a.s.similation which had transformed the Danes two hundred years before.

A half-century later, we get a vigorous and lurid picture of the survival of the old tribal strife: "1454: Donell O'Donell was installed in the lords.h.i.+p of Tyrconnell, in opposition to Rury O'Donell. Not long after this, Donell was treacherously taken captive and imprisoned in the castle of Inis--an island in Lough Sw.i.l.l.y. As soon as Rury received tidings of this, he mustered an army thither, and proceeded to demolish the castle in which Donell was imprisoned with a few men to guard him.

Rury and his army burned the great door of the castle, and set the stairs on fire; whereupon Donell, thinking that his life would be taken as soon as the army should reach the castle,--it being his dying request, as he thought--that he might be loosed from his fetters, as he deemed it a disgrace to be killed while imprisoned and fettered. His request was granted, and he was loosed from his fetters; after which he ascended to the battlements of the castle, to view the motions of the invading army. And he saw Rury beneath, with eyes flas.h.i.+ng enmity, and waiting until the fire should subside, that he might enter and kill him.

Donell then, finding a large stone by his side, hurled it directly down upon Rury, so that it fell on the crest of his helmet, on the top of his head, and crushed it, so that he instantly died. The invading forces were afterwards defeated, and by this throw Donell saved his own life and acquired the lords.h.i.+p of Tyrconnell."

There is a whole historical romance in that single picture; the pa.s.sage could not easily be surpa.s.sed for direct and forcible narrative. A few years later, we come on one of the most amusing things in the whole series of annals, a perfect contrast to the grim ferocity of the feud of the O'Donells. In 1472 "a wonderful animal was sent to Ireland by the king of England. She resembled a mare, and was of a yellow color, with the hoofs of a cow, a long neck, a very large head, a large tail, which was ugly and scant of hair. She had a saddle of her own. Wheat and salt were her usual food. She used to draw the largest sled-burden behind her. She used to kneel when pa.s.sing under any doorway, however high, and also to let her rider mount." It is evident that the Gaelic language in the fifteenth century lacked a name for the camel. The same year, we are told, "the young earl of Desmond was set at liberty by the MacCarthys; he disabled Garrett, son of the earl of Kildare."

Here is another pa.s.sage which vies in vividness and force with the story of the death of Rury O'Donell: "1557: Two spies, Donough and Maurice by name, entered the camp of John O'Neill by Lough Sw.i.l.l.y, and mingled with the troop without being noticed; for in consequence of the number and variety of the troops who were there, it was not easy for them to discriminate between one another, even if it were day, except by recognizing their chieftains alone. The two persons aforesaid proceeded from one fire to another, until they came to the great central fire, which was at the entrance of the son of O'Neill's tent; and a huge torch, thicker than a man's body, was continually flaming at a short distance from the fire, and sixty grim and redoubtable warriors with sharp, keen axes, terrible and ready for action, and sixty stern and terrific Scots, with ma.s.sive, broad and heavy striking swords in their hands, ready to strike and parry, were guarding the son of O'Neill. When the time came for the troops to dine, and food was divided and distributed among them, the two spies whom we have mentioned stretched out their hands to the distributor like the rest, and that which fell to their share was a measure of meal, and a suitable complement of b.u.t.ter.

With this testimony of their adventure they returned to their own people."