Most modern writers on Irish history have accepted as historical the romantic story of the cursing of Tara and its desertion during the reign of Diarmait. There is not a word about it in the ancient annals, though our earliest known chronicler wrote within half a century of the supposed event. A son of Diarmait, Aed Sláne, became king of Ireland, and died in 604, within the chronicler's time of writing which ends in 610. Aed Sláne shared the high-kingship with Colmán, king of the Northern Ui Néill, and the chronicle says expressly that "they ruled Tara in equal power." As late as the year 780, Tara was neither an accursed nor a deserted place, for in that year an ecclesiastical synod was held "in the town of Tara" (in oppido Temro). The extant stories of the cursing of Tara are all writings of the Middle Irish period, written centuries later than the supposed event. They tell us that the trouble began with the outlawry of Aedh Guaire, king of Ui Maine, who refused to submit to a quite unprecedented exercise of authority on the part of the monarch Diarmait. I have not been able to find this Aedh Guaire's name either in the annals or in the genealogy of Ui Maine, or anywhere except in this story. Aedh Guaire sought sanctuary. Diarmait violated the sanctuary. Twelve saints, called "the twelve apostles of Ireland," thereupon laid siege to Tara with fastings and curses, and Tara ceased to be the home of the monarchy. The annals show that some of these saints were dead at the time and others of them were still in their childhood. These so-called historical tales are seldom troubled about anachronisms. The celebrated "Colloquy with the Ancients" brings St. Patrick and Oisin into conversation with the same Diarmait. Apart from anachronisms, the story of the cursing has other features which should suffice to warn any reader from taking it for serious history.
The desertion of Tara does not stand alone, and can be explained without resort to imaginative tales of a later age. Cruachain, the ancient seat of the Connacht kings, and Ailinn, the ancient seat of the Leinster kings, were also abandoned during this period. It was military kings who ruled from these strongholds, surrounded by strong permanent military forces. My first visit to Tara convinced me that what we see there is the remains of a great military encampment. So it appeared or was known to the tenth-century poet Cinaed Ua h-Artacáin, whose poem on Tara begins with the words Temair Breg, baile na fian, "Tara of Bregia, home of the warrior-bands." When the booty and captives of Britain and Gaul ceased to tempt and recompense a professional soldiery, and when the old fighting castes became gradually merged in the general population, military organisation died out in Ireland, not to reappear until the introduction of the Galloglasses in the thirteenth century. That is one reason why Tara was deserted.
There is another and perhaps more cogent reason. Diarmait left his son, Colmán the Little, king over Midhe proper, i.e. Westmeath and most of King's County and County Longford; and another son, Aedh Sláne, before mentioned, king over Bregia, i.e. County Meath and parts of Louth and Dublin counties. This is a further instance of that process, described in a former lecture, of creating mean lords. From these two kings sprang two distinct dynasties. Colmán's line, Clann Cholmáin, dominated the western territory; Aed Sláne's line, Síol Aeda Sláne, the eastern territory. The process of appropriation was continued in detail by their descendants. "Clann Cholmáin," says an ancient genealogist, "were distributed throughout Midhe so as to possess the lordship of every tuath and perpetual sovereignty over them." In like manner, an old genealogical poem relates the distribution of Aedh Sláne's descendants in lordship over various territories of Bregia.
The annals show that, between these two families so closely related, a fierce and bloody feud broke out, with continual reprisals, lasting for many years. Tara was in the possession of Aed Sláne's line. After the year 734, the kings of this line were excluded from the high-kingship, but nevertheless continued to hold undisputed authority over all Bregia, including Tara, until the close of the tenth century, when their dynasty was suppressed by the high-king Mael Sechnaill, who was also the chief of Clann Cholmáin. These facts quite sufficiently explain why, after 734, no king of Ireland could occupy Tara without an army.
The political affairs of southern Ireland during this period are remarkably tranquil and undiversified. In Munster, there was probably more abiding peace than in any equal extent of country in western Europe. The kings of Cashel appear to have steadily consolidated their authority and to have been content to do so without seeking to extend it beyond the bounds fixed in the fifth century. In the Book of Rights, the tributes payable to the king of Cashel far exceed those to which any of the other six principal kings in Ireland laid claim. There is an allegory related in the genealogies which indicates that at one time the supremacy of Cashel was challenged by the Eoghanacht kings of West Munster. This may have particular reference to one of these, Aedh Bennán, who died in 619, and who seems to have grouped under his own authority the western states in opposition to the king of Cashel. It is doubtful whether this ambition outlived him. His daughter, Mór Mhumhan ("Mór of Munster," as she is called), figures in ancient story. She became the wife of Fínghen, king of Cashel, and the ancestress of the most numerous family in Ireland, the O'Sullivans.
The most powerful of the kings of Cashel during this period was Cathal, who died in 742. The annals indicate that he held virtually equal authority with the contemporary high-kings. One of the prerogatives of the high-king was to preside over the Assembly of Taillte ("Teltown," near Navan). In 733, Cathal seems to have attempted to preside over this assembly, in the absence of the high-king Flaithbertach, who was engaged at the time in a losing struggle to preserve his own authority in the north-west. Cathal's attempt to preside over the high-king's assembly was forcibly prevented by Domhnall, king of Midhe. In 734, Cathal appears to have secured the adherence or submission of the king of Ossory in an effort to extend his power over Leinster; and a fierce battle ensued, in which the king of Ossory was killed and the king of Cashel escaped alive. In 737, a convention was held between Cathal and the high-king, Aedh Allán, at Terryglass in Ormond, and apparently an agreement was made between them securing the claim of the church of Armagh to revenue from all Ireland. In 738, Cathal again invaded Leinster and exacted hostages and a heavy contribution from the king of Naas. In view of all this, the name of Cathal was afterwards included by some southern writers in the list of monarchs of Ireland.
In Leinster, a factor against peace was the ancient claim of the high-kings to tribute from the Leinster kings. The origin of this tribute, called the Bóramha or "kine-counting," is explained by two different stories. Possibly it originated in the conquest of northern Leinster. The tribute was seldom conceded but to main force. To exact it at least once in a reign was a point of honour, a test of the monarch's authority; and an invasion of Leinster for that purpose is an almost regular item in the annals under the first or second year of each high-king.
The irregular succession to the monarchy ends in the year 734. In that year the high-king Flaithbertach, who was king of Tír Conaill, was compelled to abdicate by Aedh Allán, king of Cenél Eogain, who then became high-king. Flaithbertach retired into religious life at Armagh where he died thirty-one years later. From the year 734 until 1022, except for two interruptions, the succession to the high kingship was reserved to two dynasties, one at the head of the Northern Ui Néill, the other at the head of the Southern Ui Néill, to the kings of Ailech and Midhe; and these succeeded each other in the monarchy in regular alternation. There is no record of any express constitutional pact to secure the succession in this manner, but the alternation was a well recognised fact; and on this fact the medieval reconstructors of Irish history for the prehistoric period modelled part of their work—so that we read of an alternate sovereignty over Munster in remote antiquity, and of another alternate sovereignty, in which the Eoghanacht and the Dalcassians were the partners, at a later period; and the history of the monarchy is projected back to the first arrival of the Gaels in Ireland, by a device already alluded to, that is, by selecting names in turn out of the pedigrees of the principal dynasties.
It is not my purpose in these lectures to give a complete scheme of Irish history, allotting to each set of facts its due proportion of the discourse. My aim is rather to supplement what appears defective and correct what appears misleading in the treatment of early Irish history as the public has been accustomed to it. In regard of the great activity of religion and learning during the period between St. Patrick and the Norsemen, I shall not attempt to give even in summary what has been so eloquently described in detail by others, for example, by Archbishop Healy in his valuable work on "Ireland's Ancient Schools and Scholars," and, in the continental and missionary aspect, by Margaret Stokes. We have noted that the Irish civilisation of this period stands out so brightly from what are called the Dark Ages that it has commanded the special attention of an eminent historian of the Roman Empire, and evoked the resources of German scholarship. When I see the eulogist of Anglo-Norman feudalism in Ireland sitting in judgment upon the political institutions of a people which he has never studied and does not at all understand, I call to mind the estimate formed by "the ancient philosophers of Ireland" about Victorius of Aquitaine—that he was deserving of compassion rather than of ridicule. A barbarous people in "the tribal stage"—every item culled out that might suggest comparison with the head-hunters of New Guinea and the Hottentot—and beside this and in the midst of it schools everywhere, not schools but universities—books everywhere, "the countless multitude of the books of Éire,"—yes, we can still use the scrapings of our Irish vellum as a cure for the foreign snake-bite—and on the other hand, the pomp and circumstance of Feudalism, with its archiepiscopal viceroys, its incastellations and its subinfeudations, its charters and its statutes, its registers and its inquisitions, but during four centuries not one school of note, not even one, and one abortive university, no literature except the melancholy records of anti-national statecraft, and whatever learning there was for the most part suborned to the purposes of a dominating officialdom, just as in our own day we have seen the highest achievements of science and invention suborned to the service of the war departments.
As regards the actual scope of Irish learning, at that period, our data are not sufficient to determine it. I do not know whether anyone has yet attempted to draw up a complete conspectus of the Latin literature that has been preserved in MSS. copied by Irish scribes, and of Latin authors quoted in ancient Irish books. In my opinion, the formation of a sane estimate of the Latin learning of that age, in the case of Ireland as of other countries, has been hindered by what I will call the intellectual snobbery of the Renaissance—an attitude of mind in which scholars think to dignify themselves by despising everything in Latin that was not written in the time of the first twelve Caesars. It should not be ignored that for centuries after the fall of the Western Empire, though Latin existed among the common people only in the form of broken and breaking dialects, the Latin of the grammarians continued to be the language of thought and of education throughout the western half of Europe, and remained for the educated a truly living language. If it did not retain its classical elegance, it still had an unbroken vital tradition. Above all, the later Latin writings contain the contemporary record of the most progressive section of the human race in those times. I have often thought that I should like to see our universities break away from that sentiment of intellectual snobbery and open up opportunities for their students to become familiar with the late Latin literature. There can be no doubt that it was this late Latin literature that was chiefly read in the ancient Christian schools of Ireland, and properly so, for its content was of more vital interest to their teachers and scholars than the matter of producing elegant yet artificial imitations of the Latin classics. In that later Latin and through its medium, Western Christendom was joined in an international common-wealth of mind. The Irish schools were familiar with works written in Spain like those of Orosius and St. Isidore, or in Gaul like those of St. Jerome and Victorius. Perhaps the intimacy and frequency of this intellectual intercourse is best illustrated in a letter written by the celebrated Alcuin no doubt from the palace school of Charlemagne, to Colgu, a professor in Clonmacnois, just before the ravages of the Norsemen began. "The writer complains that for some time past he was not deemed worthy to receive any of those letters 'so precious in my sight from your fatherhood,' but he daily feels the benefit of his absent father's prayers." Here we have clear testimony that, for personal correspondence, there existed a way of sending letters from Ireland to the Rhineland and receiving replies, approaching as near to a regular postal service as we could expect to find in that age. The sequence of the letter shows that the medium of this correspondence was merchant shipping engaged in trade between the two countries. Alcuin adds "that he sends by the same messenger an alms of fifty sicles of silver from the bounty of King Charles (i.e. Charlemagne) and fifty more from his own resources for the brotherhood. He also sends a quantity of olive oil ... and asks that it may be distributed amongst the Bishops in God's honour for sacramental purposes."
And what about Greek? Much has been written about the singular knowledge of Greek possessed by Irish scholars and their pupils of other nationalities in the time of Charlemagne and thereabouts. Zimmer in particular has laid great stress on this proposition. Some years ago, I went one day to look for help from Professor Corcoran in something I was trying to work out. I found him in his room, busy with his students. I retreated, but he called me back. "We are discussing," he said, "the question of the knowledge of Greek in the ancient Irish schools. You have come in a good time to let us know your view about it." "Well," I said, "I cannot claim to have examined the matter at all. I know that some remarkable things have been said about it. I can only claim to have formed a general impression from what I have observed." "Will you let us know what impression you have formed?" "Certainly," I said. "My impression is that such evidences of a knowledge of Greek as have been found are well enough explained as the outcome of the teaching of Greek in Canterbury by Archbishop Theodore." Since that time, Mr. Mario Esposito has discussed the matter at length in "Studies," and his conclusion is that the knowledge of Greek in those Irish schools was very meagre indeed and mainly or wholly based on mere vocabularies. Kuno Meyer, I think, disagreed with this conclusion. I can remember that Mr. Esposito's treatment of the question jarred on me to some extent—I thought his argument was too sharp in some places and too flat in others. Nevertheless, I think he was in the right on the main point. Knowledge of a language means either conversational knowledge or textual knowledge or both together. I certainly could not name a single Greek author who was textually known in the Irish schools—on the evidence; and I know no evidence of the conversational use of Greek in those schools. It may have been in them for a time. Bede, a contemporary, says that Theodore's pupils learned to speak Greek with fluency. Theodore was in Canterbury from 664 till 690, and it is very likely that Irishmen would go there to learn from him. But notwithstanding Bede's testimony, it does not appear that Theodore's teaching had the effect of establishing the study of Greek on any permanent basis in England, not to say in Ireland.
Without making any claim that does not rest on unquestionable evidence, there is enough to show that during the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries, Ireland, enjoying freedom from external danger and holding peaceful intercourse with the other nations, made no inglorious use of her opportunity. The native learning and the Latin learning throve side by side. The ardent spirit of the people sent missionary streams into Britain and Gaul, western Germany and Italy, even to farthest Iceland. And among all this world-intercourse there grew up the most intense national consciousness. It pleases me to see a certain school of writers say certain things, so that the truth may be established by its opposite. "The Irishman's country," I read, "was the tuath or territory belonging to his tribe.... The clansman, while ready to lay down his life for his chief, felt no enthusiasm for a national cause. The sentiment for 'country' in any sense more extended than that of his own tribal territory, was alike to him and to his chief unknown." The implication is that, in the twelfth century, to which these words refer, the statement made in them is, in the first place, true of the Irishman, and in the second place, especially and peculiarly true of the Irishman. If it be peculiarly or especially true of the Irishman, then the writer, Mr. Orpen, has in mind other nationalities about which the same could not be stated. What and where were they? Suppose we read instead, "The feudal vassal's country was the fief or territory belonging to his lord.... The vassal, while ready to lay down his life for his lord, felt no enthusiasm for a national cause. The sentiment for a 'country' in any sense more extended than that of his own feudal territory, was alike to him and to his lord unknown." Would this be untrue of England, France, Germany, or Italy in the twelfth century? If quite applicable to all these countries, why is it so particularly and specially said about the Irishman? For what purpose? To what end? Is it to bring out historical truth? What is the motive? What is the objective?
The fact is that, while the statement is true in a limited sense about Ireland, it is not especially and peculiarly true, as its writer would have himself believe, about Ireland, and it is less true about Ireland than about any country in western Europe at that period—the twelfth century. You will not find anywhere in Europe during that age any approach towards the definite and concrete sense of nationality—of country and people in one—which is the common expression of the Irish mind in that age. Beginning with the sixth century chronicle, every Irish history is a history of Ireland—there is not one history of a tribal territory or of any grouping of tribal territories. Every Irish law-book is a book of the laws of Ireland—there are no territorial laws and no provincial laws. The whole literature is pervaded by the notion of one country common to all Irishmen. So far as Mr. Orpen's statement is concerned with the expression of historical truth, it has this much of truth—that neither in Ireland nor in any other country was the modern sentiment of political nationality fully formed in the popular mind. Mr. Orpen goes on to contrast Irish localism with the centralised monarchies of Europe. Let us hope he does not imagine that any one of those centralised monarchies was the expression of the sentiment of country in the popular mind or in the mind of the ruler. It is true that the sentiment of country sometimes obtained its delimitation from centralised power—but the sentiments which found expression in centralised power were those of fear on the one side and domination on the other; and students who study medieval history with a map will quickly apprehend that these two sentiments, fear and domination, shaped the boundaries of country in defiance of the sentiments connected with country, race, language, nationality. In Ireland, on the other hand, we find the clear development of the national consciousness, associated with the country, to a degree that is found nowhere else. Just as we must reject the ridiculous notion that the Irish were a perverse people, with a double dose of original sin, and therefore a people about whom the more incredible are the things said the more worthy they are of belief; so, too, we must avoid the contrary extreme and refrain from insisting that everything in ancient Ireland was perfect, deriving this perfection from the angelic virtue of the national character. In Ireland it was impossible to escape the sentiment of country. So an ancient poet figured to himself that the first poem in the Irish language began thus: "I invoke the land of Ireland." Another poet puts this sentiment in the mouth of Columba—
Here is a grey eye
that looks back to Ireland
an eye that never more shall see
Ireland's men nor her women.
Now, Columba's "tribal territory" was Tír Conaill. Again, Columba is supposed to say—
Gaedheal! Gaedheal! beloved name—
My one joy of memory is to utter it.
But Columba's clan was the Ui Néill—not the Gaedhil. Shall we be told that national sentiment was an esoteric doctrine of the poets; that in lines like these, they were not appealing to the sense of country which they knew to be in the minds of their audience, but were seeking subtly to indoctrinate with a nationalism peculiar to themselves a public which could only think of tribal chiefs and tribal territories? Well and good. In what other country of that age was there even a small class of the people who held and expressed this definite sentiment of country? A Leinster poet sings the glories of the Curragh of Kildare and the royal fortress of Ailinn—seat of the Leinster kings; but in the middle of this theme, he says, "Greater than telling at every time hath been God's design for Ireland"; can this expression be paralleled in the literature of any other country in that age? Or let us look at the words with which Gilla Coemáin begins a metrical list of the Irish monarchs:
High Éire, island of the kings,
illustrious scene of mighty deeds—
These are only casual examples that rise to the mind. The plain truth is this—and the writer who denies it does so because he has set out to write a political pamphlet in the guise of history—that, notwithstanding an extensive intercourse with neighbouring and distant peoples, and notwithstanding an extremely decentralised native polity, the Irish people stand singular and eminent in those times, from the fifth century forward, as the possessors of an intense national consciousness.
The Norsemen or Northmen were the people of Norway, Sweden and Denmark. They always call themselves Northmen. This implies that they regarded themselves as being the northern branch of a larger people—and that larger people can only have been the Germans. Northmen means North Germans. On their first appearance on the Irish and Scottish coasts, the Irish called them simply "the Heathens"—Genti: all the other peoples with whom the Irish came in contact at that time being Christians. Afterwards they were called in Irish Lochlannaigh. The origin of this name is unknown. Professor Marstrander thinks it must mean the men of Rogaland, an old division of Scandinavia.
The Norse invasions are seen to go through several phases. In the first phase, the islands and coasts are fiercely devastated, and the Northmen make away again with their booty and captives, or hold the captives to ransom. In the second phase, they occupy islands and outlying forelands. They are thus able to gather strong bands and plan out incursions into the interior. These two phases cover about half a century, from 790 to 840. Gradually the leaders are learning the geography of Ireland, especially of its harbours and navigable rivers.
The rapid development of these raiding enterprises has been explained as caused by political changes in Norway. But these changes did not take place until about eighty years after the Norse raids began. They amounted to a strong centralisation under king Harald the Fairhaired and a diminution of the power of the nobles; and they were perhaps rather a consequence than a cause of the raiding movement. We have seen how, some five centuries earlier, an almost similar outbreak of raiding activity brought the Irish into touch with Roman Britain and Gaul, and how the rewards of plunder enabled Irish kings to maintain a permanent military organisation and to acquire thereby much greater power, leading to a depression of the old nobility. I think it likely that the chief cause of the Norse movement of invasion was the development of a particularly suitable style of ship-building; the building of long undecked ships of light draft and very strong construction, very seaworthy; in which, during a sea-fight, every man could take a hand.
The third phase was the occupation of inland waters. The invaders ran their ships, which were propelled by oars as well as by sails, up the navigable rivers, if necessary dragging them overland where the navigable parts were interrupted by shallow rapids, for example on the Bann and the Shannon. Thus they could place a whole fleet on a lake like Loch Neagh or Loch Ree. There they were safe from attack and were in a position to choose the place on a large shoreline for their incursions. It is to be borne in mind that, during the period of the Norse wars in Ireland and for some centuries before and after it, the Irish had no permanent military organisation. Their largest military operations never extended beyond a few weeks. Their fighting men were called out for the purpose from their ordinary peaceful occupations, and could not lawfully be held to military service for more than a few weeks in any year. Thus there was no effective means of fighting down a hostile force encamped on its ships in a large inland water. It was by a crafty lure, we are told, that Turgesius, commander of the Norse fleet on the Shannon, was captured.
The fourth phase was the occupation of a fortified station on some haven, so that the ships, drawn up on land, were secure from attack. The earliest of these Norse stations in Ireland were at Dublin and at Annagassan in Co. Louth. Annagassan, now a mere hamlet, was a port of note in ancient times. Its sandy estuary suited the shipping of that age. Irish folk-tales still describe the old way of bringing ships to land in such places. The ships were of very light draft. Those made in Ireland had the strong framework covered with hides not planks. They were run ashore in a sandy rivermouth and dragged up on land beyond the reach of the tide. What gave Annagassan importance was that at this point the old great northern highway, the Slighe Midhluachra, touched the coast. It is in describing the fortified stations of the Norsemen at Dublin and Annagassan, in the annals under the year 841, that we first find the Irish term long-phort. This word, about seventy years afterwards, has come to mean an entrenched or stockaded position for an army, a fortified camp; and its use in this sense shews us what was the character of these first Norse stations on the Irish mainland.
The occupation of these fortified stations enabled the invaders to accumulate force for strong expeditions overland. Such expeditions were soon undertaken with success.
Dublin was well chosen. The Liffey here was the boundary between two of the greater kingdoms—Leinster and Bregia. The Norsemen of Dublin were thus in a position to take advantage of the ancient hostility between the Leinstermen and the Ui Néill who had wrested the plain of Meath from Leinster and imposed a hated tribute on the Leinster kings. So, as a rule, we find the Norse of Dublin and the kings of Leinster in close alliance.
The Irish annals indicate an earlier date for the centralising policy of the kings of Norway than Norwegian historians seem to accept. In 849, they tell us, eight years after the occupation of Dublin, the king of Norway (Lochlainn) sent a fleet to establish his authority over the Norse settlers in Ireland; and four years later, in 853, they say that Olaf, whom they call son of the king of Lochlainn, assumed kingship over the Norsemen in Ireland. He became joint king of Dublin with Ivar.
Soon after this, in 856 and 857, the Gall-Ghaedhil or Norse-Irish, make their appearance in various parts of the island—in Meath and Ulster and Munster. These were the people of the generation following the Norse occupation of the Scottish islands and the Isle of Man. They spoke a broken Irish and no doubt also a broken Norse dialect.
In 851, a new variety of Norsemen arrives on the Irish coast. They are called the Black Heathens, the Black Foreigners, the Black Lochlannachs, in contradistinction to the Fair Heathens, Fair Foreigners, or Fair Lochlannachs who had been here before them. The Welsh chronicle, the Annales Cambriae, makes it fairly clear that these Black Heathens were the Danes. They came in hostility to the Norwegians, with whom they fought fierce battles; and we have already seen that for a number of years the Danes held the chief power in the Hebrides.
At this point of time, about the middle of the ninth century, the Norsemen must have seemed to be about to become masters of all northern Europe from the west of Ireland to the banks of the Volga. England was crumbling under their attacks. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells how Norse armies marched up and down through the country without resistance, then moved off to the Continent. They occupied Ghent in Flanders for a year. They defeated the Franks in battle and supplied themselves with horses from their captures, pushed up the Meuse into France, encamped there for another year; went up the Scheldt to Condé and sat there for a year; up the Somme to Amiens, and sat there for a year. Then up the Seine, and took up their winter quarters beside Paris. Then the "army went up through the bridge at Paris, and thence up along the Seine as far as the Marne, and thence up the Marne to Cheny, and then sat down, there and on the Yonne, two winters in the two places." Then they crossed from the Seine to the borders of Brittany, where the Bretons attacked and defeated them, driving them into their ships, which apparently had been sent round by sea to co-operate with them. Turning again eastward they were defeated next year in Germany, but held together in France for two years more, when they came down to Boulogne, and finding shipping for their whole force, including horses, crossed over to England in two hundred and fifty ships, Alfred being then king in England. Afterwards they crossed England, passing up the Thames and then up the Severn. Alfred, assisted by the Welsh, defeated them. They fell back on Essex, mustered fresh forces there, once more crossed England and laid siege to Chester, invaded Wales and were driven out of it. Some settled down in the conquered lands of East Anglia and Northumbria, the rest made a fresh expedition into France. Though Alfred was a great and admirable king, and justly held up to renown in English history, he could do no more than hold a minor part of England against these invaders, and at his death in 901 they were undisputed masters of about two thirds of that country.
Several causes operated in checking the growth of Norse power. One was the rivalry between the Danes and the Norwegians. Another was the consolidation of Scotland under Cinaeth Mac Ailpin. A third cause undoubtedly was the tenacious resistance of the "Celts." Had the Norsemen been as successful in Scotland and Ireland, Wales and Brittany, as they were in England and Normandy, Harald the Fair might have been the head of a new empire. The annals give a long list of pitched battles in Ireland, in some of which the invaders were victorious but for the most part they were defeated. Mr. Orpen ascribes their failure to the fact that the Irish were not politically centralised and were therefore harder to break down; yet he goes on to censure this defect in the Irish polity. Are we to conclude that it was a misfortune for Ireland and other countries that Ireland was not subjugated by the Scandinavian Heathens?
As a matter of fact, it was under the personal command of the high-king, Aedh Finnliath, that the Irish resistance took a definitely successful turn. In 866, this king captured all the strongholds of the Norsemen in the northern half of Ireland; and from this time on, they made no settlements to the north of Dublin and Limerick. Olaf and Ivar, the two kings of Dublin, turned their arms against Britain. In 870, as already related, after a siege of four months, they captured the last stronghold of the northern Britons at Dumbarton. In recording the death of Ivar in 873, the Irish annals entitled him "king of the Norsemen of Ireland and Britain."
Ireland, however, was not at peace from the invaders. Under the same year, 873, we find a characteristic entry in the annals. I have already said that those who resort to these chronicles for a record of the normal affairs of Ireland mistake the character of the record and expose themselves to deception. One of the institutions connected with the Irish monarchy was the "Fair" or Assembly of Taillte near Navan. This was considered to be the principal assembly in Ireland, and to preside over it was a function of the king of Ireland. Yet during more than four centuries before this year 873, the Assembly is only five times mentioned, and in each instance it is not the normal fact but an abnormal incident that is recorded. In the year 717, the Assembly was disturbed by Foghartach, king of Bregia. Foghartach was a claimant to the high-kingship. In 714, he was deposed and exiled to Britain. In 716, he is recorded as reigning again. His disturbance of the Assembly of Taillte in the following year marks therefore an attempt on his part to assert his position as monarch. The effective high-king at the time was Fergal, king of Ailech. In 733, Cathal, king of Munster, made a similar attempt to preside, and was prevented by the king of Meath. After this event, there is no mention of the Assembly until 811. In that year, the Ui Néill having done something in violation of the sanctuary rights of the monastery of Tallaght near Dublin, the monastic authorities placed the Assembly under an interdict. The high-king nevertheless proceeded to hold it. He was Aedh Oirdnidhe, king of Ailech; and so we see that whether the monarch had his domestic realm in Meath or in the far North, it was equally his custom to preside over this Assembly. He failed to hold the Assembly. In face of the ban "neither horse nor chariot came thither." And the violated sanctuary of Tallaght received reparation after this in the form of many gifts.
In 827, the Assembly was broken up "against the Gailings" by the high-king Conchobor. The explanation of this event is possibly that the high-king failed to hold the Assembly, being preoccupied with the hostile activities of the Norsemen who in that year were plundering, burning and wasting the Bregian seaboard, not far from Taillte; also with the equally troublesome activities of Feidlimid, king of Cashel, about whom there is more to be said. The Gailings, whose territory lay close by, were loth to be deprived of the customary celebration, and attempted to hold the Assembly on their own account, but were forcibly prevented by the high-king.
In 831, the annals record a disturbance in the courts of the Assembly, owing to some dispute regarding reliquaries of St. Patrick and St. MacCuilinn of Lusk, the reliquaries no doubt being brought there for the purpose of administering oaths in litigation.
Let it not be thought that the silence of the annals in other years is compatible with the absence of the unrecorded event. The entry of the year 873 puts this possibility out of question. It says: "The Assembly of Taillte is not held, in the absence of just and worthy cause, a thing which we have not heard to have befallen from ancient times." Nevertheless, that there was sufficient cause in the disturbed condition of the country owing to the Norse wars is made evident, for the chronicler has to record the abandonment of the Assembly three years later, in 876, when again he denies a just and worthy cause; and again in the second year after that, in 878, without just and worthy cause. When we come to 888, we are told only that the Assembly fell through. This is repeated in 889, and then, when the failure to hold the Assembly becomes annual and, so to speak, normal, the annalist ceases to record it. The next we hear of this institution is in 916, and once more it is the unwonted thing that is chronicled. In that year, the Assembly of Taillte was restored by the high-king, Niall Glúndubh. Hence it would appear that the half-century preceding 916 was the period during which the disturbance of normal conditions in Ireland reached its maximum; and this is also the period of maximum activity for the Norsemen in neighbouring countries.
Aedh Finnliath died in the monastery of Dromiskin in 879. Dromiskin is in Co. Louth, near the sea-coast, and the fact that it was there the high-king "fell asleep," i.e. died a peaceful death in religious retirement, testifies to his success in checking the menace of the Norsemen in northern Ireland. He was succeeded in the monarchy, according to the custom of alternation, by Flann Sinna, king of Meath.
In the meantime, the power of the kings of Cashel continued to increase. It is a remarkable thing that at least four kings of Cashel during this period were ecclesiastics. These were Ólchobor, who died in 796, a scribe and a bishop; Feidlimid, who reigned from 820 to 847, described in his obit as "scribe and anchorite," but in an earlier annal he is mentioned as carrying his crozier to battle; Cormac, the learned bishop, who fell in battle in 908; and Flaithbertach, the chief cause of Cormac's tragedy, who was abbot of Inis Cathaigh, afterwards became king of Cashel, abdicated or was deposed, and died in 944. The career of Feidlimid reads like that of a Heathen king of Norsemen. There are some churchmen who stand upon the letter of the law, and consider themselves thereby entitled to do things that are hard to reconcile with the spirit. Feidlimid began his reign by proclaiming the Law of Patrick over Munster, i.e. by enforcing there the primatial claims of Armagh. In the same year he burned the monastery of Gallen, a foundation of the Britons in the west of Meath, destroying all its dwelling places and its oratory. Three years later, in 826, he led the army of Munster into the same district and wasted it. In 827 the king of Ireland, Conchobor, met him in convention at Birr; this indicating that the two kings were on terms of equality. In 830, he was again burning and wasting over his borders in Meath and Connacht. In 831, he appeared at the head of an army of Munster and Leinster in Bregia. In 833, he attacked Clonmacnois, slaughtered its monks and burned its termon-lands up to the church gates; then handled the monastery of Durrow in the same fashion. In 836, he attacked Kildare, then a purely ecclesiastical and monastic settlement, and finding the abbot and other dignitaries of Armagh there on visitation, he carried them off as captives, no doubt holding them to ransom. Next year he again invaded Connacht, and in 838 another king of Ireland met him in convention at Cloncurry, and doubtless came to terms with him; in 840 he attacked Meath, Bregia, and Connacht, and exacted the hostages of Connacht; in 841, the year in which the Norsemen established themselves at Dublin, Feidlimid with his army encamped on Tara. This, along with his taking the hostages of Connacht, shows that his aim was to secure the high-kingship. In the same year he marched to Carman, near Mullaghmast; Carman was the assembly-place of the kings of Leinster, and Feidlimid no doubt wished to preside and so assert his sovereignty over Leinster. This time, however, he overstretched his power. The reigning high-king, Niall, came in force against him and drove him out, and a poem on this event says that in his flight the vigil-keeping Feidlimid left his crozier behind. After this check, he is not further heard of until his death in 847. In his obit he is called by the northern chronicler "optimus Scottorum," the best man of the Irish. His reign exhibits the high-water mark of the power of the Eoghanacht kings of Munster.
After 500 years of undisputed sovereignty in Munster, the Eoghanacht dynasty of Cashel reached a turning point in the battle of Belach Mugna in 908. In that year, urged on by Flaithbertach, abbot of Inis Cathaigh, an eligible prince and afterwards king of Cashel, king Cormac, the bishop, invaded Leinster. The high-kings of the line of Niall regarded the Leinster kings as their own choice vassals and jealously reserved to themselves the privilege of exacting homage and tribute from Leinster. We have seen how a high-king allowed a king of Cashel to plunder and harry in Connacht and Meath, and interfered with effect only when the Assembly of Carman and the sovereignty of Leinster were involved. So it befel with Cormac. Advancing through Ossory he compelled the king of Ossory to join forces with him, and crossing the Barrow they were confronted by the Leinster king and his army. They encamped for the night, prepared to do battle on the morrow. Flann Sinna, the high-king, must have been well warned, for when the morning came, the Munster army found not only the Leinstermen against them in front, but the high-king and the king of Connacht coming upon their left flank. The king of Ossory attempted to retreat but was cut off and killed. The battle became a rout. King Cormac was unhorsed and beheaded. Two Munster abbots fell in the slaughter. The abbot of Inis Cathaigh escaped.
A graphic account of this expedition, with all the appearance of authentic detail, is found in a book of annals apparently compiled at Durrow in Ossory. The memory of King Cormac was held afterwards in great veneration. To him is ascribed the compilation of the Irish glossary that bears his name, also of the Psalter of Cashel and the Book of Rights. The Psalter of Cashel survives only in excerpts and quotations, and to judge from these it was a collection of historical and genealogical matter. Of the Book of Rights, Professor Ridgeway once said to me that it was the most remarkable state document produced by any European country outside of the Byzantine empire in that age. We must consider its character and content on a later occasion.
This tragic battle, fought in the year 908, ended the long-established prestige of the Cashel dynasty. Six years afterwards, in 914, the Norsemen took possession of Waterford without opposition; and still six years later, in 920, they took possession of Limerick. Until these years, they had gained no foothold on the land of Munster. Another result of the weakening of the Eoghanacht power was the rapid rise of the Dalcassian kings.
Closely connected with the events of this time, a thousand years ago, was the remarkable story of Queen Gormlaith. She was daughter of the king of Ireland, Flann Sinna. Apparently she had been betrothed to Cormac, king of Cashel. He having become an ecclesiastic, Gormlaith was given in marriage to Cearbhall, king of Leinster, the same Cearbhall, victor over Cormac at Belach Mugna, to whose sword an ode written by a Leinster poet is preserved in the Book of Leinster. The Ossory collection of annals, which differs from the ordinary chronicles in expanding into narrative, tells that Cearbhall, wounded in the battle, lay long a-healing, and that once, as the queen sat on the couch at his feet, he boasted rudely over the death of Cormac. Gormlaith reproached him for his disrespect to the memory of so good a king. Her husband, remembering that she had been promised wife to Cormac, became enraged, and with his foot cast the queen from the couch to the floor. Thus affronted in the presence of others, Gormlaith left her husband and went back to her father. Flann refused to receive her, not desiring a quarrel with the king of Leinster. Gormlaith then sought protection from Niall Glúndubh, king of Ailech. Cearbhall died of his wounds the year after the battle, and Niall married Gormlaith. On the death of Flann in 916, Niall became king of Ireland.
I have shown that the annals are a record of abnormal rather than of normal matters. Another character of the annals is that they are in the main an aristocratic and personal record, having chief regard to great personages in Church and State and to the personal aspect of events as they concerned these magnates. A good exemplification of this feature of the annals is shown in the record of king Flann's death. It says: "Flann, son of Mael Sechnaill, king of Tara, who reigned thirty-six years, six months, and five days, died in the sixty-eighth year of his age, on Saturday, the 25th of May, about the hour of 1 p.m." So Gormlaith, daughter of a king of Ireland, chosen to be queen of Munster, became queen of Leinster, then queen of Ailech, and lastly queen of Ireland. There is an old poem which represents her standing by the grave of her husband Niall and commanding a monk not to set his foot upon that clay. She died in religious retirement in 948, forty years after the battle of Belach Mugna.
In the first year of his reign as king of Ireland, 916, Niall Glúndubh, as already told, restored the Assembly of Taillte. In the following year, 917, he marched against the Norsemen of Waterford. They came out to meet him. An indecisive action was fought. Then both armies fortified themselves in the field, anticipating the modern manner of warfare, and remained thus face to face for three weeks. Niall meanwhile sent to the king of Leinster requesting him to attack the Norsemen from that side. The Norsemen, however, did not wait for this attack. Keeping enough force to hold their position against Niall, they sent their main body to meet the Leinstermen, whom they completely defeated. The place of this encounter is named Cenn Fuait, and was absurdly identified by O'Donovan with Confey in Co. Kildare, apparently on the principle that there is an M in Macedon and also in Monmouth. The battle must have taken place close to Waterford Harbour on the Leinster side. Other editors of the annals content themselves with repeating O'Donovan's conjecture as authentic. After this failure, Niall withdrew, and the Norsemen held Waterford from that time until the Norman invasion.
Next year 918, Niall opened war on the Norsemen of Dublin. That is just 1000 years ago. The following year, 919, he led an army against Dublin. The Norsemen met him on the north bank of the Liffey at Islandbridge. Niall was defeated and mortally wounded. This battle is sometimes called the battle of Dublin, sometimes the battle of Cell-mo-Shámhóg, from a church in the vicinity. The latter name furnished O'Donovan with the occasion for another conjectural identification, which other editors have blindly followed. He made Cell-mo-Shámhóg to be the same as Kilmashogue, six or seven miles from Dublin on the south side and among the hills. A little reflection would have assured these editors that, just as a Leinster army coming to the relief of an army near Waterford was not likely to encounter the Norse of Waterford in the north of Leinster, so also an army from northern Ireland was not likely to meet the Norsemen of Dublin in the mountains to the south of Dublin. For the full identification of the battle site, the student may refer to the name Cell Mo Shámóc in Father Hogan's Onomasticon.
From Niall Glúndubh the O'Neills of Tyrone derive their surname and descent.
The Norsemen were now no longer the ferocious heathens of their earlier record. Most of them had adopted Christianity. Intermarriages between them and the Irish were quite frequent. Their towns soon developed into trading communities, though it is clear enough from Norse documents that a Norse trading ship went to sea well prepared to make gains by less patient methods than buying and selling. Wexford seems to have been pre-eminently a trading settlement, and the first part taken by the Wexford Norsemen in Irish wars was apparently the defence of their town against the Anglo-Normans. With their Irish neighbours they lived in peace and security. In the tenth century the Norse settlements in Ireland became part of the Irish body politic, and if they went to war in Ireland, as often as not, it was in alliance with one Irish king against another. There were still incursions of the Norsemen of outlying parts, the Isle of Man, Galloway, the Hebrides, etc., and in Ireland the struggle takes the form of resistance to these invaders, under a number of leaders of note. One of these leaders, Cellachán of Cashel, king of Munster, has a saga all to himself, but I think the story contains more than history. Some of its striking events, which we might expect to find recorded in the chronicles, find no place in them. However that may be, Cellachán's activity against the Norsemen is the last glory of the Cashel dynasty, the flame that shoots up from the candlestick before the candle goes out. Already the Dalcassian line was preparing to take the place of the declining Eoghanacht power in Munster. In the year 944, the father of Brian Bóramha, Cennétig, king of Dál gCais, with the title of king of Thomond or North Munster, gave battle to Cellachán, but was defeated. Brian was born in 941, three years before this battle. Cellachán died in 954.
In northern Ireland at this time the head of resistance to the Norsemen was Muirchertach, son of the high-king Niall Glúndubh who fell in the battle of Dublin. A list of his victories is given, a century after his time, by the poet-historian Flann of Monasterboice. Among them is mentioned an expedition by sea against the Norsemen of the Hebrides—it is also mentioned in the genealogies but not in the contemporary annals. The annals on the other hand record that in 939 Muirchertach was captured in Ailech and carried off by the Norsemen to their ships but was immediately ransomed. The event shows that Ailech, one of the great prehistoric stone fortresses, was still occupied in the tenth century by the kings who took their title from it. Especially interesting in Muirchertach's career are his relations with the high king Donnchadh. In the ordinary course of the alternate succession, Muirchertach, as king of Ailech, was the designated successor in the high-kingship to Donnchadh, who was king of Meath. At times he appears prepared to dispute the authority of Donnchadh, at other times he is active in upholding it. His most remarkable action is what is known as his Circuit of Ireland, in 941, briefly noticed in the Annals but described at length in a poem by Cormacán Éces, who accompanied the expedition. With a picked force, said to number 1000, Muirchertach marched through all the principal kingdoms of Ireland, and exacted hostages from each king. In Cashel, he took the king himself, Cellachán, as a hostage. The Dalcassians alone stood off, and after four days marching here and there in their territory, Muirchertach passed on to Connacht without the hostages of Dál gCais.
The fact of this expedition illustrates what I have already said, that, from the sixth to the thirteenth century, there was no military organisation in Ireland. The hostages were brought to Ailech and there hospitably entertained by the king and queen for some weeks, after which Muirchertach, so to speak, regularised his position in the matter by handing over all the hostages to the high king Donnchadh.
Two years later, in 943, Muirchertach fell in battle with the Norsemen near Dundalk. The high king Donnchadh died in the following year, 944. In the ordinary course of the alternate succession, he should have been succeeded by the king of Ailech, but Muirchertach's death left this kingship either disputed or divided, and the high-kingship was assumed by Congalach, king of Bregia, who reigned for twelve years and fell in battle with the Norsemen. This reign of Congalach is the only breach in the alternate monarchy between the years 734 and 1002.
The kingdom of Dál gCais occupied the eastern half of the present county of Clare. Its prominence dates from the time of Lorcán, grandfather of Brian. Being a border state, it was able to form relations of mutual advantage with the border states of Connacht, with Aidne, Ui Maine, and the Delbna. In the wars between Mathgamain and the Limerick Norsemen, the Delbna were his allies. The kings of Aidne and Ui Maine, Connacht states, were allies of Brian, and gave their lives, as he did, on the great day of Clontarf.
The killing of Mathgamain in 976 appears in later writings in a more odious light than it could have appeared to contemporaries. We can recognise that the ancient Eoghanacht dynasty of Cashel, which Mathgamain overthrew, had already lost its prestige and was no longer able to rule and protect Munster. It has always happened in the world's history, and is probably happening to-day, that institutions and established powers appear to contemporary people to be full of vigour and likely to last, whereas to people of a later time it is clear that they resembled the hollow tree awaiting the blast that was to lay it low. To the Eoghanacht princes who compassed the death of Mathgamain, he was the successful usurper who had broken into the ancient right of their kindred and held it by the strong hand.
With regard to Brian, there are some noteworthy things to be said which even enthusiastic eulogists have ignored. Brian had one or two ideas which, in the Ireland of his time, were revolutionary. He had the idea of a more centralised authority than any Irish king in history before him had attempted to create. To this end, he designed holding in permanent garrison a number of fortified places in various parts of Munster. This design is clearly expressed in a poem added in his time, and no doubt under his direction, to the Book of Rights; and the annals show that he endeavoured to give effect to it.
Brian had also definite notions on the subject of what in our time is called sovereign independence. This is one of many matters about which we must be on our guard against thinking the present back into the past—an obvious precaution yet one which many writers on Irish history have neglected. It can be shown, and it would have interested Professor Bury had he known it, that from the earliest Irish chronicle, from the sixth century, down to the eleventh or twelfth century, the dominant idea in Ireland with regard to international relations was this—that as in Ireland there were many little States and over them all, in primacy rather than in operative authority, there was a chief king, the monarch of Ireland, so in the world there were many kingdoms and over all these a chief king whom Irish writers called the king of the world. This idea was adopted from Latin historians, especially from St. Jerome and Orosius. In our earliest histories, the emperor reigning at Constantinople was regarded as king of the world. A metrical list of the kings of the world from Noah's Flood down to the eighth century was written by the poet-historian Flann of Monasterboice, who died in 1056. The prevalence of this idea probably facilitated Henry of Anjou in obtaining the submission of the Irish princes. The annals, in relating Henry's arrival in Ireland in 1171 and his departure in 1172, say nothing about the papal grant, but describe Henry as "the son of the Empress." The same idea lingered in western Europe down to the time of the emperor Charles V, and was the cause of no small anxiety to the mind of Henry VIII, with all his bluffness. Nevertheless, it was very much shaken and confused by the creation of the Western Empire under Charlemagne. That made two kings of the world. If two why not more?
About the year 1000, under Brian, that portion of the Book of Rights which concerns Munster was rewritten, and we have now the new version side by side with the old one. The new poem on the rights of the king of Cashel asserts that Cashel is subject to no king in Ireland but its own. But what about the king of the world? On that point the old idea still holds. This is what the poem says:
Cashel overheadeth every head
Except Patrick and the King of the Stars,
The high-king of the world and the Son of God
To these alone is due its homage.
But a few years later when Brian was king, not only of Cashel but of all Ireland, his view about the high-king of the world, the Emperor—eastern or western—had undergone a change. He recognised the spiritual primacy of Armagh, and when he visited Armagh, which now holds his dust, he offered a tribute of twenty ounces of gold. The Book of Armagh was displayed to him, and in his presence his official historian wrote in Latin these words, which are still upon the page:
"I Mael Suthain write this in the presence of Brian, Emperor of the Irish."
This title, "emperor of the Irish," is not a mere high-sounding epithet. It means that, as Basil was then supreme temporal ruler in the East and Henry of Bavaria in the West, so was Brian in this island.
Another trait in Brian's policy was his avoidance of battle when, by delay or otherwise, he could hope to establish his authority. In 1001, when Brian's aim at supremacy was clear to the high king Mael Sechlainn, the latter prepared to resist with the effective co-operation of the king of Connacht, and to this end built a new causeway of stone across the Shannon at Athlone. Brian's first move the following year was to occupy Athlone and prevent co-operation; and it was at Athlone that he received the submission of both kings. Year after year he led his army into the North to obtain the submission of the northern states; and when he was opposed in force he retired without battle, until at length it became evident that he had the power to enforce submission and the northern hostages were yielded to him in peace.
Some writers have been at pains to argue that the popular view of the battle of Clontarf as a national victory over foreigners is a delusion; and would have it that this battle was either a mere incident in the domestic wars of Ireland or was rather a struggle between the forces of Christianity and Heathendom. It is enough to say that the Norse sagas regard the battle as the Irish popular view regards it—a contest between Irishmen and Norsemen about the sovereignty of Ireland. The kingdom of Ireland was the prize which king Sigtrygg of Dublin offered to Earl Sigurd of the Orkneys. It was to win Ireland that the Norsemen came from distant Iceland and from Normandy; and the Norse poet who tells of the event says, "Brian fell but saved his kingdom." "This Brian," too, says the Norse account, "was the best of kings."
If the battle of Clontarf ended the prospect of a Norse conquest, it brought no advantage to the internal peace of Ireland. The effect of Brian's assumption of the monarchy is visible. The year after the battle, Flaithbertach Ua Néill, king of Ailech, came southward with his hosting, plainly with the aim of restoring the alternate succession, under which he would become next king of Ireland after Mael Sechnaill. Mael Sechnaill resumed the high-kingship and held it until his death in 1022. The king of Ailech seems then to have made no attempt to assert his claim to the high-kingship; and for half a century afterwards no high-king is recognised. Towards the end of the century, the monarchy is restored, going now always to the strong hand—two O'Briens from Thomond, two O'Conors from Connacht, and two O'Lochlainns from Tyrone; an irregular hegemony, without even the semblance of an institution.
The Icelandic saga of Burnt Njal shows us in the most vivid possible way how great a shock Clontarf sent through the Norse world. The battle, it tells us, was accompanied or followed by apparitions and dreadful portents seen in the Hebrides, in the Orkneys, in the Faroe islands, and in distant Iceland. In truth a victory for Earl Sigurd might have been, as his defeat must have been, a decisive event in European history. The Norse of Dublin were comparatively not much affected. They maintained their alliance with Leinster. Three years after the battle, these confederates are again seen on the offensive, invading Bregia, and their joint forces sustain a heavy defeat from Mael Sechnaill.
Though a close intercourse was maintained with Norsemen in other countries, the colonies of Dublin, Wexford, Waterford and Limerick became a domestic factor in the life of Ireland. Intermarriage with the Irish was quite common. We find Norse names in Irish families and Irish names in Norse families, and a considerable vocabulary of Norse words became at home in the Irish language. A new element, the commercial life of towns, was introduced by these colonies.
The Book of Rights divides Ireland into a little more than a hundred petty states (owing to certain peculiarities of treatment, the number cannot be stated definitely.) These are arranged in seven groups, with an over-king at the head of each group. The principal matter of the book is to define certain relations between the over-king of each group and the petty kings under him. All this is told in verse. The plan of the book is to allot two poems to each of the over-kingdoms or groups of states. One of the two poems relates the tributes payable by the petty states to the over-king at the head of the group. The other poem relates the customary gifts given by the over-king to the petty kings. Great importance was attached to this giving and receiving of gifts, and the significance of the gifts is clearly expressed in their Irish name, tuarastal. The meaning of this word, which is still in familiar use, is wages. The gifts then were not favours. The acceptance of them was an act of homage. The king who accepted tuarastal from another king acknowledged himself to be that other king's man, to be, so to speak, in his pay—if only in a figurative or ceremonial sense.
Not all the petty states were subject to tribute. When the dynasty of a petty state was a branch of the over-king's dynasty, no tribute was due. In Munster, for example, there were various petty states whose rulers were of the Eoghanacht lineage. These paid no tribute to the king of Cashel, who was also of Eoghanacht lineage. The other states were tributary. This exemption from tribute and liability to tribute goes back to an ancient state of conquest, but of conquest during the Celtic period. The citizens of the tributary states were freemen, whereas the people of the older communities of pre-Celtic origin were, at least in theory, unfree. This does not mean that they were slaves. The status of the unfree communities, roundly speaking, was similar to that of the natives of British India at present; and the status of a tributary state would be comparable to that of a country possessing self-government but subject to what is called an imperial contribution. The non-tributary states might be compared to the existing autonomous dominions of the British Empire. There were distinct names for each class. Non-tributary states were called saor-thuatha, "free states"; tributary states were called fortuatha, which means "alien states"; unfree communities were called daor-thuatha, which we might translate "vassal-states"—and they were also called aithech-thuatha, "rent paying states." Each free or tributary state had a distinct territory, but the unfree communities were not bounded by the territorial bounds of the others. They might overlap the bounds of two or more States, and some of them were broken into separate groups distributed here and there over a very wide area.
The compilation of the Book of Rights is ascribed to two writers, Selbach and Oengus, acting under the authority of Cormac mac Cuilennáin, king of Munster. Cormac reigned from 901 to 908. As O'Donovan has shown, the Book received certain amplifications under a king of Munster who claimed to be, or aimed to make himself, king of Ireland; and O'Donovan properly argues that this king could only be Brian Bóramha. Moreover I think that there are fairly clear indications of the year 1000 or 1001 as the date of these amplifications.
The Book of Rights was edited by O'Donovan and published in 1847 by the Celtic Society. The Council and officers of this society, whose names follow the title page, form a list which shows a greater interest in Irish historical studies at that time than in our time among Irishmen of high standing in learning and politics. The names include those of Sir Aubrey de Vere, Sir Robert Kane, William Monsell, William Smith O'Brien, Daniel O'Connell, Dr. Renehan, president of Maynooth College, Thomas Hutton, Sir Colman O'Loghlen, Michael Joseph Barry, Dr. Crolly, Charles Gavan Duffy, Samuel Ferguson, Dr. Graves, James Hardiman, William Elliott Hudson, Dr. Matthew Kelly, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, William Torrens McCullagh, John Mitchel, Thomas O'Hagan, John Edward Pigot, Sir William Wilde, Dr. Madden, and Thomas Francis Meagher. The edition belongs to O'Donovan's early work. A new edition is very much to be desired, with a critical treatment of the text and more accurate notes, taking advantage of the great increase of philological, historical and topographical knowledge accumulated during the seventy years that have passed since this first and only edition was brought out.
I think it likely that only the section relating to Munster was drawn up in Cashel; that this section was circulated as a model; and that each of the other sections was drawn up on this model by writers on behalf of the other principal kings. For example, in the Connacht section, the tributes are said to be brought "hither," a fairly definite indication that the writer belonged to the personal surrounding of the king of Connacht.
The over-kings in the Book of Rights are the kings of (1) Cashel, (2) Cruachain, (3) Ailech, (4) Oriel, (5) Ulaidh, (6) Tara, (7) Leinster. In the section for Oriel, the statement of tributes is wanting. Its absence is probably not accidental. The kings of Ailech from the fifth century onward kept steadily extending their power eastward and southward, encroaching on the domain of the kings of Oriel. Armagh, the ecclesiastical capital, was in Oriel, and one can clearly trace throughout a long period of time a definite policy, on the part of the Ailech dynasty, of bringing and keeping Armagh within their sphere of influence. The natural resistance of the kings of Oriel appears to have been broken down by their defeat in 827, in the battle of Leth Camm, at the hands of Niall Caille, king of Ailech and afterwards king of Ireland. According to an old tract, from this time forward, the kings of Oriel became tributary to Ailech. This would explain the omission from the Book of Rights, drawn up about eighty years later, of a list of tributes payable to the over-kings of Oriel.
In the tenth century we find the kings of Ailech still inhabiting Ailech. In the eleventh century, the name of their domestic territory, Tír Eoghain, has been transferred from the district of Ailech to that which now bears the name, "Tyrone," which was formerly the central part of the kingdom of Oriel. I have not been able to determine how or at what time the old Tír Eoghain, now called Inis Eoghain, containing the fortress of Ailech, passed into the dominion of the kings of Tír Conaill. With regard to Oriel, there is one point to be carefully noted. In the early documents of the Anglo-Norman regime, we find the name Oriel used to comprise the present county of Louth, which is called the English Oriel, being occupied by feudal grantees. Only a very small fraction of the county belonged to the Irish kingdom of Oriel; but a few years before Strong-bow's invasion, Donnchadh O'Cearbhaill, king of Oriel, extended his dominion southward to the Boyne. It was he who, in exercise of this extended dominion, granted the lands of Mellifont to the Cistercians. This recent occupation caused the feudal newcomers to extend the name Oriel to the whole region between Oriel and the Boyne. This nomenclature may well hold good for documents of the feudal regime—but we find it used to import error and confusion into quite a different class of documents. For example, the editor of the Annals of Ulster, in his index, says that Oirghialla comprises the county of Louth, though the name is not used in that sense before the fifteenth century; and he omits to say that in the early annals Oriel comprises Tyrone and the larger part of County Derry.
This method of treatment is unfortunately typical of the manner in which the sources of Irish history have been presented in publication. It is not mere anachronism. The underlying principle is that what is true of one period is true of the whole range of time covered by Irish records. When we find sympathetic editors of these records obsessed by such a view, we are still more inclined, in the case of antipathetic writers, to content ourselves with the judgment recorded by Columbanus—to deem them worthy of indulgence rather than of ridicule.
The tenth and eleventh centuries produced a school of Irish historians whose chief work was to reduce the old miscellaneous matter of tradition to unity and sequence. It would have been well if they had been satisfied with so much, but they went farther. In dealing with the pre-Christian period, they tampered with tradition in two ways. Where they found definite elements of heathenism, they either cut these out or furbished them in a guise which they considered consonant with Christian belief; and this can be shown to have been done consciously and deliberately. They also took a free hand in devising a system of chronology for events that had no chronology. On this point, they did not all act together, and so, for such epochs as the Gaelic invasion, we have six or seven different dates varying from the fourth to the eighteenth century B.C. Not withstanding these defects in their work, the historians of this period acquired in later times a degree of authority that stood up as a barrier in front of the past. Their highly artificial treatment was vested with all the sanctity of veritable tradition. The main work that has now to be done by students of Irish antiquity is to get behind this barrier and bring into the light the abundant remains of older tradition that are extant.
I have said that, in the minds of the scattered Norse community, the battle of Clontarf broke the victorious prestige of their race. It happened at a critical moment, for in the year before it, in 1013, the Danish conquest of England had been completed, and all England had submitted to the rule of Sveinn, king of Denmark. Nearly a century later, king Magnus of Norway endeavoured to restore the empire of the Norsemen. He succeeded in bringing under his authority all the Scottish islands, Caithness, part of Argyle, and the Isle of Man. Once more, Ireland shaped the course of history. In 1102, Magnus, then in the Isle of Man, sent an embassy to Ireland threatening war, and no doubt demanding tribute. Muirchertach O'Briain, then king of Ireland, obtained a year's truce. About the same time, Muirchertach made peace for a year with Domhnall MacLochlainn, king of Tyrone, who opposed his claim to the high-kingship. Next year, 1103, Muirchertach marched against Domhnall, but was defeated in the neighbourhood of Banbridge. About the same time, and probably taking advantage of this internal conflict, Magnus made a landing on the Ulster coast, but was cut off and fell in the fight. With his fall, the prospect of a Norse empire came to an end.