Ireland as well as Norway and the Orkneys had her saga-tales of the events of the viking period. About the middle of the tenth century two princes, one in the north of Ireland and one in the south, are noted for their wars against the Norse. Both had strange and romantic careers, and of both we have full details told by their own poets or chroniclers. These two contemporary princes were Murtough of the Leather Cloaks, in Ulster, and Callaghan of Cashel, in Munster. The career of the former concerns us most.

Murtough was a prince of the O’Neills, and he ruled his clans from an immense fortress called Aileach, in North Londonderry, whose walls, with secret passages in their thicknesses, remain to the present day to testify to the massive strength of the old fortifications. He was son of a brave king of Ireland, Niall Glundubh or “Black-knee,” who had fallen in fight with the Danes of Dublin after a short but vigorous reign, spent in warring against his country’s foes. Murtough had been brought up in the tradition of resistance to the common enemy, and well did he answer to the call of duty. No doubt he was determined to avenge his father’s fall. Again and again he gathered together the clans over whom he ruled and endeavoured to push back the invader. His career is a brilliant succession of victories. We first hear of him in full chase of Godfrey and the Dublin Danes during one of their raids on Armagh. Murtough stole up behind, coming on their track at fall of night, and only a few of the enemy escaped in the glimmering twilight, because they could not be seen by the Irish. Four years afterwards he dealt them another severe blow on Carlingford Lough, in the middle of winter, which seems to have been Murtough’s favourite time for warfare, and here eight hundred were killed, and the remainder besieged for a week, so that they had to send to Dublin for assistance. King Godfrey came to their aid, and raised the siege; but these defeats seem to have discouraged the foreigners, for soon after this Godfrey left Dublin to claim the throne of Northumbria, left vacant by the retirement of Sitric Gale, and Murtough took advantage of his absence to make a descent on Dublin with Donagh, the King of Ireland, raiding south to Kildare.

A misfortune overtook Murtough soon after his return home. The Northern foreigners laid siege to his fortress, and succeeded in taking him prisoner, and carrying him off to their ships. The prince was ransomed by his people, and took his revenge by penetrating with his fleet to the Hebrides, and carrying off much booty from their Norse inhabitants. This successful foreign expedition so much increased his fame that we find him soon afterwards making a warlike circuit of the entire country, and taking hostages of all the provincial kings of Ireland. It was this circuit through Ireland that gained him his title of “Murtough of the Leather Cloaks,” from the warm cloaks of rough hide or leather which he and his attendants wore to protect them from the cold. The famous journey was performed in the depth of the winter of 942, after his return from “Insi-Gall,” or the Isles of the Foreigners, as the Hebrides were frequently called. He summoned all the clans over whom he ruled, and chose out of them a bodyguard of a thousand picked men, with whom he proceeded eastward into Antrim, then south to Dublin, thence into Leinster and Munster, and homeward through Connaught to Ulster again. Leinster and Munster threatened to oppose him, but the sight of his thousand chosen warriors seems to have deterred them. Murtough took with him his clan bard, who has written in verse which still exists an account of their journey. Their leather cloaks they used for wraps by day and for tents by night. Snow often lay deep on the ground on which they had to sleep, but they would “dance to music on the plain, keeping time to the heavy shaking of their cloaks.” Murtough returned home with an imposing array of princes as his hostages, for none dare refuse to acknowledge his supremacy. Sitric, a Danish lord of Dublin, was delivered to him by the Northmen; a prince of Leinster followed, and a young son of Tadhg of the Towers, King of Connaught, who alone went unfettered, while all the others were in chains. But his most audacious stroke was the demand that Callaghan, King of Cashel, in Munster, should be delivered to him fettered. Such an unheard-of demand was not easily acquiesced in; but Murtough would accept no other hostage, and at length, apparently at the King’s own request, he was delivered into the hands of the proud prince of the North. This fettering of a King of Munster caused a sensation at the time and was the burthen of many poems.

After his triumphal entry into his palace with his princely hostages, rejoicings and feastings went on for the space of five months, the hostages taking part in all the festivities and being royally entertained. The Queen herself waited on them and saw to all their wants. Before their arrival messengers had been sent forward to tell the Queen to send out her maidens to cut fresh rushes for the floor and to bring in kine and oxen for the feast. The Queen on her own behalf, to show her joy, supplied them all with food, and her banquets “banished the hungry look from the army.”

When the season of rejoicing was past Murtough led the captive princes out of his castle, and lest he should seem to be assuming glory and rights not properly his own, he sent them under escort to the High-King of Ireland, begging him, in courtly language, to receive them in token of his submission and respect. His message runs thus: “Receive, O Donagh, these noble princes, for there is none in Erin so greatly exalted as thyself.”

But Donagh, King of Ireland, would not accept so great a token of submission at Murtough’s hands. He replied: “Now thou art a greater prince than I, O King! Thy hand it was that took these princes captive; in all Ireland is there none thine equal.” So the captives were sent back, and apparently set free, with the blessing of the King of Ireland.

Only one year afterwards, in 943, Murtough again met the angry Northmen at the ford of Ardee, on the River Boyne, and fell by the sword of Blacaire, son of Godfrey, lord of the Foreigners. There is something romantic and unusual in every act of this Northern prince of the O’Neills, and we feel inclined to echo the despairing words of the old chronicler who records his death: “Since Murtough does not live the country of the Gael is for ever oppressed.”

It would seem to have been a daughter of this brave Murtough whose story we find in the Icelandic Laxdæla Saga, and who in these troublous times was carried away by the Norse out of her own country and sold as a slave in Northern Europe, eventually being purchased by an Icelander and carried away to Iceland. Her story is so interesting in itself and throws so much light on the conditions of the time that we will now tell it at length. If it was really Murtough of the Leather Cloaks who was father to this poor enslaved princess, torn from her home in Ireland and carried far overseas, never to return, we cease to wonder at the persistent hatred with which Murtough pursued the foes at whose hand he had received so great injuries as the death of his father and the loss of his daughter. In this case he was the grandfather of the famous Icelandic chief, Olaf Pa, or Olaf the Peacock.