A History of Ireland.

Clontarf and After.

by Eleanor Hull

1931

IV.—CLONTARF AND AFTER

A false move in a game of chess was the immediate cause of the outburst. Maelmora, who had come to Kincora to bring his tribute of ship-masts to Brian, was teaching Conang, a young lad, to play chess with Morrogh, Brian's son. He advised a move which lost the game to Morrogh. Angry words arose. "It was thou that gavest advice to the foreigners at the battle of Glenmama by which they were defeated," Morrogh said angrily. "I will give them advice again, and they will not be defeated," retorted the King of Leinster. Without taking leave of anyone, Maelmora departed next morning in a furious passion, and hardly had he returned home when he began to stir up the chiefs of his own province, declaring that he had received insult in the house of Brian. They declared for war, and were joined by the princes of Ulster, who were only too glad of an opportunity to throw off the unwelcome yoke of Brian. Great hosts began to assemble. Gormliath in Dublin was gathering a formidable alliance of Danes from the Orkneys and the Isle of Man to the aid of her son Sitric, whom she brought into the quarrel to support her brother Maelmora, and all over the country the stormclouds gathered.

A vivid account is given in Njal's Saga of the arrival on Yule-night at the Orkneys of Sitric Silkenbeard's heralds to demand aid from Sigurd the Stout, Jarl (or Earl) of Orkney, in his rising against Brian. Sigurd's mother had been Audna, or Eithne, one of the daughters of Carroll (Cearbhal), King of Ossory, and he was familiar with affairs in Ireland, for he made constant viking expeditions there. Eithne, who was something of a soothsayer or 'wise woman,' had on a former occasion shown her mettle when her son had hesitated to go on an expedition against a jarl in Scotland, on the ground that his enemy's forces were seven to one "Had I known that thou wouldst wish to live for ever," she replied, "I should have reared thee up in my wool-bag. It is fate that rules life, and not the place where a man may go. It is better to die with honour than to live with shame." She had woven for him the raven banner, which floated in the form of a bird over the host, and which brought Sigurd to his death at Clontarf. It was said to bring victory to him before whom it was borne, but death to him who carried it. Sigurd at first refused to go out against Brian, but the promise of the kingdom of Ireland if they slew King Brian, with the hand of Gormliath, Sitric's mother, finally induced him to give his promise.

Gormliath, when she sent her son abroad to seek for help, had said to him, "Spare nothing to get them into thy quarrel; whatever price they ask, give it." All those to whom he went conspired to say the same thing; when he went on from Orkney to interview the chiefs of two fleets of thirty viking ships lying off the Isle of Man, they also asked as their reward the kingdom of Ireland and the hand of Gormliath. Sitric at once promised, only stipulating that they should keep the terms a secret from Sigurd the Stout. He went home with the news that the pirates of Man and the Earl of Orkney would be prepared to join their forces to those of the Danes of Dublin and the Leinstermen by Easter time of the new year. No doubt the Danes in Ireland hoped for the foundation of a kingdom similar to that which King Sweyn Forkbeard of England (1013-14) was endeavouring to found between Britain and Denmark. But it was not destined that a Danish Canute should ever rule a united kingdom from Ireland.

The battle of Clontarf was fought on Good Friday, 1014. Brian and his forces marched on Dublin, burning all the way, so that the Norsemen when they arrived in Dublin Bay saw all the land one sheet of flame. The battle was fought on the north side of the river Liffey, on the low lands beside Clontarf, and up to the wooded country on the higher ground now known as Phoenix Park. Here, with the wood of Tomar behind them, the Irish forces were drawn up, facing the bay by which the Danish auxiliaries were landing from their ships. On the south side of the river stood the Danish fort, from the height of which Sitric and Gormliath followed the course of the battle going on below them. Another spectator watched beside them. This was Sitric's wife, who was Brian's daughter, married to the chief of her country's foes. Her feelings must have been a strange compound indeed of fear and hope. All day long the contest lasted, from high tide in the morning, when the foreign troops landed and beached their boats, to high tide at night, when they sought their boats' in order to flee seaward. But the low tide of midday had carried the boats out to sea, and they had no place of retreat, seeing that they were cut off between the Bay and Dubhgall's bridge on the one hand, and between it and Tomar's wood on the other. They retreated to the sea "like a herd of cows from the heat of the sun, or pursued by gadflies." There they were cut off and lay dying in heaps and hundreds. To the watchers on the battlements of Dublin Castle it seemed all day like the reaping down of a field of oats. Sitric believed that it was his mercenaries who were gaining ground. "Well do the foreigners reap the field," he said brutally to his wife, whose secret heart he knew to be with her countrymen; "many a sheaf do they cast from them." "By the end of the day the result will be seen," was her reply. Later, when the terrible rout of the Danes on the shores of Clontarf was going on, Brian's daughter had her revenge. "It seems to me," she said, "that the foreigners have gained their patrimony. They are going to the sea, their natural inheritance. I wonder are they cattle, driven by the heat? But if they are, they tarry not to be milked." The answer of her husband was a blow across the mouth. Close to the weir of Clontarf, where the river Tolka seeks the sea, Turlogh, the young grandson of Brian, pursued a flying Norseman across the stream. But the rising tide flung him against the weir, and, being caught on a post, he was drowned, still grasping the hair of the Norseman, who lay dead beneath him.

The age of Brian, who was seventy-three years old when the battle was fought, prevented him from taking a leading part in the fight. His tent was pitched at some distance behind the fighting hosts, on a slight height, from which the contest could be seen. He had, in any case, been unwilling to engage on Good Friday, and he remained all day from dusk to eve absorbed in prayer. A lad who tended him stood at the door of his tent and reported from time to time the ebb and flow of the battle. Toward nightfall a viking chief from the Isle of Man, named Brodir, made his way to the tent. This Brodir bore an ugly character, even in the North. He had been a Christian, but, in the words of the saga, he had become "God's dastard, and now worshipped pagan fiends and was of all men most skilled in sorcery." He came up the hill with intent to kill Brian, for his wizard arts had told him that if the fight were on Good Friday, though Brian's hosts would win the day, he himself would fall. Brian's lad had just reported the disastrous news that the banner of Morrogh, Brian's son, which led the Irish troops, had fallen, and he was in the act of endeavouring to induce Brian to mount his horse and fly, when Brodir entered the tent. Brian had refused to take refuge in flight, and was making his last bequests, still kneeling on his cushion, as he had knelt all day, with his psalter open before him. But as the blue-armoured foreigner rushed in he rose and unsheathed his sword.

Brodir passed him by, and noticed him not. One of his two followers had in former times been in Brian's service, and he said, "Cing, Cing, this is the King." "No, no," said Brodir, "but Prist" ("it is a priest"). "By no means so," replied the man; "this is the great King Brian." Then Brodir turned, and swung his gleaming, double-bladed axe above Brian's head. The old King made a cut at the ferocious viking with his sword, wounding his leg, and both fell together, Brian's head being cleft through by the axe. Then Brodir stood up and with a loud voice exclaimed, "Now may man tell his fellow-man that Brodir hath felled King Brian." But his triumph was shortlived; he was taken by the Munstermen and put to a horrible death on the spot. The slaughter on that day was terrible. Hardly a leader on either side was left alive. Both Morrogh, Brian's son, and Maelmora, King of Leinster, on the other side, were among the slain. Jarl Sigurd the Stout of Orkney fell, carrying the fatal raven's banner under his cloak. A young Icelander of his bodyguard, as fearless as he was brave, took up his stand with a few others beside Tomar's Wood, refusing to fly. When, seeing the rout, all beside him turned to run, Thorstein stooped down to tie his shoestring. An Irish chief, coming up at the instant, asked him why he did not fly with the others. "Because I am an Icelander," said Thorstein, "and were I to run ever so fast I could not reach home to-night." Struck by his coolness, the Irish chief set him at liberty, and Thorstein went to Munster with Brian's sons, and was well beloved in Ireland. When, a week later, Hrafn the Red, one of Sigurd's men, returned to Orkney, having escaped with his life, he was asked by Jarl Flosi, "What hast thou to tell me of my men?" Hrafn could make no reply other than, "They all fell there."

Considerable differences are to be observed in the accounts of the battle as to the part taken in it by King Malaughlan. A long Munster report, put into Malaughlan's own mouth, says that he was so horrified by the storm and contest of the battle that he and his forces were too frightened to take part in it. Nothing could be more unlikely than that the victor of the battle of Tara, during whose reign the foreigners had been repeatedly beaten down and reduced to slavery, would have been affected in such a way by the sight of a battle. Still less is it likely that he would have publicly proclaimed himself a coward. The Annals of the Four Masters distinctly assert that he took part in the battle, and that the enemy forces "were afterward routed by dint of battling, bravery, and striking by Malaughlan from the river Tolka and Finglas to Dublin against the foreigners and Leinstermen." The Annals of Ulster say nothing of his defection. It would seem that the Meath troops were stationed behind the Dalcais, at some distance in the rear, and the Wars of the Gael with the Gall states that an understanding had been entered into between Malaughlan and the Danes that if he would not attack them they would refrain from attacking him. It is quite likely that Malaughlan, who had all to regain by Brian's overthrow, was, as the Annals of Clonmacnois say, "content rather to lose the field than win it." In the earlier part of the day he probably stood aside, but when he saw the foreigners apparently winning he broke in with his troops and took his part in the struggle. This theory at least would reconcile the conflicting accounts. The death of Brian restored Malaughlan to the throne of Ireland, and up to the last days of his life he continued without intermission to harry and attack the foreigners. He reigned eight years after Clontarf, dying in 1022. Those of the annalists who do not admit the right of Brian to the throne of Tara give him a reign of forty-three years in all. He died in retirement at Cro Inis, opposite his fort of Dun-na-sciath on Lough Ennell, in Westmeath, with the Abbot of Armagh and the leading men of Ireland beside him.

The battle of Clontarf was an incident rather than a conclusion. It did not close the Danish period in Ireland, but it inaugurated a new phase. For the next two hundred years or more we find the Norse existing in the country as a separate nationality, adhering to their own interests and holding the cities they had founded round the coasts. Dublin remained in Danish hands. Kings of Norway and jarls of the Isles and Man could still look to Ireland with the assurance of a friendly welcome or even with the hope of a possible reconquest, and the fleets of both nations met on the seas for merchandise or war. Some of the Northern jarls claimed great possessions in Ireland as well as in Scotland. Thorfinn, youngest son of Earl Sigurd the Stout of Orkney, who fell at Clontarf, held rule "from Thurso-skerry to Dublin" and was everywhere beloved in his wide-flung dominions. Important battles, not mentioned in the Irish chronicles, are remembered in the sagas. A great battle, much heard of in the North, was fought at Ulkfeksfiord (?Dundalk Bay) by a jarl of Orkney, in which an Irish king Konofogor (Conor) gained a victory, so that Earl Einar had to flee back to Orkney after losing his men and all his booty. This was in 1018, and is not mentioned in the Irish annals.[1] Of Guthorm, the nephew of St Olaf, King of Norway, it is said about the year 1050 that Ireland was for him a land of peace and that he had his winter-quarters in Dublin and was in great friendship with King Margad.[2] They are found plundering together in Bretland (Wales), but they quarrelled about the division of the booty, and in this unfriendly fight Margad fell. They fought on St Olaf's Day, and the booty was so great that Guthorm is said to have made an image of St Olaf out of every tenth penny of the loot.[3] This Irish king would seem to have been a king of Dublin called in the annals Eachmargadh (?Each-marcach, "The Rider of a Steed"), who came to the throne in 1035, was deposed by Ivar, son of Aralt, in 1038, but was restored in 1046, when Ivar was expelled. In spite of his Irish name he was a nephew of King Sitric, who left the kingdom to him when he went overseas to Rome. In 1052 Eachmargadh also went overseas, apparently on the Welsh expedition from which he never returned. At this time the kingship of the Danes of Dublin seems to have been disputed between princes of the Norse or Danish race and the kings of Leinster, for Dermot, son of Maelnambo, King of Leinster, succeeded him. He was the ancestor of King Dermot MacMorrogh, who took his family title from this Dermot's son. He and his son Morrogh were both styled "Kings of the Danes of Dublin."

[1] Saga of St Olaf Haraldsson, ch. lxxxvii (Heimskringla, Laing's edn., ii, 382.
[2] Saga of Harald Hardrade, ch. lvi (op. cit., iii, 410).
[3] Ibid., ch. lvii (op. cit., iii, 412).
But the Norse king whose memory is most clearly preserved in Ireland was Magnus Barelegs (reigned 1093-1103), so called because on his return from his Western viking raids he and his men adopted the Scottish and Irish custom of wearing the plaid and kilt. "They walked barelegged in the streets and wore short kirtles and over-wraps" to the great astonishment of their people. Magnus came three times on expeditions to the West and spent many years in Ireland. His close relations with Murtogh Mór [4] O'Brien, King of Munster, make it necessary that we should take up the course of events in Ireland after the battle of Clontarf.

[4] It is not to be supposed that such words as Mór ='Great,' Oge = 'Junior,' Fionn = 'Fair,' Donn = 'Dark,' Liath = 'Grey,' Boy (buidhe) = 'Fairhaired,' Reagh (riabhach) = 'Swarthy,' etc., were part of the Christian name or surname ; they were personal adjectives, which sometimes were adopted to distinguish different branches of the family. The MacCarthys Reagh were a junior branch of the MacCarthys, of which the MacCarthy Mór was the head ; the O'Conor Donn (now Don) was the senior branch in rank of the O'Conors. In other cases the adjective denotes the district ruled over, as O'Conor Faly (Failghe) or O'Conor Kerry (Ciarraidhe). We use the double 'n' in this name where the family seems to be distinct from the ruling family of Connacht, such as the O'Connors of Offaly, or O'Connors Faly, Offaly being a district comprising parts of Leix.
The shattered army of Munster had fought its way back to the Shannon carrying the wounded on litters, but they were impeded by the unpatriotic attempt of the prince of Ossory to hinder the return by throwing his clansmen across the path of the marching troops. But the wounded warriors caused themselves to be tied upright to stakes set in the ground among the fighting men, so that they might bear their part in the conflict. Struck with fear and pity, the army of Ossory refused to fight such dauntless heroes and allowed them to pass on.

The rise of Brian and the intrusion of a king of Munster into the line of the High Kingship of Ireland, hitherto alternating between the Ulster and Meath branches of the race of Niall, had interrupted the custom of centuries. The interruption was more than momentary, for it had established a precedent which the princes of the South naturally thought might well be followed by Brian's descendants. Hence a new uncertainty arose regarding the succession to the throne of Ireland and a fresh cause of strife. Brian, during the course of his long reign, had come nearer than any king before him to establish his authority over the whole island; only Ulster, as always, had refused to recognize him and gave him, only when forced into it, a grudging and unwilling submission. The personal nobility of Brian, his benevolence and wisdom, added much to the dignity of his reign. To the Northmen he was "the best-natured of all kings, who would thrice forgive outlaws the same offence before he would have them judged by the law," while the Munster Chronicles loudly proclaim the justice of his rule and the benevolence of his heart, praising his patronage of learning and devotion to religion. Though on his fall Malaughlan, King of Meath, returned to the position from which Brian had ousted him, the brilliant possibility of attaining to the High Kingship was never absent from the minds of Brian's powerful family. A short interregnum was filled by the joint regency of two good and learned men, Cuan O'Lochain, a chronicler and judge as well as a poet, of the distinguished family of the O'Lochains of Meath, and Corcran the cleric, who was connected with the Waterford district of Lismore. They governed the land like a free state, and not as kings; but the arrangement was brought to an end by the slaying of Cuan by the men of Teffia two years afterward, in 1024, an act which brought that family into great disrepute. The interregnum, however, lasted for eighteen years after his death.

Then began a series of reigns most of which are accounted by the chroniclers reigns "with opposition," that is, they were not acquiesced in by the whole country, and there was generally a rival king who disputed the title to the throne. Three kings of the O'Brien family of Munster, two of the O'Conors of Connacht, and two of the O'Lochlans of Ulster held at various times the coveted title, though "with opposition"; and more than once a monarch of Leinster aspired to it. Some of these kings, in particular Murtogh O'Brien (d. 1119) and Turlogh O'Conor (d. 1156) were men of great power as well as of vast ambition. Each fought steadily for his own hand, and between them "great storms of war" swept through Ireland or, as the annals express it, Ireland became between them "a trembling sod." They succeeded in making their names and influence felt outside their own country, willingly entering into foreign alliances in order to strengthen their claims at home. The respect felt outside Ireland for Murtogh Mor (called Murchad by the Norse), the strongest representative of his house next to King Brian, is shown by the request that came to him from "the nobility of the Isles," that is, from the Hebrides and Man, who, on the death of their ruler Lagman, son of Godred Croven, asked Murtogh to send them some worthy person to act as regent until Godred's son should come of age to govern. Murtogh sent over his nephew Donald MacTeige, impressing upon him the duty of ruling a country which was not his own with all possible bounty and moderation. But the choice was unfortunate. Donald's rule was so tyrannical and his crimes so great that the Hebridean chiefs formed themselves into an association and expelled him from the Isle of Man. He is said to have been killed by the men of Connacht in 1115 during a raid into his own country.[5]

[5] P. A. Munch, Chronica Regum Manniae, at 1095.
Murtogh Mór instituted friendly relations not only with the Northmen of Dublin, the Isle of Man, and Norway, but also with the kings of England. William of Malmesbury tells us that Murtogh, King of Ireland, and his successor were so "devotedly attached" to Henry I that they wrote no letters but such as tended to soothe him and did nothing but what he commanded. He adds, however, that on one occasion Murtogh acted for a short time rather superciliously toward the English and had to be brought to a better mind by the suspension of navigation and foreign trade, upon which Ireland largely depended; this seems to have had the desired effect, seeing that "soon after his insolence subsided." "For," adds the chronicler, "of what value could Ireland be, if deprived of the merchandise of England?" [6] This mercantile dependence on England is illustrated in the twelfth century by the facility with which the largest of the towns, such as Dublin, could be reduced to starvation when an English blockade was established by sea, the inland trade being evidently quite insufficient to cope with an emergency.[7] That there was a trade in fine cloth as well as provisions is shown by the well-known story of the Skrud-viking, or "Broadcloth cruise," of the great viking chief of the Orkneys, Swein Asliefsson, who, when he was approaching Dublin with his ships for a raid about 1150, met two merchant ships coming from England laden with English cloth and other merchandise bound for Dublin. He set upon and plundered the vessels and "took every penny out of them," leaving to the merchants "only a small quantity of provisions and the clothes they stood up in." They sailed away to the Orkneys with the fine cloth sewn to their sails, so that it looked as though these were made entirely of rich cloth.[8]

[6] Chronicle of William of Malmesbury, Bk. V, 1119.
[7] Giraldus Cambrensis, Conquest of Ireland, ch. xix, xxii.
[8] Orkneyinga Saga. Skrud means fine or costly material.
It is possible that King Murtogh found it difficult to keep on good terms with princes so much opposed to each other as King Henry I of England and King Magnus of Norway, for both of them accused him of uncertain conduct. Murtogh was second son to Turlogh O'Brien and reigned thirty-three years. A letter from Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, written in 1074 to this Turlogh, styles him, "Magnificent King of Ireland," and the Archbishop remarks that the Almighty showed great mercy toward the Irish people when He gave Turlogh supreme power over that land. But it detracts a little from this praise that by the very same messenger who transmitted this letter to Turlogh, Lanfranc sent another epistle to Godred, or Godfrey, at that moment Danish king both of Man and Dublin, calling him also "glorious King of Ireland." This letter recommends to him Patrick (Gilla-Phadraic), whom he had just consecrated as the second Danish bishop of Dublin in 1074.[9] Turlogh was never, in fact, supreme king of Ireland, though he came near to asserting his claim when, in 1080, he marched at the head of an army into Meath attended by the clergy of Munster. He then received the submission of Malaughlan, King of Tara, who brought with him the Bishop of Armagh carrying the famous relic, the Bachall Isa, or "Staff of Jesus," supposed to have been given by our Lord to St Patrick.[10] But his claims were never acknowledged by the princes of the North, and after his death, six years later (1086), he is usually styled "King of Ireland with opposition." [11] Turlogh died at Kincora after a long illness. His son Murtogh Mór who succeeded him, as we have seen, set about immediately to assert his claim to the throne of Ireland, in opposition to a formidable rival in Western Ulster, Donal MacLochlan, who claimed the overlordship against the O'Briens. During the greater part of a long reign this contest continued. The fury with which it was waged is shown by the frequent efforts made by the abbots of Armagh to bring the sanguinary struggle to an end, but the most they could do was to impose a truce upon the combatants from time to time.[12] The hewing down of several of the sacred trees under which from very early times the kings had been inaugurated shows also the bitterness with which these wars were conducted.[13] Both princes were men of determination and ability, and both felt that the contest was finally to decide the rival claims between the North and South. In the course of the struggle each combatant razed to the ground the principal palace of the other, Murtogh ordering his men, in the vehemence of his anger, to carry away the very stones of which the fortress of Aileach, the royal seat of the Hy-Neill, was built, a stone in every sack of their provisions, all the way from Donegal to Kincora. He declared that he would rebuild his own destroyed residence out of the ruins of that of his enemy.

[9] Godred styled himself Rex Hiberniae. In the Annals of Loch Cé his death is recorded under 1075 . "Goffraidh, son of Ragnall, King of Ath Cliath [Dublin] mortuus est."
[10] Giraldus Cambrensis, Topography of Ireland, ch. xxxiv.
[11] The Annals of Loch Ce call him King of Erin.
[12] Ibid., under dates 1097, 1099, 1102, 1105, 1107, 1109, 1113, etc.
[13] In 1099 the craebh-thelcha or "spreading tree of the hill," under which the kings of Ulidia were inaugurated, was cut down by the Cinel Eoghan. It gave its name to Crewe, a townland in Co. Antrim. In 1111, in retaliation, the sacred trees or grove of the Cinel Eoghan at Telach-og, or Tullyhog, in Co. Tyrone were hewn down by the Ulidians ; and in 1143 Turlogh O'Brien hewed down the Ruadh-Bheithigh, or Red Birch, the royal tree of the Hy-Fiachrach of Connacht. The inauguration tree of Murtogh's own race had been cut down by Malaughlan, King of Tara, in his wars with Brian Boromhe; it stood on Magh Adhair in Co. Clare.
It was in the course of this struggle that Murtogh came into close relations with King Magnus Barelegs, who came three times to Ireland and affianced his son Sigurd to Murtogh's daughter. The marriage took place in 1102 on Magnus's last visit to the country. The Norse King came over with the definite intention of making himself master of the country. "On hearing of the delightfulness of Ireland, the abundance of its pro duce and the salubrity of its climate, Magnus could think of nothing else but the conquest of the country." His first step was to send over his shoes from the Isle of Man to Murtogh, "bidding the Irish King carry them on his shoulders through his palace on Christmas Day, in presence of the envoys," in token of Magnus's superior authority. The courtiers, furious at such a request, prayed the King not to agree to it. But Murtogh said that he "would not only carry the shoes, but eat them, rather than that Magnus should ruin a single province of Ireland." [14] They renewed their friendship, plundering together in Dublinshire, and the Norse King passed a winter in Kincora with the King of Munster. "Why should we think of faring home?" he sang shortly before his death. "My heart is in Dublin. Youth makes me love the Irish girl better than myself." He was fated to fall in the country of his affection. While waiting for the arrival of some cattle needed to provision his homeward voyage from Ulster, he and his men fell a prey to an ambush in the swampy ground at the head of Strangford Lough below Downpatrick. The King was conspicuous by his armour and the emblems on his shield. He fell under a stroke from an Irish axe, such as the Danes had taught the Irish to use. This was in 1103.[15] This is the last descent of a Norse king upon the shores of Ireland until King Hakon Hakonsson's abortive attempt in 1263, shortly after the fatal battle of Down. But viking raids continued regularly up to the Norman period, well-known vikings such as Swein Asliefsson plundering the Isles and the coasts of Ireland twice a year, in their spring and autumn seafaring. It is probable that the landing of the first band of Normans on the Southern shores was looked upon by many of the inhabitants as one of these old accustomed viking raids. But the Normans had come to dispute with the Norse the possession of the towns. An interesting remark made by MacFirbis the genealogist early in the seventeenth century tells us that up to his own day the greater part of the merchants of the city of Dublin belonged to the descendants of the son of Olaf Cuaran, that is Sitric Silkenbeard, showing that the Norse commercial activity survived in the old Norse city even after the Norman conquest. It is difficult to imagine the posterity of this fierce and ambitious prince developing into a trading community; but the Norse added to the original population a fresh and vigorous stock possessed of much practical ability. At the end of the thirteenth century the Annals of Clonmacnois mention the families of Dalemare, Ledwitch, ffrayne, and MacCabe as of the remnant of the Danes who remained in the kingdom.[16]

[14] P. A. Munch, op. cit., 1098; Keating, History, iii, 309.
[15] Magnus Barelegs' Saga, ch. xxvii (Heimskringla, Laing's edn., iv, 111).
[16] Annals of Clonmacnois, 1299.
They evidently looked on the Normans as of Danish or Norse stock. There were of true Norse stock the MacCabes and MacLeods, the MacKeevers (Ivar), the O'Hagans (Hakon), MacSorleys (Somhairle), Kettles (Ketel), MacManus (Magnus), MacCaffereys (Godfred), Cottars (Ottar), and MacAwleys (Olaf), who not only became thoroughly nationalized but in some cases chiefs of Irish districts. It is difficult not to see in the MacLochlans and the fierce MacSweeneys, or MacSwines, the descendants of mixed Norse and Irish blood. Lochlann was the common Irish name for Norway or, perhaps, rather for the Hebrides, from which so many of the race descended upon the North of Ireland. MacFirbis gives a considerable list of Danish settlers in different parts of the country. The intermarriages and consequent interchanges of name began early and went on apace, showing the terms of comradeship and familiarity on which, in spite of wars, the two peoples stood.[17] A number of Norse place-names replaced the earlier Irish names, especially on the east coast. Howth, Skerries, Lambay, Dalkey, Leixlip, near Dublin, are names given by the foreigners, as are also Smerwick in Kerry, Waterford, Wexford, Arklow, and Carlingford and Strangford Loughs or fiords. Donegal means "the Fort of the Foreigners," and the old Irish names of three provinces added the Norse termination 'ster' to the original Irish name.[18]

[17] MacFirbis, On the Fomorians and the Norsemen, ed. Alexander Bugge (1905).
[18] Joyce, Names of Places; A. Walsh, Scandinavian Relations with Ireland during the Viking Period (1922).
The adoption of Christianity by the Danes about the beginning of the eleventh century brought about great changes in the life, as in the architecture, of the Danish towns of Dublin, Waterford, and Limerick. Olaf Cuaran, Sitric's father, died at the Columban monastery of Iona, which in the past the Danish vikings had ruthlessly wrecked, and his brother-in-law, King Olaf Tryggvsson (995-1000) had been baptized "to the West over in Ireland," probably in the Skellig Isles off the Kerry coast.[19] They would therefore appear to have united themselves to the Irish native Church. But Sitric and his successors were sharply divided from it. Their bishops sought consecration from Canterbury and held no intercourse with the Irish clergy for at least half a century. We may ascribe this adoption of the non-Celtic system of Church government to Sitric's visits to Rome, where he probably received baptism. On his return he set up a Church organization in the city of Dublin in every way formed on the Roman model. Bishops, and not abbots, ruled in the Danish cities, and each bishop had his own diocese. The men chosen by the Danes as their first bishops appear all to have been Irishmen, but they were Irishmen who had received their training in England or abroad, and had been brought up under the discipline of the Anglo-Roman Church. [20] Donogh O'Hanley had been a monk at Canterbury; Samuel O'Hanley, a monk at St Albans; Patrick of Dublin, "who had been nourished in monastic institutions from his boyhood," was well known to Archbishop Lanfranc, and Gilbert of Limerick was the friend of Anselm, whom he had met in Rouen when Anselm was called over to the deathbed of William the Conqueror. Malchus of Waterford had been a monk at Winchester. They were all men with a knowledge of affairs outside their native land, and they had been educated in the Roman methods of Church government. From the first they set about to organize their dioceses on the model in which they had been trained. They professed obedience to Canterbury, from which they had received consecration, five bishops of Dublin, one of Waterford, and one of Limerick having been consecrated in Canterbury in the time of Archbishop Theobald (1138-61). When Cellach of Armagh, as Primate of the Irish Church, claimed the obedience of the Danish bishops to his authority, they wrote to Ralph, the then Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1121, "We will not obey his command, but desire to be always under your rule." [21]

[19] This is Worsaae's opinion. It is erroneously assumed that Olaf was baptized in the Stilly Isles, off Cornwall. Olaf was for some time in Ireland, and took home an Irish wolfhound, which never left his side during his life. After Olaf's death at the fatal battle of Svold the dog was found dead on the mound which he thought contained the remains of his master. See Saga of Olaf Tryggvsson, ch. xxxii, xxxv (Heimskringla, Laing's edn., ii, iii, 115).
[20] The dates of the earliest bishops of Dublin are; Donat, 1038-1074; Patrick, 1074-84; Donat O'Hanley 1085-9 ; Samuel O'Hanley, his nephew, 1095-1121; Greine, or Gregory, first Archbishop, 1121-61; Laurence O'Toole, 1162-80.
[21] See also the submission of Patrick, second Bishop of Dublin, to Canterbury, in Ussher, Works, iv, 564.
The churches that they erected bore foreign names, such as St Olaf (or Olave), St Werburgh, and St Audeon, and they enshrined in them the relics of foreign saints. The rapidity of their church building shows that the Danish people as well as their princes had become Christian. About 1040, twenty-five years after the battle of Clontarf, the foundations were laid of the church of the Holy Trinity, known later as Christ Church Cathedral, church dedications to native saints beginning about this time to give way in favour of dedications to the Trinity, or to the Blessed Virgin and Church saints. Its history had a complete parallel development to that of Christ Church at Trondhjem. It remained so Danish in sympathy that even at the end of the fourteenth century no Gael could get employment in connexion with this church. All these churches were crowded together within the narrow limits of Danish Dublin, close round the fort or castle. In later days the Norman successor to Archbishop O'Toole built St Patrick's outside the walls as a rival to the Danish cathedral, the ancient differences between the two cathedrals and their struggles for priority witnessing to the double national and spiritual life existing side by side. In the end priority was secured by the older church.

Nevertheless, just as the Danes had bishops of Irish nationality, so they were supported in their church extension by the Irish population of the towns. The Irish contributed grants of land to Dunan, or Donatus, the first bishop, for the foundation of his church and the episcopal palace beside it. The Danes seem to have taken part in the popular election of the bishops, a novel and interesting feature of the Danish Church system in Ireland, and at the Synod of Athboy in 1167 Ragnall, chief of the foreigners, attended, surrounded by a bodyguard of a thousand horsemen. At the Synod of Kells (Ceanannus), held in 1152 and presided over by Cardinal John, who brought the pallia for the four archbishops, Dublin, Cashel, Tuam, and Armagh, Danish and Irish bishops sat together and conferred in common on the new arrangement of the dioceses.[22] Possibly the example of the Danish Church in their midst may have helped to bring about the abandonment of the ancient system of Church government, hitherto so tenaciously adhered to, and consecrated by the example of the founders of the Church. Leading ecclesiastics, both of the Irish and Danish sees, united in an effort to bring the Celtic Church into conformity with the Roman discipline. The energy with which they applied themselves to the task is shown by the number of conferences and synods held during this century, seven meetings having been held between 1110 and 1167. They must have been imposing assemblies. As many as twenty-five bishops and over three hundred clergy "both monks and canons" attended one of them. At the Synod of Usneach in 1105 "three hundred and sixty priests and one hundred and forty deacons and many other clerics" were present.[23] At later meetings large numbers of laity attended, thirteen thousand horsemen, of whom, as we have seen, one thousand were Danes, having been present at the Synod of Athboy in 1167. It was at the Synod of Rath-breasal, held in 1110 and presided over by Gilbert of Limerick in his capacity of legate of the Holy See, that the question of regulating the diocesan system was seriously taken up.[24]

[22] Keating, History, iii, 315.
[23] Keating, History, iii, 297.
[24] Gilbert was an Irishman though he was bishop of the Limerick Danes. His name is a Latinized form of the Irish Gilla espuig or "Servant of the Bishop," often anglicized to Gillespie. He signed his name in Irish below the Acts of this Synod, for which see Keating, History, iii, 299-307, quoting from the lost Annals of Clonenagh. See also H. J. Lawlor, St Malachy, xxxvii seq.
The general plan adopted was that of two archbishoprics, Armagh and Cashel, under whom ten bishops were appointed for the North of Ireland and ten for the South. It is noticeable that their decisions in respect of Leinster and Connacht are put in the form of suggestions rather than commands, these two provinces being too independent of the rule of Cashel or Armagh for it to be taken for granted that they would adopt the decisions of the archbishops and clergy of either. The views of the Danes of Dublin, in particular, were, no doubt, an uncertain factor in the situation. But the first bold step had been taken. The principle had been laid down that a bishop, in Ireland as elsewhere, must be attached to a diocese, and the first efforts were made to mark out these new dioceses, which naturally followed the general limits of the tribal boundaries. The wandering unattached bishop and the bishop attached only to a monastery disappeared as an institution with the signing of the Acts of the Synod of Rathbreasal (1110).

As the head of his diocese the bishop took henceforth an independent and superior position. He was brought out of the monastery into the world. There does not seem to have been any wide opposition to the change among the bishops, but the old abbacies naturally resented a change which placed them under the jurisdiction of the bishop in whose diocese the abbey stood. Great foundations, proud of their descent from the early saints and counting their origin from the first days of Irish Christianity, could not easily accustom themselves to the new position. In spite of all efforts to bring them into the general scheme, monasteries like Clonmacnois, Derry, and Fenagh remained even up to the fifteenth century quite outside it.[25] The old "evil custom" of hereditary succession and the familiar tribal organization were too deeply rooted to be broken through. While, in general, the South and East of Ireland, with the towns, conformed, Connacht and Ulster stood out for the preservation of their independence. The reformers got much support from the O'Briens and MacCarthys of Munster, but they got none from the O'Neills of Ulster, and with Ulster went Connacht and the West. Ecclesiastically as well as politically, the North and West lay outside the radius of reforming movements, and their customs and ways of life underwent little change.

[25] Book of Fenagh, ed. W. Hennessy (1875).
The chief agent in bringing about the new system was St Malachy, the friend and correspondent of St Bernard, whose beautiful life of the Irish Primate [26] is an invaluable record of the conditions of Church life in Ireland as seen from the Roman standpoint. Malachy, whose real name was Maél Maedóc ua Mórgáir, was born in Armagh in 1095. He was educated by a Danish recluse, Ivar O'Hacon, or Hagan, from whom and from a three years' stay with Malchus, Bishop of the Danish church of Waterford, he imbibed the ideas of church discipline of which he became so ardent a champion. He became Bishop of Connor and Abbot of Bangor and in 1137, for a short time, and most unwillingly, Primate of Armagh. His humility, his love of voluntary poverty, and his energy as a missionary teacher in his backward diocese, of the condition of which he gives a distressing account, disinclined him to undertake the duties of the Primacy. But he was called to larger work even than this. The decisions of the Synod of Rathbreasal were incomplete without the bestowal of palls on the two Archbishops, and Malachy was empowered to undertake the long journey to Rome to beseech their bestowal on the Archbishops of Armagh and Cashel. Twice he had to make the journey across the Alps, the Pope not considering his credentials sufficient on the first occasion; but the labour was atoned for to Malachy by the opportunity it gave him of cultivating the friendship of St Bernard, at whose Cistercian monastery he rested and where, on his second visit, death overtook him. The almost womanly tenderness felt for him by St Bernard is shown by the letters he addressed to him and by the beautiful memorial sermons delivered to his monks by the great saint on the anniversaries of Malachy's death. When St Bernard died five years later he was buried in the habit worn by his friend.

[26] St Bernard's Life of St Malachy has been translated by H. J. Lawlor (1902). The letters and sermons are included.
The formal appeal for the palls was not without effect. At the Synod of Kells (1152) Cardinal John Paparo brought over four palls, one for each province, thus erecting Dublin and Tuam into archbishoprics along with Armagh and Cashel, an unexpected act of generosity not altogether pleasing to the Irish people, who saw the new Danish see of Dublin placed on a level with the ancient Primacy of St Patrick. But the gift had a purpose; it severed the connexion between the Danish Church and Canterbury, and made it part of the Church of Ireland.[27] Henceforth, in spite of local differences, there was up to Elizabeth's day but one Church in the country with four Archbishops, and Rome as the final court of appeal. It was largely to the untiring energy of St Malachy that this consummation was due.

[27] For the Synod of Kells see Keating, History, iii, 313-317.
St Malachy had fallen upon an evil time. The synods which met during the twelfth century were not altogether occupied with questions of organization; they were also called upon to deal with social reform. The sweeping condemnation of Malachy when he first undertook the charge of the diocese of Connor, however much we may discount its bitterness as the result of a different point of view in ecclesiastical matters, must have been true of many of the outlying parts of Ireland. There were few priests and neither preaching nor singing in the churches. The people were "dead in regard to rites, impious in regard to faith, barbarous in regard to laws, and shameless in regard of morals"; "though Christians in name, they were in fact pagans." The Acts of the Synods and the pages of the annals alike bear out these terrible accusations. The restraints of life had been removed during the long Norse sway. The old monastic system had broken down over large parts of the country, and the new diocesan and parochial system had not yet been established to take its place. It is no wonder that St Malachy was so anxious for a change of organization. Raid-ings, burnings of dwellings and villages, and the marchings and assaults of bodies of armed men made peaceful occupations impossible. Feuds between bishops and abbots became more frequent. Wars and pestilences were not occasional; they never ceased; the country lived under arms, not only for certain seasons as the vikings did, but at all times.

The annals of the eleventh and twelfth centuries give a lamentable account of the general state of the country, especially in the North and West. There was no sanctity for church or abbot; abbots were killed at the door of their own monasteries, and churches and round towers full of people were ruthlessly fired if they stood in the path of a passing body of troops. The sanctity of oaths, even when sworn on the most sacred objects, was disregarded, and men were killed by treachery and guile even when placed under the special protection of the clergy.[28] The different states were at constant war with one another, and the uncertainty of succession to the chieftainship opened the way for interminable broils within the limits of each state. Among the numerous aspirants within the same family who were more or less eligible for election to the chieftainship the most sanguinary wars arose, all the more embittered because the warfare was between men of the same kith and kin. Even after the introduction of tanistry, by which the successor was designated by the reigning chief and recognized by the people during his lifetime—a system intended to put an end to these tribal disputes—personal ambition or force of character continued to disturb the regularity of the succession. To guard against this there were to be found in every chieftain's courtyard a number of unfortunate youths of high position who were held in confinement, either to secure them from disputing the position of the chief or as hostages for the fealty of their families. Many of them passed long periods in imprisonment, and they were liable at any moment to be blinded or killed in their fetters if their friends showed any disposition to support their claims or if their captors had any reason to doubt the fidelity either of their relations or of their clan. On almost every page of the annals we read of the blinding or execution of some one or more of these unhappy lads, whose only crime was to have been born within the limits of the succession to the lordship of their people.[29]

[28] Annals of Loch Cé, 1055, 1060, 1089, 1128, 1138, 1170, 1185, etc.
[29] No less than eight young men of the O'Brien family were blinded by their near relations between 1153 and 1185, four of them by Donal Mór, who died in 1194. See also Annals of Loch Cé, 1092, 1093, 1265, 1266, 1368, etc.
Nor, when the chief was elected and inaugurated, was the clan permitted to settle down in peace. Every prince or chief, as soon as he was elected, thought it incumbent on him to prove his right to the chieftaincy above his competitors, whom his elevation had defeated and disappointed, by reducing any outstanding province or state that declined to recognize his authority. These expeditions were known as the creacht righi, or regal raids, and they were a constant pretext for external wars. The rule of succession to the High Kingship equally forbade any possibility of quiet; for any aspirant to the high position from the North to become eligible must possess, besides his own province of Ulster, one province in the South; and an aspirant from Munster must in like manner have the command of Connacht or one of the other provinces besides his own kingdom. Hence the warlike expeditions and circuits made by princes aiming at the supreme power, often undertaken even before the death of the reigning monarch, with a view to establishing their right to the succession. Such a custom cut at the root of any consolidation of the monarchy and led to interminable wars for the supreme authority.[30] Thus, although in many directions progress had been made during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the political organization showed no tendency toward settling down into any shape that promised a peaceable or progressive native rule. The Ireland into which the Normans precipitated themselves toward the close of the latter century found the country, so far as the general administration of the provinces was concerned, in a state of anarchy. They added one more factor to the already entangled situation.

[30] Annals of the Four Masters, 1083, 1265, 1559, 1562.
If from a political point of view the country showed little progress, it is otherwise when we turn to art, architecture, and poetry. The Irish continued to build their churches on the small scale founded on traditions believed to have been handed down by St Patrick, and when St Malachy, fresh from seeing the great churches of York, Clairvaux, and Rome, proposed to erect a stone oratory at Bangor in 1140 the people were scandalized. They "drew attention to Malachy's frivolity, shuddered at the novelty, and exaggerated the expense." [31] But the richness with which these small buildings were decorated gives them a distinct place in the original developments of Romanesque. Cormac O'Cillan, Abbot of Clonmacnois (d. 964), King Brian (d. 1014), and Conor O'Kelly, who built Clonfert in 1166-67, were all great ecclesiastical architects working on purely Irish models. The chapel erected by King Cormac MacCarthy on the Rock of Cashel in 1127 shows this type of design in its greatest luxuriance.[32] Most of the round towers also date from the Norse period, and the finest of the high crosses and metal work. Before the coming of the Normans the erection of the first Cistercian monastery, Mellifont on the Boyne, consecrated in 1157, began a new era in church building.

[31] Lawlor, Life of St Malachy, pp. 109-110.
[32] Margaret Stokes, Early Christian Architecture in Ireland (1920), pp. 126 seq.
It is of great interest that there remain certain charters given to monasteries, written both in Irish and Latin, dating from the eleventh and twelfth centuries, which show that grants of land and privileges were legally witnessed and executed before the coming of the Normans to Ireland. The earliest of the Gaelic charters conveys a grant of land at Kells, "with its vegetable garden, to God and pious pilgrims," no pilgrim having any right in it until he should have devoted himself to God and proved his piety. The grant included two tracts of pasture-land "with their meadows and their bogs...with their houses and outhouses, and with their lawns as far as the Cathach of Domnach Mòr [Donaghmore]." This charter, which was drawn up about 1080, was made by the King of Tara and the Abbot of Kells, with all the clergy, for a priest of Kells and his kinsmen who had purchased the ground for twenty ounces of gold, and a large number of influential persons became securities for the grant "as they were passing round the land and through the middle of the land;" an early example of 'beating the bounds.' A similar grant in Irish was made to Kells (c. 1128-40) also for the support of pilgrims, "in the year when the cattle and swine of Erin perished by a pestilence." This deed is witnessed, among others, by Tiernan O'Rorke, whose wife ran away to Dermot MacMorrogh, in the presence of his sons, Donchad and Sitric. Most of these early grants secured the land given from any future claims of rent, tribute, or coigny from king or chief.[33]

[33] Gilbert, Facsimiles of National Manuscripts of Ireland, Pt II, Nos. LIX, XLIV.
Even more interesting is a Latin charter founding the monastery of Duisk,[34] in which the signature of King Dermot MacMorrogh himself appears as the founder along with those of the donor, Dermot O'Ryan, chief of Odrone, Lawrence, Archbishop of Dublin, and others. These charters show that lands were regularly conveyed or purchased in the ordinary manner, and also that the Latin hand and language as well as Gaelic were used for such purposes before 1170.

[34] Now the monastery of Graigue-na-managh, Co. Kilkenny See ibid., No. LXII (1).
END OF CHAPTER IV