CHAPTER XVII. Arrival of reinforcements to the Danes.-Alliances between these foreigners and the natives. -Demoralizing effects thereof.-Divisions among the Northmen themselves.-Arrival of these Norwegian brothers.-Tax called nose-money imposed on the Irish.-Reign of the monarch Aod Finliath.-Exploits of Anlaf the Dane.-Reign of the monarch Flan Siona.Retrospect of the affairs of the Scots of North Britain.- Reign of Cormac Mac Culinan, King of Munster.-Death of Cormac in the great Battle of Moyalbe.-His character. So signal and decisive appeared the advantage which had been gained over the common enemy, that Melachlin, who had now succeeded to the throne of Ireland,* despatched ambassadors to the court of France on the occasion, announcing his intention to go on a pilgrimage to the Holy City, as an act of thanksgiving for such a deliverance, and asking permission to pass through France on his way. The constant influx of Irish missionaries into France during the eighth and ninth centuries, had brought the two countries, as has been already remarked, into amicable relations with each other; and the high repute which the learned Irishman, John Erigena, now enjoyed at the French court, must have still more conciliated for his countrymen the good opinion both of the monarch and his subjects. The ambassadors sent on the solemn mission just referred to, were the bearers of costly presents to the French King; but the intended visit of the royal pilgrim, which they came to announce, was, by a return of the troubles of his kingdom, frustrated. The Danes, though dispersed and apparently subdued, were still numerous in those parts of the island they had so long possessed; and waited but a reinforcement from the 49. shores of the Baltic, to enable them to reappear in the field as formidable as ever. A. D. With so strong a sense of the value of the possession they had lost, they were of course not slow in devising means for its speedy recovery; and accordingly, in the year 849, a fleet from the north, consisting of 140 sail, landed a fresh supply of force upon the coast of Ireland:|| and the war, which had slumbered but from want of fuel, was now with all its former vigour rekindled. While the violence, too, of the contending parties continued, in its renewed shape, as fierce and barbarous as ever, there was now introduced in their relations to each other a material and demoralizing change,-a readiness to merge their mutual hostility in the joint pursuit of plunder or revenge; and to fight side by side under the same banner, regardless of aught but the selfish interests of the moment;-a change, which, it is evident, to the moral character of both parties could not be otherwise than deeply and lastingly injurious. Upon the public mind of Ireland, in particular, the effects of such warfare must have been to the deepest degree degrading. The dissensions of a people among themselves, however fatal to the national strength, may not be inconsistent with a generous zeal for the national glory and welfare; but when, as in this instance, they invite the foreigner to cast his sword into the scale, they not only blindly invite slavery, but also richly deserve it. The first example of such degeneracy at this period was set by the Irish monarch, A. Melachlin himself; who achieved, with the assistance of the Danes, a dishonour850. able victory over his own countrymen. In like manner, a prince named Keneth, the lord of the Cianachta T of Meath, was enabled by the same base sort of confederacy * It would appear, from the instance of Malachy, that even when lord of all Meath by inheritance, the monarch was not suffered to retain that principality after his succession to the supreme throne; as we shall find that, during Malachy's reign, Meath was held jointly by two other princes. "Rex Scotorum ad Carolum, pacis et amicitie gratia, legatos cum muneribus mittit, viam sibi petendi Romam concedi deposcens."-Chron. de Gest. Norman. With an easterly wind the northern navigators calculated but three days as the average duration of a voyage to the British Isles:-"Triduo, flantibus Euris, vela panduntur."-Script. Rer. Dan. Annal. Inisfall. ad ann. 849. Ware, Antiq. c. 24.-Annals of Ulster, ap. Johnstone, Antiq. Scand. Celt. There were several other Cianachtas throughout Ireland; but this in Meath, and the other, called the Cianachta of Glingiven, in the North Hy-Nial, were the most noted. See Dissert. on Hist. of Ireland.-There was also another in Derry, from whence a sept of the O'Connors derived the title of O'Concubar Kianachta. O'Brien (in voce Cianachta) interprets the use of the word, in this instance, as meaning that these O'Connors were descended from Cian, the son of the great Olliol-Ollum; and this derivation of the term would seem to be countenanced by a similar application of the word Eoganacth to territories belonging to the descendants of Eogan More (See Ware, Antiq. c. 7.) But Cianachta appears to me to have had a more general import; and, from the manner in which it is used by Tigernach (Rer. Hib. Script. p. 44.,) must have meant, I think, a particular measure of land, as he speaks there of "a thirty-fold Cianachata."-Trichac. Ciansa. to lay waste the territories of the princely Hy-Niells from the source of the Shannon to the sea.* Had this spirit of disunion and faithlessness been confined to the natives alone, they must at once have fallen an easy prey to the stranger; but, luckily, the habit of serving as mercenaries soon estranged the loyalty of the Danes from their own cause: and, according as they became divided among themselves, they grew less formidable as enemies. There occurred an event, also, about the middle of this century, which added a new source of internal division to the many that already distracted and weakened their strength. An army of Northmen, called the Dubh-Gals, or Black Strangers, as being of a different race from those hitherto known in Ireland, having landed in considerable force in the year 850,† made an attack on the Fin-Gals, or White Strangers, already in possession of Dublin; and, after defeating them with great slaughter, made themselves masters of that city and its adjoining territories. In the following year, however, the Fin-Gals, being reinforced from their own country, attacked the Black Gentiles, by whom they had been driven from Dublin; and, after a battle which lasted, according to the annalists, three days and three nights, compelled them to abandon their ships, and regained possession of the city. A, D. It was soon after this latter occurrence that the three brothers, Anlaf, Ivar, and Sitric, of the royal blood of Norway, arriving with a large army collected from the different isles of the North, took possession of the three great maritime positions,-Dublin, Limerick, and Waterford; and while Anlaf and Ivar, to whom fell the sovereignty 853. over the former two cities, enlarged considerably their boundaries, and, it is not improbable, fortified them, the remaining brother, Sitric, is generally allowed to have been the first founder of Waterford. T ** However suspicious, in most of its circumstances, is the tale told by Cambrensis,* respecting the stratagems of these brother chieftains, in coming under the assumed guise of merchants, and thus obtaining for themselves and their followers a friendly footing in different parts of the country, it is by no means improbable that to their skill and success in commercial pursuits, as well as to that command over the Irish sea-coasts which their position and practice in seamanship gave them, they were mainly indebted for the acknowledged influence they so soon attained throughout the kingdom. How considerable was the amount of this power may be judged from two pregnant facts stated by the annalists,—that to these brothers not only the foreigners throughout the whole island submitted, but likewise the natives were all compelled to pay them tribute. What was the nature of the tribute they exacted from the Irish, or whether it resembled the famous Danegelt in its first form, when paid by the English to purchase a respite from Danish plunder, does not appear from any of the records. We are told, indeed, of a tax imposed by Turgesius, called Argiod-Sron, or Nose-money, from the penalty attached to its non-payment being no less than the loss of the defaulter's nose. A sort of tax, bearing the same name, but not enforced by the same inhuman forfeit, appears, from * Annal. IV. Mag. ad ann. 848. † Ann. Ult.-Ware and Lanigan place it in the year 851. The Four Masters, as usual, antedate the event, making it in 849. In Harris's Annals of Dublin, a. d. 838, it is said, "Dublin now submitted to them (the Ostmen, or Danes) for the first time, in which they raised a strong rath, and thereby curbed not only the city, but, in a little time, extended their conquests through Fingal to the north, and as far as Bray and the mountains of Wicklow to the south. These parts seem to have been soon after made the head of the Danish settlements in Leinster; and from them Fingal took its name, as much as to say, The Territory of the White Foreigners, or Norwegians, as the country to the south of Dublin was called Dubh-Gall, or the Territory of the Black Foreigners, from the Danes. This last denomination is not preserved in history, that we know of; but it remains by tradition among the native Irish of these parts to this day." The writer would have found, in the Annals of the Four Masters, the name of Dubh-ghall applied to these strangers, while in the Annals of Inisfallen and of Ulster, they are styled Dubh-gentie, or Black Gentiles, and the others, Fionn-geinte, or White Gentiles. Annal. Ult. ad an. 851. (852.) Annal. Inisfall. ad ann. 852, T Smith, Hist. of Waterford, c. 4.-" Were we to believe Giraldus Cambrensis," says Dr. Lanigan, "Sitric was the founder of Limerick " (c. xxi. sect. 14. note 143.) But this is an oversight; for it is to Ivar that Giraldus attributes the construction of this city. "Constructis itaque primò civitatibus tribus, Dublinia, Gwaterfordia, Limerico, Dubliniæ principatus cessit Amelao, Gwaterfordiæ Sytaraco, Limerici Yuoro."Topog. Hib. Dist. iii. c. 43. It is clear that Dublin, of which Giraldus attributes the building to Amlaf, had been in existence, though probably but an inconsiderable place, long before this time; and the Annals of Inisfallen fix the first occupation of it by the Danes, in the year 827. Of Limerick, its historian, Ferrar, says, "According to a manuscript in the editor's possession, the Danes got possession of Limerick in the year 855." But we have seen that, about a dozen years earlier, that place had been used by the Northmen as a station for their ships. ** Topograph. Hibern. Dist. 3. c. 43. tt IV. Mag. ad ann. 851. Annal. Inisfall. ad ann. 852. The latter annalist thus states the fact:-Gur ghiallsat Lochlannaicch Eirionn do, 7 cios o Ghadhalaibh do. one of the Sagas,* to have been in use among the ancient Scandinavians; and such, most probably, was the nature of the tribute now exacted by their descendants, though thus misrepresented, according to the usual bias of history when the hand of an enemy holds the pen. A. D. On the death of the monarch, Melachlin, he was succeeded in the throne by Aodh Finliath, a prince,t of the northern Hy-Niell, who had, just before his accession, in concert with the Danes, overrun and ravaged the kingdom of Meath. This prin863. cipality, which formed no longer an inseparable adjunct of the monarchy, was, at the time of Aodh's succession, held in partition between the two princes, Lorcan and Concobar; on the former of whom the new monarch laid violent hands and deprived him of his eyes; while the latter was drowned at Clonard by Aodh's accomplice and ally, Anlaf the Dane.‡ The deeds of this adventurous Northman occupy a conspicuous space in the records of his time. Besides his various exploits in Irish warfare, among which the spoliation of the rich city of Armagh, and the burning of its shrines and hospitals, was not the least memorable, he also refreshed his veteran followers with an occasional inroad into North Britain, where the now weakened Britons of Strath-Clyde opposed but a feeble resistance; and the renowned fortress of Alcluyd, after a blockade of four months, fell into his A. D. power. At length, in one of these incursions into the Albanian territory, he was surprised by a stratagem of the Scots and slain. 849. The fame of Ireland, as a place of refuge for the exile and sufferer, was, even in these dark times, maintained; and we find Roderick, King of Wales, when compelled to abandon his own dominions to the Danes, seeking an asylum on the Irish shores.|| After a reign of sixteen years, the monarch, Aodh Finliath, departed this life; and Flan Siona, a prince of the South Hy-Niell, succeeded to the throne. It has been A. D. seen, from the time of the first establishment of an Irish colony in North Britain,¶ 879. how close and friendly continued to be the intercourse between that settlement and the mother country, cemented as it was by all those ties which consanguinity, perpetual alliance, and frequent intermarriages, could create. To this connexion between the two kingdoms a new link had, during the late reign, been added by the marriage of the Irish monarch, Aodh Finliath, with Malmaria, the daughter of the renowned Keneth Mac-Alpine. Some time having elapsed since I last submitted to the reader any notice of the affairs of the Scots of North Britain,**— -a people whose annals the parent country long identified with her own,ft—it may not be amiss to review briefly the course of that colony since the period at which our last notice of it terminated. The ruler of the Scoto-Irish settlement at that time was Aidan, the royal friend of St. Columba, under whose sway (A. D. 590,) it ceased to be tributary to the Irish crown,tt and became an independent kingdom. On the small stage of this miniature realm, we find acted over again most of the dark and troubled scenes of the Irish pentarchy; the same lawlessness and turbulence, * In the Ynglinga Saga, it is said that Odin introduced such laws as before were in use among the Asi; and," throughout all Swedland, the people paid unto Odin a Scotpenny for each nose." † Annal. Inisfall. ad an. 863. According to these annals, it was through the aid of Anlaf and the Danes, that Aodh Finliath was raised to the throne. 1 IV. Mag. ad an. 862 (863.) Annal. Ült. ad an. 869, and 870. "Alcluyd was wholly razed to the ground. The Black Strangers were resistless; and the Britons, Saxons, Angles, and Picts, were mingled in captivity beneath the yoke of Anlaf and Hingvar (Ivar.")-Palgrave, English Commonwealth, c. xiv. Annal. Ult. ad an. 876. For accounts of the original settlements of the Irish in North Britain, see c. vii. p. 78, and c. xi. p. 123 of this Work. ** See c. 12, p. 128 of this Work. tt Not unfrequently, too, the records of the affairs of Albany have been corrected by reference to those of the mother country: for an instance of this, see Rer. Hib. Script. tom. i. p. 88., and tom. iv. p. 357. "In rebus Albanicis," says Dr. O'Connor, "longe accuratiores sunt Hibernici Annales." He adds, that if Kennedy, in his Chronological Genealogy of the Stuarts, had been more diligent in consulting the Irish annals, he would not have fallen into so many errors. 1 See, for an acount of the convention held at Dromceat in the year 590, page 129 of this Work, "At that convention," says O'Flaherty," Aidan obtained an exemption from paying tribute to the kings of Ireland; and, consequently, the honours and dignities attendant on a free and absolute sovereignty."Chronol. and Geneal. Catalogue of the Kings of Scotland, Oxygio Vindicated, c. 12. $$The region occupied by the Scoto-Irish colony, comprised only Kentire, Argyle, and some of the islets. In a note on the annals of Tigernach, ad an. 502, Dr. O'Connor thus describes the extent of this small kingdom :-" Regiones quas filii Erci occupaverunt tendebant à freto Dunbrittannico, includentes Kentiream, Knapdaliam, Loarnam, Ardgatheliam, et Braidalban, cum vicinis insulis Hebridum." Some late writers have been induced, by the unsafe authority of Whitaker, to refer the date of the migrations of the sons of Erck to the beginning of the fourth century; but the period fixed for this event (A. D. 503,) by all the best writers on the subject will, as Pinkerton justly observes," to any one the least versed in Irish history, or in the old Scottish chronicles, be as openly evinced as any date of Greek or Roman history."—Inquiry, part iv. c. 3. redeemed sometimes by the same romantic heroism; a similar reverence for all that was sanctioned by the past, combined with as light and daring a recklessness of the future. That rooted attachment to old laws and usages which marked the natives of the mother country, was here transmitted in full force to their descendants;-the ancient language, and all the numerous traditions of which it was the vehicle; the system of clanship, and laws of succession; even the old parti-coloured dress worn by the ancient Scots,-all continued to be retained in North Britain to a much later period than among the original Irish themselves. The native hardihood of the early colony had been strongly manifested, not only in the spirit with which they maintained themselves in their rude mountain holds, in despite of an ungenial clime, and the neighbourhood of a fierce enemy, the Picts, but also in their conversion afterwards of this enemy into an ally, and the gallant stand made by them jointly against the legions of mighty Rome. In the reign of their King Aidan (572— 605,) the longest and most glorious of any in the Dalriadic annals, these highlanders encountered the Saxon invaders on the borders of Westmorland, and in two several engagements defeated them.* At length, elated too much by his successes, Aidan ventured to attack the Bernician king, Ethelfrid, in the full career of his victories, and sustained, on that occasion, so signal a defeat, that he himself was but able to escape with a few followers from the field. This was the last effort of military prowess, out of their own immediate region, upon which the Scots of North Britain are known for some centuries to have ventured. After the death of this able prince, not merely their external influence declined, but the peace and union which he had managed to maintain within his small dominions, almost entirely vanished. The elements of anarchy, which this Irish colony had imported with them, in their system of chieftainship and the rivalry of septs which naturally sprung out of it, were, of course, not tardy in developing themselves; and there arose a feud between the two kindred races of Fergus and Lorn, which for more than a century and a half divided this small community into two fierce and irreconcileable factions. Throughout the whole time during which this division lasted, the respective tribes were kept in a state of perpetual strife; and we are told that, on one occasion, when each of the antagonist sovereigns had sent out a fleet composed of currachs, or small leathern boats, to attack the dominions of the other, the two armaments met off Ardanesse, on the coast of Argyleshire, and a naval battle took place between them, which ended in a victory on the side of the belligerant who boasted his descent in the line of Fergus. At length an arrangement was brought about, by which, as in the alternate succession of the north and south Hy-Niells in Ireland, the rival races of Lorn and Fergus were, each in turn, to succeed the other on the throne. During the whole of this state of affairs, of which the Picts, it might be supposed, would gladly have taken advantage, as opening so favourable a field for designs against the independence of their Scottish neighbours, no act indicative of such a policy appears to be recorded; and it was not till near the middle of the eighth century (A. D. 736,) that that series of fierce conflicts between the Scots and Picts commenced, which ended, after a long struggle and with alternate success, in placing a Scoto-Irish prince on the throne of the Pictish kings. With the expectation, doubtless, of softening, by a family alliance, the mutual hostility of the two kingdoms, a marriage was contracted, early in the ninth century, between Both these victories of Ædan are mentioned, in the annals of Ulster, at 581, and 589. In the curious Duan ascribed to Malcolm the Third's bard, this Scoto-Irish king is called "Edan of the extended territories." ↑ Bede thus speaks of the second battle:-"Motus ejus profectibus idan rex Scotorum qui Britanniam inhabitant venit contra eum cum immenso exercitu, sed cum paucis victus aufugit."-Hist. Ecclesiast., lib. i. c. 34. The record of this battle, in the Saxon Chronicle, is thus confusedly rendered by a late translator:"The Scots fought with the Dalreathians, and with Ethelfrith, King of the Northumbrians." A full account of the achievements of this Scoto-Irish king may be found in Buchanan, Rer. Scot. Hist. lib. 5. Rex xlix. According to Sigebert, ad an. 615, this defeat of the Scoto-Irish had been foretold by the apostle of the English, Augustin. Hæc calamitas Scottis contingit secundum vaticinium Augustini episcopi, qui interminatus est Scottos ab Anglis fore perimendos." Bishop Lloyd thus marks the dates, both of this event and of the settlement of the Scots in North Britain:"In the year 603 (which I reckon to have been just a hundred years after their coming into Britain,) that prince, Aidan, having a jealousy of Ethelfrid, &c."-On Church Govern, c. i. Sine rege ac certo imperio per cognitiones tributim sparsis.-Buchan, lib. 4. At a still earlier period, the race of Fergus alone had supplied sufficient materials of discord from its own stock, the septs of Comgal and of Gauran, both descended from Fergus, having, for a length of time, convulsed this small realm with their feuds. At length, in 571, a sanguinary battle decided their respective pretensions, leaving the tribe of Gauran in the possession of Kintire, while Argyle fell to the tribe of Comgall; "and these two tribes," says Chalmers," are sometimes distinguished in the Irish annals as the sept of Kintire, and the sept of Argail."—Vol. I. Book ii. c. vi. See also this useful work (loc. citat.) for a Genealogical Table of the Dalriadic Kings. Achy, or Achaius, King of the Scots, and a Pictish princess named Urgusia; and this connexion, though it had not the effect of even abating the mutual enmity of the two kingdoms, was the means ultimately of conducing to that only issue of such a contest by which it could be summarily, and without chance of revival, extinguished. About the middle of the same century, Keneth Mac Alpine, the grandson of the Princess Urgusia, furnished with the double claim arising from military prowess and his maternal descent, took the field, assisted by Irish auxiliaries, against the Picts; and, after a battle, renewed, as the chroniclers tell us, no less than seven times in one day, gained a victory over that people (A. D. 843,) so complete and decisive, as to have been exaggerated by panic and fiction into their total extirpation.* *By this event the crowns of Albany and Pictland were both united on one head; and from the same epoch is to be dated the foundation of the Scottish kingdom in North Britain;-although it is certain that the application of the name of Scotia to that country did not begin to come into use before the eleventh century.t At this time the celebrated Lia Fail, or stone of Destiny, upon which the ancient kings of Ireland used to be inaugurated,‡ and which had been brought over into Albany by Fergus, the leader of the Dalriadic colony, was removed by the conqueror of the Picts from Argyle to Scone, where it remained till the time of Edward I., by whom it was transferred to Westminster Abbey. To return to the course of our history.-The marriage of Malmaria, the daughter of the conqueror of the Picts to Aodh Finliath, the monarch now ruling over Ireland, was, as we have seen, a continuance of the ancient ties of amity between the two A. D. kindred kingdoms of Ireland and of Albany. After Aodh's death, his successor, 879. Flan Siona (A. D. 879,) solicited also and won the hand of the widowed Queen Malmaria, who became, through this double alliance, the means of connecting the three great branches of the Hy-Niell race, the Tyronian, the Clan-Colman, and the Slanian, to the utter exclusion of the fourth, or Tyrconnel branch, from the succession to the monarchy. Among the deficiencies most to be complained of by a reader of our early history, is the want of the interest and instruction arising from the contemplation of individual character, the rare occurrence, not merely of marked historical personages, but of any actors in the tumultuous scene sufficiently elevated above their contemporaries to attract the eye in passing, or form a resting place for the mind. To this but too obvious defect of our early annals, a rare exception occurs at the period we have now reached, A. D. in the person of Cormac Mac Culinan, King and Bishop of Cashel, whose connexion with the literary as well as the political history of his country, imparts an interest to his name and reign but seldom attendant upon the records of his brother kings and bishops. 901 to 903. The union of the regal and sacerdotal powers in the same person was not without precedent in Cormac's own family;-two of his ancestors, Oncobar and Cenfilad, having The original source of this extravagant fiction was the ancient chronicler, Henry of Huntingdon, according to whom the very language of the Picts passed suddenly into oblivion:-"Non solum reges eorum, et principes, et populum deperiisse, verum etiam stirpem omnem, et linguam et mentionem simul defecisse."Lib. i. Buchanan mentions an ancient prophecy, which had foretold this utter extinction of the Picts by the Scots: Divinitus Pictis dictionem esse datam fore, ut aliquando tota gens a Scotis deleretur."-Lib iv. † Usher is decidedly of opinion, that no instance can be produced of the name Scotia having been applied to the present Scotland before the eleventh century;-" Quod ut ante undecimum post Christi nativitatem seculum haud quaquam factum, in fine præcedentis Capitis declaravimus: ita neminem, qui toto antecedentium annorum spacio scripserit produci posse arbitramur qui Scotia appellatione Albaniam unquam designa. verit."-Eccles. Primord, c. 16. Dr. O'Connor follows Usher in this opinion (Prol. i. 63;) and Pinkerton, agreeing with both, says, "the truth is, that from the fourth century to the eleventh, the names Scotia and Scoti belonged solely to Ireland and the Irish."-Inquiry, part iv. c. 1. Sir Walter Scott, therefore, antici pates by a century or two, when, in speaking of Kenneth Macalpine, he says," The country united under his sway was then, for the first time, called Scotland; which name it has ever since retained."-Hist. of Scotland, Cab. Cyc. vol. i. c. ii. Said to have been brought into Ireland by the Tuatha-de-Danaan.-See c. v. p. 57 of this Work. Of this relic, and its removal, Drayton thus makes mention : "Our Longshanks, Scotland's scourge, who to the Orcads raught IV. Mag. ad ann. 876, (æræ commun. 879.) Polyolb. Seventeenth Song. Hinc sequitur O'Neillos Tironenses Clan Colmannos, et Clan Slanios per Maelmariam consociatos fuisse, et Tirconnallenses a Regimine Hibernorum prorsus exclusos.-Rer. Hib. Scrip. t. iv. ad ann. 878. Note. See also, Dissert. on the Hist. of Ireland, sect. xv. |