Kitabı oku: «Ireland under the Tudors, with a Succinct Account of the Earlier History. Vol. 1 (of 3)», sayfa 2

Sir John Davies did not exhaust the subject

Notwithstanding the above decision, it is probable that a description of tanistry and gavelkind does not exhaust the subject. The theoretical division among all the males of a sept is not at all likely to have been carried out, except in very early times. Human nature was against it. From the twelfth century the example of the Anglo-Normans, which cannot have been altogether without weight, was against it. The interest of the chief was everywhere against it, because it would deprive him of the means of rewarding his friends, and because he was always tempted to seize lands to his own use. The tendency to private property would be always asserting itself, but the exact historical truth can never be known. Before the close of the mediæval period, a great part of Ireland had been reconquered by the tribes from Anglo-Norman hands. Is it possible that the Irish land system can have been anywhere restored in its integrity? On the whole, it is at least probable that English statesmen in the sixteenth century made as many mistakes about tenures in Ireland as their representatives in the eighteenth and part of the nineteenth made about tenures in India. Good faith may be generally granted in both cases, but the blunders made were no less disastrous. It is at all events clear that primogeniture was no Celtic usage, that it is no part of the law of nature, and that the Tudor lawyers treated it as an end in itself, and almost as a necessary element in the eternal fitness of things. In the twelfth century Irish practice may have come much nearer to theory than in the sixteenth; at all events, Henry II.’s grants to individuals were absolutely opposed to Celtic notions of justice.

Composition for murder

Celtic usages part of the common Aryan stock

The conflict of laws is the key to Anglo-Irish history

The Irish admitted composition for murder. This blood-fine, called an eric, was an utter abomination to the English of the sixteenth century, who had quite forgotten the laws and customs of their own Teutonic ancestors. To men long used to a strong central government such a custom seemed impious. It was nevertheless part of the common heritage of the Aryan race, and had been in vogue among the peoples from whom the later English sprung. The Njal Saga illustrates its use among the Icelanders by many famous cases strictly in point. The feudal system and the canon law had caused the Teutonic nations to abandon a usage which they once had in common with the Irish. Celtic Ireland had never had a very strong central government, and such as it was it had sustained serious damage. Homicide was still considered a personal injury. The rule was not a life for a life, but adequate damages for the loss sustained. The idea of public justice, irrespective of private interests, was far in advance of the stage which had been reached by the Irish Celts. Irish history cannot be understood unless the fact is clearly grasped, that the development of the tribal system was violently interrupted by a feudal half-conquest. The Angevin and Plantagenet kings were strong enough to shake and discredit the native polity; but they had neither the power nor the inclination to feudalise a people which had never gone through the preliminary stages. When the Tudors brought a more steadfast purpose and better machinery to the task, they found how hard it was to evolve order out of the shattered remnants of two systems which had the same origin, but which had been so brought together as to make complete fusion impossible. From the first the subjects of England and the natives of Ireland had been on entirely different planes. Even for us it is extremely difficult to avoid confusion by applying modern terms to ancient things. The Tudor lawyers and statesmen could hardly even attempt to look at jarring systems from the outside. They saw that the common law was more advanced than that of the Brehons, but they could not see that they were really the same thing at different stages. In fact, plain Englishmen in the sixteenth century could not do what only the most enlightened Anglo-Indians can do in the nineteenth. They were more civilised than the Irish, but they were not educated enough to recognise the common ancestor. That there was a common ancestor, and that neither party could recognise him, is the key to Anglo-Irish history both before and after the Tudor times.

Origin of the Irish Church. Patrick and Columba

Exile of Columba

Saint Bridget

The early history of the native Irish Church is shrouded in much obscurity. The best authorities are disposed to accept St. Patrick as the apostle of Ireland, the fifth century as the period of his labours, and Armagh as his chief seat. He was not a native of Ireland; so much seems certain. A more interesting, because a more clearly defined figure, is that of Columba or Columkille, who was born in Donegal in 521. The churches of Derry, Durrow, Kells, Swords, Raphoe, Tory Island, and Drumcliff, claim him as their founder; but it is as the apostle of North Britain that he is best known. He was religious from his youth, but a peculiarly serious tinge was given to his mind by a feeling of remorse for bloodshed which he had partly caused. He had surreptitiously transcribed a psalter belonging to another saint, who complained of this primitive infringement of copyright. A royal decision that ‘to every cow belongs her calf’ was given, and was followed by an appeal to arms. Exile was then imposed as a penance on Columba, whose act had been the original cause of offence. Such was long the received legend, but perhaps the exile was voluntary.¹² Whether his departure was a penance or the result of a vow, tradition says that he was bound never to see Ireland again, that he landed first on Oronsay, but found that Erin was visible from thence, and refused to rest until he had reached Iona. His supposed feelings are recorded in a very ancient poem: —

 
‘My vision o’er the brine I stretch
From the ample oaken planks;
Large is the tear of my soft grey eye
When I look back upon Erin.
Upon Erin my attention is fixed.’
 

Columba was the Paul of Celtic Christianity. By him and his disciples a great part of Scotland was evangelised, and it was to him that the British Church looked as a founder when the time came to decide between the relative pretensions of the Celtic and the Norman type of religion. St. Bridget or Bride, who died four years after Columba’s birth, is scarcely less celebrated. She was born near Dundalk, and her chief seat was at Kildare. She was the mother of Irish female monachism, and in popular estimation is not less famous than Patrick, and perhaps more so than Columba.¹³

The Irish Church was originally monastic

Irish Christianity was at first monastic. A saint obtained a grant of land from a chief. A church was built, and a settlement sprung up round it. The family, as it was called, consisted partly of monks and partly of dependents, and the abbot ruled over all as chief of a pseudo-tribe. Like a lay chiefry the abbacy was elective, and the abbots wielded considerable power. These ecclesiastical clans even made war with each other. Thus, it is recorded that in 763 the family of St. Ciaran of Clonmacnoise fought with the family of St. Columba of Durrow, and that 200 of the Columbides fell. The head of such a confraternity was called coarb, or successor of the founder, and Irish writers sometimes called the Pope ‘coarb of Peter.’ In course of time the coarb of Patrick crystallised into the Archbishop of Armagh, and the coarb of Columba into the Bishop of Derry. Other saints were revered as the founders of other sees. Very often at least the abbot was chosen from among the founder’s kin.

The early Church was episcopal, but not territorially so

Episcopal orders were acknowledged from the first, but it was long before the notion of a territorial bishop prevailed. In early days there were many bishops, wanderers sometimes, and at other times retained by the abbot as a necessary appendage to his monastery. The bishop was treated with great respect, but was manifestly inferior to the head of a religious house. St. Patrick was said to have consecrated 350 bishops, founded 700 churches, and ordained 5,000 priests; a mere legend, but perhaps tending to show that the episcopal order was very numerous in Ireland. Travelling bishops without definite duties, and with orders of doubtful validity, became a scandal to more regularly organised churches, and drew down a rebuke from Anselm as late as the beginning of the twelfth century. At an earlier period impostors pretending to be Irish bishops were not uncommon.¹⁴

Ireland gradually conformed to Roman usage

The Irish Church long continued to keep Easter on a different day from that sanctioned by Rome, and to use a different form of tonsure. But the inconvenience of such dissidence from the general body of Western Christendom was soon felt. About 630 Pope Honorius I. addressed a letter to the Irish Church, in which he reminded the clergy that they were a scanty company inhabiting a remote region, and that it could not be for their interest to remain isolated. Cummian, afterwards seventh abbot of Iona, warmly espoused the papal cause. ‘Rome errs,’ he said with great scorn, ‘Jerusalem errs, Alexandria errs, Antioch errs, the whole world errs – the Britons and Irish are the only right-minded people.’ The southern Irish followed Cummian, but the northern rejected his advice, and some even called him a heretic; yet this did not prevent his being elected to fill Columba’s chair. Adamnan, ninth abbot of Iona, and biographer of the great founder, was no less earnest on the Roman side than Cummian had been. At the Synod of Whitby in 664 Wilfred discomfited Colman of Lindisfarne, and settled the question so far as England was concerned. Adamnan lived till 704, and succeeded in converting nearly all the Irish churches, except those subject to his own monastery.

Close of the Paschal controversy, 716

In 716, under Duncadh, the eleventh abbot, Iona conformed, and the Paschal controversy came to an end, after lasting 150 years. The coronal tonsure was adopted three years later. The supremacy of Rome was thus acknowledged, but circumstances long prevented the Irish from adopting the Roman plan of Church organisation.

Influence of the Scandinavian invasions on the Church

The Eugenian Constitution, 1151

The Scandinavian inroads began towards the close of the century which witnessed the submission of Iona. It is probable that the influx of pagan Northmen kept Ireland apart from the rest of Christendom. The ninth century produced Erigena and other eminent Irishmen, but a country in which Christianity was fighting for bare life was not a promising field for Church reformers or systematisers. It was not until Clontarf had finally decided the cause in favour of Christianity that Ireland had again leisure to think of ecclesiastical polity. Gillebert of Limerick, an Ostman, was the first papal legate, and as such presided at the synod of Rathbreasil in or about 1118, where the first serious attempt was made to divide all Ireland into dioceses. The great influence of Malachi of Armagh was exerted in the same direction. He was the friend of Bernard of Clairvaux, and he introduced the Cistercian order into Ireland. Pope Eugenius III., himself a Cistercian, finished the work, and in 1151 Ireland accepted four archiepiscopal palls from Rome. From that date the Irish Church must be held to have fully accepted not only papal supremacy but Roman organisation. That she had not done so long before seems due to accident more than anything else. From mere remoteness of position Ireland had escaped the dominion of Imperial Rome. From the same remoteness she was comparatively slow to feel the influence of Papal Rome. Still, it can scarcely be doubted that had it not been for the Scandinavian intrusion, the Ireland which adopted the Roman Easter and the Roman tonsure before the middle of the eighth century, would have gladly accepted the palls long before the middle of the twelfth.¹⁵

CHAPTER II.
THE SCANDINAVIAN ELEMENT

First appearance of the Northmen, 795

Norwegian ships began to appear on the Irish coast in 795, one year after the destruction of the church at Lindisfarne. The islands were harried, Lambay being perhaps the first to suffer; everything of value was taken, and the hermits and anchorites were killed or carried away. Iona, where the greatest of Irish saints had founded a new Church, was burned or plundered in 802 and 806. About twelve years after their first visit the Scandinavians began to venture inland, sacking the monasteries, which contained such wealth as Ireland then possessed, and slaughtering the monks. The famous religious community at Bangor, in Down, was thus destroyed about 824. The first permanent settlement of the northern invaders was perhaps in the neighbourhood of Limerick. They had a fort at Cork before 848, and at Dublin before 852. There were also forts on Lough Foyle and at Waterford. The flat coast between Dublin and the borders of Meath lay open to a floating enemy, and early obtained the name of Fingal, or the land of the stranger.

Turgesius, 830

In or about 830 a chief arrived who pursued a more ambitious policy. He is called Turgeis or Turgesius by the Irish, and by the Irish only: this may be a form of Thorkils or Trygve, and may perhaps be a name applied to the mysterious hero whom the Scandinavians call Ragnar Lodbrok. Turgesius landed in Ulster, and planned the complete subjugation of Ireland. He burned Armagh and drove out St. Patrick’s successor, and then took up a central position near Athlone, whence his flotillas could act on Lough Ree and Lough Dearg. We know that the Northmen dragged ships or boats overland to Loch Lomond, and similar feats may have been performed in Ireland. There was another plundering station on Lough Neagh about the same time.

Turgeis mastered the northern half of Ireland, and made frequent incursions into the other half. Against the Church he showed peculiar animosity, and his wife used the high altar at Clonmacnoise as a throne when she gave audience; perhaps she uttered oracular responses from it. In the south Turgeis was less powerful, for the dispossessed abbot of Armagh took refuge at Emly in Tipperary. But the whole coast was attacked by innumerable corsairs, who sometimes made raids far into the central districts. Dublin was fortified by the Norwegians about 840, and became the chief seat of the Scandinavian power. Turgeis did not live to unite the various bands, but fell into the hands of Malachi, King of Meath, in 845, and was drowned in Lough Owel. The Northmen of Limerick were defeated in the same year at Roscrea, and their earl, Olfin, was slain.¹⁶

A.D. 852

The Black and White Gentiles

Seven years after the death of Turgeis came the Black Gentiles, who are generally supposed to have been Danes, as the White Gentiles were certainly Norwegians. Whether the colour of their armour or their complexion was referred to is doubtful. The new-comers made themselves masters of Dublin, and of the plunder which the first invaders had accumulated from all the Irish churches. Before one of the battles fought to decide whether Black or White Pagans were to enjoy this property, Horm, or Gorm, the Danish chief, is said to have invoked St. Patrick, a singular confusion of ideas, which may have resulted from intercourse with Christians in England. Victory followed. The Black Gentiles seem to have retained their supremacy; but the distinction becomes partly obliterated, and the Danes, of whom we read later, were probably intermingled with Norwegians. It is recorded that Amlaf, son of the King of Norway, came to Ireland in 852 or 853, that all the foreigners of Erin submitted to him, and that the Irish also paid tribute. The name of the Black Gentiles is believed to be preserved in the little town of Baldoyle.

Forty years’ peace

Amlaf and his sons were not satisfied with the spoils of thrice plundered churches, but everywhere violated tombs in search of gold ornaments. Another great chief was Ivar, who appears to have been Ivar Beinlaus, son of Ragnar Lodbrok, and founder of the Northumbrian kingdom, which was afterwards closely connected with the Irish Danes. To the Norwegians who fled to Ireland from the iron rule of Harold Harfager, the King of Dublin was one of the chief sovereigns on earth. Carrol, lord of Ossory, was in alliance with Amlaf and Ivar, and ruled Dublin after their deaths; but he died about 885, and a Norse dynasty was then re-established by force. A dozen years later another Carrol drove the foreigners across the Channel, but Sitric, king of Northumberland, regained the fortress in 919, and the Celts do not appear to have recaptured it. For a period of some forty years, ending about 916, Ireland is said to have had a little rest. The enemy may have had enough to do elsewhere, but their predatory expeditions did not entirely cease. There were perhaps no fresh invasions in force, but former settlers held their own against the Irish, with whom they were generally at war.

Renewed invasions, 916

Severe treatment of the natives

Whatever may have caused the period of comparative rest, the Danish incursions began again with renewed vigour. A great host came to Waterford in 916, defeated the men of Leinster, and harried all the south of Ireland; churches, as usual, attracting their special attention. Ragnal, Ivar’s grandson, represented by the Ulster annalists as king of all the Irish Scandinavians, was the chief leader, and he afterwards led his men to Scotland, where the great but indecisive battle of Tynemoor was fought.¹⁷ Sitric, Ragnal’s brother, took Dublin from the Irish, who had, perhaps, held it since 902, and on Ragnal’s death succeeded to the royal title. The natives had occasional successes, but on the whole they were conspicuously inferior in the field, and Nial Glundubh, King of Ireland, who headed a great confederacy, fell in the attempt to recover Dublin. Twelve chiefs or kings of northern and central tribes are said to have died at the same time. After this reverse all serious attempt to check the invaders seems to have been given up, and fleet after fleet brought hordes of oppressors to the ill-fated island. Munster suffered especially, and the general nature of a Danish invasion cannot be better apprehended than by transcribing the chronicler’s words: – ‘And assuredly the evil which Erin had hitherto suffered was as nothing compared to the evil inflicted by these parties. All Munster was plundered by them on all sides and devastated, and they spread themselves over Munster and built earth-works and towers and landing-places over all Erin, so that there was no place in Erin without numerous fleets of Danes and pirates; so that they made spoil-land and sword-land and conquered-land of her throughout her breadth and generally; and they ravaged her chieftainries, privileged churches, and sanctuaries, and demolished her shrines, reliquaries, and books. They wrecked her beautiful ornamental temples: for neither veneration, nor honour, nor mercy for holy ground, nor protection for church or sanctuary, for God or man, was felt by this furious, ferocious, pagan, ruthless, wrathful people. In short, until the sand of the sea, the grass of the field, or the stars of heaven are counted it will not be easy to recount or enumerate or relate what the Gaedhil, all, without distinction, suffered from; whether men or women, boys or girls, laics or clerics, freemen or serfs, young or old; indignity, outrage, injury, and oppression. In a word, they killed the kings and the chieftains, the heirs to the crown, and the royal princes of Erin. They killed the brave and the valiant, the stout knights, champions, soldiers, and young lords, and most of the heroes and warriors of all Ireland; they brought them under tribute and reduced them to bondage and slavery. Many were the blooming, lively women; the modest, mild, comely maidens; the pleasant, noble, stately, blue-eyed young women; the gentle, well-brought-up youths; and the intelligent, valiant champions, whom they carried to oppression and bondage over the broad green sea. Alas! many and frequent were the bright eyes that were suffused with tears and dimmed with grief and despair at the separation of son from father, and daughter from mother, and brother from brother, and relatives from their race and from their tribe.’¹⁸

The Northmen fail to found a permanent kingdom

The Irish Danes became strong enough to interfere with effect in English politics, and Olaf Cuaran, or Sitricson, King of Dublin, was a general of the great Scandinavian army which Athelstane overthrew at Brunanburgh. The Danes were much fewer than the Irish, but their general superiority during the tenth century was incontestable; and had the invaded people been of kin to them the kingdom of Canute might have had a counterpart in Ireland. Irish Celts were only too ready to call in Scandinavian allies in their internal quarrels, but they could never amalgamate with them. Occasionally a confederation of tribes would gain a great success, as at the battle of Tara, where King Malachi defeated the Dublin Danes under Athelstane’s old opponent, Olaf Cuaran. After great slaughter on both sides the Dublin men had the worst, and were forced to release Donnell, King of Leinster, who was then in their hands. A great part of Ireland was at this time subject to the Danes, and the battle of Tara has been called the end of the ‘Babylonish captivity of Ireland, inferior only to the captivity of hell.’ King Olaf went on a pilgrimage to Iona, where he died in the following year. Thirty-seven years had passed since his acceptance of Christianity, at least in name; yet the Danes plundered the sacred isle only five years later, in 986, and killed the abbot and fifteen of his monks. It is to be noted that the Scandinavian treatment of churches reacted on the Irish, and that many native warriors came to regard saints and sanctuaries with as little respect as Turgesius himself.

Their strongest power in Munster

Munster seems to have been more completely subdued than any other part of Ireland. The Danish stations at Waterford, Cork, and Limerick made invasion at all times easy, and the sons of Ivar bid fair to found a lasting dynasty at the latter place. There was a tax-gatherer in every petty district, a receiver to intercept the dues of every church, a soldier billeted in every house, ‘so that none of the men of Erin … had power to give even the milk of his cow, nor as much as the clutch of eggs of one hen in succour or in kindness to an aged man, or to a friend, but was forced to preserve them for the foreign steward, or bailiff, or soldier. And though there were but one milk-giving cow in the house she durst not be milked for an infant of one night, nor for a sick person, but must be kept for the steward, or bailiff, or soldier of the foreigners. And however long he might be absent from his house, his share or his supply durst not be lessened; although there was in the house but one cow, it must be killed for the meal of the night, if the means of a supply could not be otherwise procured.’¹⁹

Succession to the kingdom of Cashel

At last a deliverer arose. According to the will of Olioll Olum, King of Munster in the third century – such is the theory – the sovereignty of Cashel, that is of Munster, was to belong alternately to the races of his two sons, Eoghan Mor and Cormac Cas. The Eoghanachts and Dal Cais are generally Anglicised as the Eugenians and Dalcassians; the strength of the former and much stronger tribe being in Cork, Limerick, and Kerry – that of the latter in Clare. The Eugenian Fergraidh was king in 967, when he was murdered by his own people. Mahon the Dalcassian then became king, in compliance with the constitutional theory, but not without a struggle. Urged on by his brother Brian, he attacked the Danish settlements up and down the country, and became master of Cashel, when Ivar, finding his supremacy threatened, summoned all that would obey him to root out utterly the whole Dalcassian race.

Molloy, Mahon, and Brian

The tribes of Western Munster generally were disposed to follow Mahon, but Molloy, King of Desmond, and some others, adhered to the Dane rather than admit the supremacy of a local rival. A pitched battle took place at Solloghead, near Tipperary, in which the foreigners and their allies were totally defeated. Molloy and other chiefs who had taken the losing side were forced to give hostages to the victor. Mahon burned Limerick and drove away Ivar, who returned after a year with a great fleet, and fixed his head-quarters on Scattery Island, where St. Senanus had so sternly resisted the blandishments of a female saint.

Murder of Mahon. Brian succeeds him

For some years Mahon reigned undisputed King of Munster, but his successes only stimulated the jealousies of Molloy and the other Eugenian chiefs, who saw their race reduced to play an inferior part. They accordingly conspired with Ivar, and Molloy procured the treacherous murder of Mahon. The crime was useless, for Brian was left, and he immediately succeeded both to the leadership of his own tribe and to the kingdom of Munster, Molloy having certainly forfeited all moral claim to the alternate succession. Brian pursued the Danes to their strongholds, slew Ivar and his sons, and carried off the women and the treasure. There was, however, still a Scandinavian settlement at Limerick, and we find a grandson of Ivar afterwards in Brian’s service as one of the ten Danish stewards whom he employed. He was ambitious, and he had experience of the skill of such officers in extorting contributions from unwilling subjects. Molloy and his chief allies were slain; and Brian, having reduced the Limerick Danes to insignificance, turned his arm against those of Waterford, whose territory he ravaged, and whose Celtic allies, inhabiting the modern county of Waterford, he easily subdued. Brian was acknowledged as supreme in Munster, and took security from the principal churches not to give sanctuary to thieves or rebels. As the consequence of further expeditions Leinster also became tributary; and thus, in eight years after his brother’s death, Brian was admitted to be supreme in the southern half of Ireland.

Brian aims at being King of all Ireland

In his further expeditions, undertaken with a view of becoming King of all Ireland, the Danes of Waterford sometimes accompanied Brian; but his progress towards the desired goal was arrested for a while by a prudent treaty with Malachi II., head King of Ireland, whom he acknowledged as undisputed sovereign of the northern half, and by a revolt of the Leinster men, who were allied with the Danes of Dublin, the united forces of Brian and Malachi having overthrown the Leinster Danes at Glenmama, near Dunlavin, Dublin fell an easy prey. The spoils taken are represented as enormous, and the mention of carbuncles and other precious stones, of buffalo-horns, goblets, and many-coloured vestures, betoken some degree of luxury and much commercial activity among the Danes. It is to be observed that Brian and his followers, though Christians, had no scruple about making slaves. His panegyrists simply say that the Danes by their cruelty and oppression had deserved no better treatment. Threshing and other rough work was done by the male prisoners. Menial work, including the severe labour of the hand-mill, was done by the women. ‘There was not,’ we are told, ‘a winnowing sheet from Howth to the furthest point of Kerry that had not a foreigner in bondage on it, nor was there a quern without a foreign woman.’ The fairer and more accomplished of the Danish women of course underwent the fate of Chryseis.

Brian and the Danes, Gormflaith

Having in vain sought a refuge with the northern Irish, Sitric was forced to submit to Brian, who reinstated him at Dublin as a tributary king. Sitric’s mother, Gormflaith, or Kormlada, was sister to Maelmordha, King of Leinster, and her husband, King Olaf, having been dead many years, she was free to marry Brian, which she did soon after, while Brian’s daughter married Sitric. Wielding thus the whole force of southern Ireland, Brian called upon Malachi to acknowledge his supremacy. The King of Ireland sought aid in vain from his kinsmen, the northern Hy Neill, whose king Aedh, or Hugh, sarcastically remarked that when his clan had held the chief kingship they had known how to defend their own. No help coming from Connaught either, Malachi was forced to submit to Brian’s power, and though no formal cession took place the King of Ireland quietly subsided into King of Meath.

Brian, King of all Ireland, 1002

Brian was henceforth reckoned as monarch of Ireland. He invaded Connaught with a flotilla on the Shannon and an army marching on land, and the chiefs of the western province were glad to give hostages. The Ulster potentates falling out among themselves, the north also was easily subdued, and Brian became the actual lord paramount of Ireland. After this he made a tour round the island, starting from the Shannon and marching through Roscommon and over the Curlew mountains into Sligo. Hugging the coast by Ballyshannon to Donegal, he crossed Barnesmore Gap into Tyrone, and then passing the Foyle, near Lifford, he went through Londonderry, Antrim, Down, and Louth, to the neighbourhood of Kells. In a previous expedition he had visited Armagh and laid twenty ounces of gold on the altar. A fleet, manned by the Danes of Dublin, Limerick, and Waterford, seems to have circumnavigated Ireland while he was making the circuit by land.

Brian’s supremacy a loose one

Gormflaith’s intrigues

The supremacy of Brian was no doubt an extremely loose one. He had made no real impression on the northern tribes, and they only waited a favourable opportunity to cast off the nominal yet galling yoke. But for about seven years there seems to have been no serious attempt against him, and he was able to turn his attention to the building of churches and bridges. It was during this period that a lone woman is said to have walked unmolested from the Bloody Foreland to Glandore with a gold ring at the end of a wand. Peace, however, there was not; for Brian was engaged in at least two warlike expeditions to Ulster, and there was a fair amount of murder and private war among the minor chiefs. Brian had repudiated Gormflaith, Maelmordha’s sister and Sitric’s mother, and probably not without good reason, for her moral character was by no means on a par with her beauty and talents, since she had been married successively to Olaf Cuaran and to Malachi II., and had been repudiated by both. ‘She was,’ says the Saga, ‘the fairest of all women, and best gifted in everything that was not in her power, but it was the talk of men that she did all things ill over which she had any power.’ Brian afterwards married a daughter of the King of Connaught, and when she died, Gormflaith may have sought to be reinstated. At all events she was at Kincora when her brother arrived, bringing with him the tribute of Leinster. Her taunts, and a quarrel which he had with Murrough, Brian’s eldest son, provoked Maelmordha to leave Kincora in anger, and to raise the standard of revolt. ‘Gormflaith,’ says the Saga, ‘was so grim against King Brian after their parting, that she would gladly have him dead, and egged on her son Sitric very much to kill him.’ Sitric readily agreed to Maelmordha’s proposal, and so did the northern Hy Neill, who had never been really conquered, and who at once invaded Meath. After a gallant struggle against Leinster and Ulster, Malachi was overpowered, and called upon Brian for help. The King of Ireland, to whom the men of Connaught remained faithful, accordingly ravaged the country between his own district and Dublin, but was obliged to retire from before its walls for want of provisions.²⁰