is to be found in the remarks of an old English historian, William of Neubridge, in introducing his account of the submission of Ireland to Henry II. "It is a matter of wonder," says this writer, "that Britain, which is of larger extent, and equally an island of the ocean, should have been so often, by the chances of war, made the prey of foreign nations, and subjected to foreign rule, having been first subdued and possessed by the Romans, then by the Germans, afterwards by the Danes, and, lastly, by the Normans, while her neighbour, Hibernia, inaccessible to the Romans themselves, even when the Orkneys were in their power, has been but rarely, and then imperfectly, subdued; nor ever, in reality, has been brought to submit to foreign domination till the year of our Lord 1171."*

CHAPTER XXII.

State of the schools of Ireland in the tenth century.-Armagh still visited by strangers.Eminent native scholars during this period.-Probus, lecturer of the school of Slanc.Eochaid O'Floinn, a Bardic historian-Kenneth O'Artegan, a poet.-School established by the Irish in England, called Glastonbury of St. Patrick.-Monasteries of the Scots or Irish in France and Germany.-Literary works of an Irish ecclesiastic, named Duncan.-Numbers of Bishops from Ireland on the continent.-Efforts by councils to suppress them.

THE night of ignorance and barbarism, which had been so long gathering around the western world, is supposed, in the century we are now considering, to have reached its utmost gloom. How far this comparative view is well founded may be a matter of question; but of the positive prevalence of darkness throughout this age there can exist no doubt. It is not, therefore, wonderful that even Ireland, which had hitherto stood as a beacon of learning in the west, should begin to share in the general obscuration of the times; and, being acted upon by the same causes which had already uncivilized some of the fairest regions of Europe, should feel the fated tide of barbarism gaining fast upon her shores. The exceeding rapidity with which the chief schools and monasteries throughout the country, though so frequently ravaged and burnt by the Northmen, again arose from their ashes, and resounded afresh with the voice of instruction and prayer, seems hardly less than marvellous. Nor was this intrepid and persevering enthusiasm, in the cause of learning and holiness, confined to the natives of the country alone, but inspired also its visiters; as, but a few months after a desperate inroad of the Danish spoilers into Armagh, we are told of a youth of the royal house of the Albanian Scots, named Cadroe, repairing to the schools of that university for the completion of his education.§

Among the obituary notices scattered throughout the annals of this age, there occur the names of several divines who are described as learned and eminent, but of whom no farther mention is to be found. Towards the middle of the century flourished Probus, or, as his Irish name, of the same import, is said to have been, Coenachair, whose Life of St. Patrick, still extant, is praised by a high authority on the subject of our ecclesiastical history, as "a very valuable work." That Probus was an Irishman, he has himself placed beyond doubt by several expressions which occur in his pages. Thus, when

Sane hoc quoque de hac insulâ mirabile est, quod cum major Britannia, æque oceani insula, nec spacio longiori sejuncta, tantos bellorum casus experta sit, toties exteris gentibus præda fuerit, toties externam dominationem incurrerit, expugnata et possessa primo a Romanis, deinde a Germanis, consequenter a Danis, postremo a Normannis; Hibernia Romanis etiam Orchadum insularum dominium tenentibus inaccessa, raro et tepide ab ullo unquam expugnata, et subacta est, nunquam externæ subjacuit ditioni, usque ad annum a partu Virginis M. C. septuagesimum primum.-Rerum Angl. lib. 2. cap. xxvi.

Leibnitz, among others, dissents from this opinion, affirming that there was more knowledge and learning in the tenth century than in either the twelfth or thirteenth. See Note on Mosheim, cent. x. part ii. chap. I. "Nimirum verè dixit scriptor vetus, quod in Armacha summum studium literale manet semper.' Nam studia literarum ita continenter in illa academia floruerunt, ut ne rabies quidem Danorum per sacra et profana cædibus et incendiis furosissime grassantium cursum eorum inter ruperit."—Gratianus Lucius c. xxii. § Cadroe has been sometimes claimed as an Irish Scot; but it appears evident that he was a Scot of North Britain. See Lanigan, chap. 23. § 2.

"The Life of St. Patrick by Probus, in two books, is a very valuable work."-Lanigan. Eccles. Hist. vol. i. chap. 3. § 2.

speaking of the Saint embarking from Britain for Ireland, he says, that "he entered upon our sea; and the harbour first reached by the missionary, whom he styles" our most holy father, is represented by him as "one much celebrated among us.' Probus was Chief Lecturer of the school of Slane; and fell a victim there, as already has been related, during an attack upon the church of that place by the Danes.*

In giving an account of those bardic or metrical historians by whom the adventures of our earliest colonists and the romantic achievements of the sons of Milesius, were first invented, I mentioned, as ranking among the chief contributors to this stock of fiction, a poet of the tenth century, named Eochaidh O'Floin. In the poems of this writer, of which there are a number still extant, may be found those fables respecting Partholan, the battles of the Formorians, and the storming of the Tower of Conaing, which have all, by Keating and others, been gravely promulgated as history; and which Vallancey could not otherwise account for, than by supposing all these marvellous transactions to have taken place among the oriental ancestors of the Irish, before their departure from Greece. In the year 975, according to the annalist Tigernach, took place the death of Keneth O'Artegan, "Chief of the Learned of Leath Cuinn." A poem of this writer is still preserved, descriptive of the beauty of the celebrated Hill of Tara, and moralizing mournfully over its history; nor should those who visit, in our days, that seat of long extinguished royalty feel any wonder on not discovering there some vestige of its grandeur, when told that, even in the time of this poet, not a trace of the original palace still remained; while the hill itself had become a desert, overgrown with grass and weeds.

As thus, in the midst of the general darkness of the age, there were still preserved in Ireland some relics of the lore of better days, so, in the schools and religious establishments of the continent, her sons still continued to retain all their former superiority, and, among the dwarf intellects of that time, towered as giants. In England, where, since the death of her great Alfred, both sacred and literary knowledge had sunk to so low an ebb, that at length no priest could be found capable of writing or translating a Latin letter, T the Irish were, in this century, the means of restoring some taste for liberal studies. With that devotion to the cause of religion and instruction which had become, in this people (as an author of those times expresses it,) a second nature, a number of Irishmen described as conversant with every department of knowledge, secular as well as sacred, retired, some time before the year 940, to Glastonbury. This monastery had already been long distinguished as a favourite retreat of their countrymen; and, within its walls, so great was the reverence felt for their patron saint,** that, from an early period, the establishment had been called "Glastonbury of St. Patrick." From the Irish who fixed themselves there in this century, the able St. Dunstan chiefly received his education; and while he imbibed, as we are told, under their discipline, the very marrow of scriptural learning, they also instructed him in the sciences of arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy, in all of which they were, it is intimated, more deeply skilled than in the refined niceties of classical literature. With a taste, too, highly characteristic of their country, they

Among the relics destroyed on this occasion were the pastoral staff of the patron saint of Slane, and "a bell (says the annalist) the best of all bells."-IV. Mag. ad. ann. 948. In Archdall's Monastic. Hibern. these last words are incorrectly translated "the best clock in Ireland," on the strength of which mistake, combined with the mention of a "clock" in king Cormac's pretended Will, some sapient persons have claimed for the Irish of those times a knowledge of the art of clock making.

† See for an account of these poems, the Transactions of the Iberno-Celtic Society, ad. ann. 984.

It is much to be regretted that, though in many respects so qualified to illustrate and advance the study of Irish antiquities, Vallancey, through false zeal and fantastic speculation, should have ended only in drawing down ridicule on the subject. One of his earliest essays, "The Laws of Tanistry illustrated," to which have frequently had occasion to refer in these pages, shows how well and usefully he could turn to account the materials contained in our own authentic annals, without calling in the aid of the Sadder of Zerdusht, or of his favourite "Pishdadian Dynasty.”—See Vindication of the Ancient History of Ireland, Col· lectan. vol. iv.

Trans. Iberno-Celt. Society, ad ann. 975.

If this poem be not antedated by a century or two, the mansion which Malachy and his immediate pre. decessors in the throne of Tara must have recently occupied, at the time when the poet wrote, could not have been the same, of course, nor built upon the same site with that whose ruin and utter disappearance he bewails.

TVery few churchmen were there," says Alfred, "on this side the Humber, who could understand their daily prayers in English, or translate any letter from the Latin. I think there were not many beyond the Humber; they were so few, that I, indeed, cannot recollect one single instance on the south of the Thames when I took the kingdom."-See Turner, Hist. Anglo Sax. book v. chap. 1. A few years before the Norman conquest (says Mr. Berington, on the authority of William of Malmesbury,)" the clergy could hardly stammer through the necessary service of the church, and he who knew the rules of grammar was viewed as a prodigy." ** Nec Normannorum solùm sed Anglosaxonum quoque temporibus sacro-sanctam apud Glastonienses B. Patricii fuisse memoriam, Baldredi, Inæ et Ealdredi ostendunt Charte-Usher, Eccles. Primord

tt Horum ergo disciplinatu sacram scripturam medullitus ad extremam satietatem exhausit.-Gulielm. Mal mesbur. Vit. S. Dunstan.

11 Arithmeticam porro cum geometria et astronomia ac musica, quæ appendent, gratanter addidicit, et dili. genter excoluit. Harum scientiarum Hibernienses pro magno pollicentur; cæterum ad formanda Latine verba et ad integre loquendum minus idonei.-Ibid.

succeeded in awakening in their pupil so strong a love and talent for music, that it was in after life his frequent practice, when worn with business or study, to fly for refreshment to the soothing sounds of the harp.*

On the continent of Europe, in like manner, the fame of the Island of Saints continued to be upheld by the learning and piety of her sons; and in the course of this century, there flourished in France, as well as in Germany and the Netherlands, a number of eminent Irishmen, whose names belong not so much to the country which gave them birth, as to those which they benefited by the example and labours of their lives. Among the prelates present at a synod held in the year 947, at Verdun, was an Irish bishop named Israel, whose character and accomplishments must have been of no ordinary stamp, as he had been one of the instructors of the great and learned archbishop Bruno, the brother of the emperor Otho.t

An Irish abbot of considerable celebrity, named Fingan, who had been honoured with the notice and patronage of the dowager empress Adelhard, the zealous relict of Otho the Great, was, through her interest, invested with the government of the abbey of Symphorian, at Metz, on the singular condition that he and his successors should receive no other than Irish monks into their establishment, as long as any such could be found; but, in case of a deficiency of monks from Ireland, should then be allowed to admit those of other nations.‡

Another of these "monasteries of the Scots," as they were to a late period called, had been established about this time on an island in the Rhine, near Cologne, having for its first abbot an Irishman named Mimborin; and it is clearly to this establishment at Cologne that such frequent reference is made in the Annals of the Four Masters, and others.§ Helias, a successor to this abbot, had, previously to his departure from Ireland, belonged to the monastery of Monaghan;-one of many proofs of the close intercourse then maintained between the foreign religious establishments and those of Ireland.

Of the attention early paid to the study of Greek in the native schools of the Irish, some notice has already been taken; and a proof of their continued attention to the culti vation of that language is to be found in the interesting fact, that, in the diocese of St. Gérard, at Toul, where there had assembled at this time a number of Greek refugees, as well as of Irish, the church service, in which both nations joined, was performed in the language of the Greeks, and according to the Greek_rite.||

One of the few of our learned countrymen at this period, who have left behind them any literary remains, was an Irish bishop named Duncan, or Duncant, who taught in the monastery of St. Remigius, at Rheims, and wrote for the use of the students under his care a Commentary on the Nine Books of Martianus Capella," an author whose claims to attention, such as they are, concern the musician rather than the scholar,¶and also, "Observations on the First Book of Pomponius Mela, De Situ Terræ ;" both of which writings are still extant.

With respect to those Irish bishops we frequently read of, as connected with foreign religious establishments, and passing their whole lives abroad, it is right to explain, that there existed at this time a custom in Ireland of raising pious and exemplary monks to episcopal rank, without giving them any fixed sees. In addition to these there was also, as in the primitive times of the Church, an order of Chorepiscopi, or country bishops, to whom the care of the rural districts was entrusted, with powers subordinate to those of the regular bishop in whose diocese they were situated. From these two classes of ministers were furnished, doubtless, the great majority of those Episcopi Vagantes, or

* Ispe citharam, si quando à literis vacaret, sumere.-Gulielm. Malmesbur. Vit. S. Dunstan.

† Lanigan, Ecclesiast. Hist. chap. xxiii. § 4.

1 A copy of the deed, confirming the rights and possessions of the establishment on this condition, is given by Colgan in the Acta Sanctorum; and the stipulation, as expressed in the deed, is as follows:-"Ea videlicet ratione, ut abbas primus nomine Fingenius Hibernienses natione, quem ipse prælibatus episcopus tunc temporis ibi constituit, suique successores Hibernienses monachos habeant, quamdiu sic esse poterit; et si defuerint ibi monachi de Hibernia, de quibuscumque nationibus semper ibi monachi habeantur."

§ IV. Mag. ad an. 1042, and 1052. An. Ult. 1042. In the Ulster Annals for the year 1027, we find the fol. lowing record :-" The wisest of the Scots in Cologne died."

The following is the account given of this circumstance by the Benedictines, in one of those clever sketches prefixed by them to the several volumes of their valuable work:-"Un autre moien qui servit beaucoup à repandre la connoissance de cette langue parmi nos Français fùrent ces Grecs aux quels S. Gerard, Evêque de Toul, donna retraite dans son diocèse. Ils y formerent des communautés entières avec des Hibernois qui s'étoient melés avec eux, et y faisoient separément l'office divin en leur langue et suivant leur rit particulier. L'établissement de ces communautés de Grecs est tout-à-fait remarquable."-Hist. Littérarie.

A manuscript copy of this work of Duncan, which was formerly in the monastery of St. Remigius, at Rheims, is deposited at present in the British Museum.-Bibliothec. Reg. 15. A. xxxiii. The name of the transcriber is Gifardus, and on the margins of some of the pages there are very neatly traced with the pen various geometrical figures. By an odd confusion, Stuart, in his History of Armagh, states that Duncant, an Irish bishop, delivered lectures in St. Remigius's monastery, in Down.-Append. No. 5.

"vague bishops," as they were called, of whom such numbers, principally Irish, were found on the continent in the middle ages; and whose assumed power of ordaining came at length to be so much abused, that, at more than one Council, an effort was made to abate the evil, by declaring all such ordinations to be null and void. Notwithstanding, however, such occasional laxity of discipline, it is admitted by one of the most liberal as well as most learned of theologians, that the bishops of this description from Ireland were of great service, as well to the Gallican as the Germanic church.f

CHAPTER XXIII.

Restoration of the monarch Malachy.—His victories over the remains of the Northmen.Battle at the Yellow Ford.-Death of Malachy.-Social state of Ireland at this period.Decline of religion and morals throughout the country.-Ecclesiastical abuses.-Corbes and Erenachs. Succession of the monarchy suspended:—Provisional government established.Kingdom of Munster ruled jointly by Teige and Donchad, the sons of Brian.-Murder of Teige through the contrivance of his brother.-Donchad, titular monarch of Ireland;— Turlogh, his nephew, aspires to the throne. Is supported by the princes of Leinster and Connaught.-Donchad, defeated, flies to Rome.-Turlogh, monarch of Ireland.—Events of his reign.-Death.-Is succeeded by Murkertach.

WHEN the mortal wound received by Morough, the son of Brian, in the battle of Clontarf, had deprived the army of the presence of its acting leader, the command devolved, as we have seen, on the patriotic and high-minded Malachy, by whom the victory, then all but accomplished, was followed up to its full and perfect success. Almost immediately, too, without, as it appears, any preparatory process or intervening forms, this prince reassumed the high station from which he had been so wrongfully deposed, and was acknowledged, by tacit and general assent, supreme monarch of Ireland. Could any doubt exist, as to the view taken in Brian's own times, of the lawless means by which he got possession of the supreme throne, the ready acquiescence, if it did not amount even to loyal satisfaction, with which the same prince, who had been so triumphantly set aside twelve years before, was now seen to resume his due station, would be sufficiently convincing on this point; -showing, at once, how strong was still in the popular mind the regard for hereditary right, and how bold and powerful must have been the hand that had dared so successfully to violate it.¡

Attempts have been made by some modern historians, as already has been remarked, to invest with an appearance of respect for the popular voice the self-willed act of the usurper. But the general feeling entertained on the subject, in times bordering on those of Brian, may be collected from the manner in which the annalist Tigernach, who wrote in the following century, has recorded the death of Malachy. Not acknowledging those twelve years, during which the usurpation lasted, to have been any interruption of the rule of the legitimate monarch, this chronicler states, as the period of Malachy's reign, the whole of the forty-three years which intervened between his first accession to the throne and his death;-thus denying to the name of Ireland's great hero any place in the list of her legitimate monarchs. It should be added, too, that in this tacit but significant verdict on the lawless act of Brian, the old chronicler has been faithfully followed by the writers of the Annals of Ulster.

The calumnious story referred to in a former chapter, of Malachy's treachery in drawing off his troops during the heat of the action at Clontarf, has already been disposed of

• In consequence of this abuse, it was decreed by the council of Calcuith (A. D. 816.) that no Irishman should be permitted to exercise clerical duties:-"Ut Scoti non admittentur sacra ministrare."

præf.

Mabillon.-"Plurimum ecclesiæ tum Gallicanæ tum Germaniacæ profuisse."-Annal. Benedictin. sec. ii.

IV. Mag. 1014 (æræ com. 1015.)

Inisfall. ad an. 1016. 1016. Ware, Antiquities, c. xxiv.

Those who are guided by less strict views of legitimacy in their calculation limit Malachy's reign to the thirty-four years during which he occupied the throne. "Quem codex Cluanensis (says Colgan) tradit 43 annis regnasse, alii vero communiter 23."-Trias Thaum. Sect. Append. ad Act. S. Patric.

as it deserved; but, were any farther refutation of the calumny wanting, we should find it, not only in the fact alleged by the Four Masters of his heading the army after the fate of its leader Morough, but also in the prompt and according assent of the whole nation to his immediate resumption of the supreme power, and the instant vigour with which, on his accession, leaving no respite to the remnant of the Danish force, he attacked them in their head-quarters, Dublin, and, setting fire to the citadel and the houses around it, destroyed the greater part of that city.*

In the following year, these daring ravagers, having received some recruitment of their force, again poured forth, under the command of their king Sitric, extending the course of their depredations over all the region then called Hy-Kinsellagh. But the monarch, with the aid of his kindred, the southern Hy-Niells, surprised the spoilers in the midst of their havoc, and put them to the rout with immense slaughter. About the same time, a signal instance of retribution was exhibited in the fate of the royal family of Leinster, whose reigning prince, the son and successor of that king, who had been the promoter of the late coalition against Ireland, was deprived of his eyes-the usual mode of incapacitating a prince from reigning-by order of the Danish king, Sitric. In consequence of this and similar outrages, the people of Leinster, at length provoked into resistance, gained, at Delgany, a complete victory over the fierce Sitric and his Danes.§ Decisive and prompt as appear to have been the measures of Malachy, it is evident that the strong grasp by which, in his predecessor's time the swarm of minor kings had been curbed and kept down was now no longer felt; and, accordingly, in the north and west, as well as in the south, his presence was called for to repress pretensions and revolts. In the year 1016-a year distinguished in our annals by the rare record of "Peace A. D. in Erin'-the monarch proceeded at the head of an army to Ulster, and com1016. pelled the princes of that province to deliver to him hostages. In the course of the following year we find him again wreaking his revenge on the restless Danes, at a place called Odhba; and in 1018, the O'Niells of the north, being up in arms, assisted by the warlike tribe of the Eugenians, he hastened to encounter their joint force, having gained an easy victory over them, drove the Eugenians, as it is stated, "beyond the mountain Fuad, towards the north."¶ About the same time, a portion of his army committed great slaughter upon the Fercallians, a people of the district now called the King's County; and in the year 1020, accompanied by the O'Niells, and by Donchad, the son of Brian, with his Dalcassians, the monarch marched at the head of an army into Connaught, and received hostages from the kings of that province.**

A. D.

1020.

In approaching the close of this eminent prince's career, it should not be forgotten, among his other distinguished merits, that, unlike the greater part of those chieftains who flourished in what may be called the Danish period, he never, in any one instance, sullied his name by entering into alliance with the foreign spoilers of his country; and as the opening year of his reign had been rendered memorable by a great victory over the Danes, so, at the distance of nearly half a century, his closing hours were cheered by a triumph over the same restless, but no longer formidable foe. In the summer of the year 1022, being summoned to the field by some aggression of the Northmen, he encountered their force at the Yellow Ford, a place now called Athboy, and defeated them with great slaughter. Retiring, soon after the battle, to a small A. D. island upon the Lake Annin, in Meath, he there devoted his last hours to penitence 1022. and prayer; being attended in his dying moments by the three Comorbans, or successors of St. Patrick, St. Columba and St. Ciaran: one of his latest cares being to endow a foundation for the support of 300 orphan children, to be selected out of the principal cities of the island; an act of beneficence which, as it appears from distichs quoted by Tigernach and the Four Masters, some poets of that day commemorated.§§ In taking a review of the authentic portion of Irish history we have now traversed, and, to avoid controversy, confining that portion within the interval only that has elapsed from about the time of the monarch Niell, (A. D. 406,) called, "Niell of the Nine Hostages," it will be found that, though wanting, perhaps, in that variety of adventure

IV. Mag. ad an. 1014 (1015.)

Inisfall. ad an. 1018. Ware. ad an. 1019.

Ware's Annals, ad an. 1022. IV. Mag. ap. Colgan.

"Sith in Erind." Annal. Ult.

† Annal. Inisfall. ad an. 1016.

Tar sliabh Fuait fo thuaidh." This name, Fuad, occurs frequently in the annals, but it does not ap pear what particular mountain is designated by it.

* IV. Mag. Inisfall.

t IV. Mag. ad an. 1021. (æræ com. 1022.) Tigernach, ad an. 1022, &c.

11 Cited in Rer. Hib. Script. Prol. 2. liv.

IV. Mag. ad an. 1022. Rer. Hib. Script.

Sce c. 7, p. 88 of this Work.