If the Danes and Northern raiders never conquered Ireland, on the other hand they never were expelled. Through the cessation of the original impulse of unrest which brought them, they gradually ceased to receive accessions from the North, and at the same time the forces of amalgamation were slowly merging them into the national and tribal life of their new home. Their separate influence grew less and less, but their race continued, and continues to this day in the sea-ports we have named.
We shall presently have to record another series of Norse inroads, this time not directly from the North, but mediately, through France and Britain, and we shall find that much of our subsequent history was influenced by the new elements and principles then added. We shall do well, therefore, to linger for a moment before this new transition, to gain a clear view of the tendencies of the epoch then closed, the wider significance of that chapter of our nation's life.
The culture of Ireland, during the period before the Northern raids, bridged over the abyss between the classical and the mediaeval world. During the whole of that period the rest of Europe was hidden under the clouds of the Dark Ages. Ireland stood alone as the one cultured nation. Receiving the classical learning from Roman Gaul and Britain and Italy, while the old world was still alive, Ireland carried that culture onward when Rome and the Roman Empire fell, crushed under the hordes of Northern barbarians: the Franks in Gaul; the Lombards, Goths and Vandals in Spain and Italy; the Angles, Saxons and Danes in Britain; and the Picts and Northmen in the Scottish lowlands. Austria was meanwhile overrun by Asian nomads, the Huns and Magyars; Russia and Germany, with the Scandinavian lands, were still pagan.
Thus all Europe was submerged under a deluge of heathenism, and the old Latin culture was swept away. The tradition of ancient Greece still lingered at Constantinople behind the wall of the Balkans, but it had no influence at all on the northern nations beyond the wall. Ireland was thus the one exception, the ark of safety for the old wisdom and beauty of classical days. And from Ireland, when the tide of heathen invasion slackened, the light of classical times and the spirit of the New Way went forth to all the nascent nations, the great pagan tribes that were to form the modern world. Thus Ireland was the bridge over the Dark Ages, the first of modern nations, keeping the old and blending it with the new.
Yet another view of Ireland's significance must not be forgotten. Of the original life of the great pagan world which swept over the Roman Empire we know almost nothing. How much do we realize of the thought and genius of Aleman, Frank and Vandal, of Angle and Lombard and Burgundian?
Nothing at all. The darkness that shrouds them is complete. But what a contrast when we come to Ireland! If we leave out the basin of the Mediterranean, with its Asian and African traditions, Ireland is the one European nation which has clear records of its pagan history. And how excellent that history was, how full of humanity and the rich wine of life, the stories of Fergus and Concobar and Cuculain, of Find and Ossin and Gael, of Meave and Deirdré and Credé bear sufficient witness. The tide of Irish life to which they belong, and which brought them forth, flowed on without break to a time so recent that their whole tradition has come down to us, practically at first hand, from the heralds and bards themselves. Ireland is, therefore, our one doorway to the history of northern Europe through the long era of pagan times.
That history was everywhere a fierce tale of tribal warfare. Its heroes are valiant fighters, keen leaders of forays, champion swordsmen and defenders of forts. The air throbs to the battle-drum, rings to the call of the war-trumpet. Every tribe, every clan, is in turn victor and vanquished, raider and victim of raids. Everywhere are struggle and unrest, tales of captivity and slaughter.
We fall into vain lamenting over this red rapine and wrath, until we divine the genius and secret purpose of that wonderful epoch, so wholly different in inspiration from our own. The life of races, like the life of men, has its ordered stages, and none can ripen out of season. That was the epoch of dawning individual consciousness, when men were coming to a keen and vivid realization of themselves and their powers. Keen consciousness and strong personal will could be developed only through struggle--through long ages of individual and independent fighting, where the best man led, and often fought for his right to lead with the best of his followers. Innumerable centers of initiative and force were needed, and these the old tribal life abundantly gave. The territory of a chief hardly stretched farther than he could ride in a day, so that every part of it had a real place in his heart. Nor was he the owner of that territory. He was simply the chosen leader of the men who lived there, perhaps the strongest among many brothers who shared it equally between them. If another thought himself the better man, the matter was forthwith decided by fighting.
The purpose of all this was not the "survival of the fittest" in the material sense, but a harvest purely spiritual: the ripening of keen personal consciousness and will in all the combatants, to the full measure of their powers. The chiefs were the strongest men who set the standard and served as models for the rest, but that standard held the minds of all, the model of perfect valor was in the hearts of all. Thus was personal consciousness gained and perfected.
If we keep this in mind as the keynote of the whole pagan epoch, we shall be better able to comprehend the new forces which were added to that epoch, and which gradually transformed it. The greatest was the Message of the New Way. Deeds are stronger than words, and in the deeds of the first Messengers we can see the new spirit bearing fruit. The slave of Slemish mountain returned breathing not vengeance for his captivity but pity and generous kindness towards his captors. Colum the exile did not seek to enlist the Picts against his native land, but sought rather to give the message of that land to the wild Pictish warriors, and to spread humane and generous feeling among them. Thus was laid the foundation of a wide and universal consciousness; a bridge was built between soul and soul.