And now we come to the birth of Christ, which is thus recorded by the "Four Masters": "The first year of the age of Christ and the eighth of the reign of Crimhthan Niadhnair."[9] Crimhthan was no doubt one of the marauding Scots who plundered Britain, for it is recorded of him that "it was this Crimhthan who went on the famous expedition beyond the sea from which he brought home several extraordinary and costly treasures, among which were a gilt chariot and a golden chess-board, inlaid with three hundred transparent gems, a tunic of various colours and embroidered with gold, a shield embossed with pure silver," and many other valuables. Curiously enough O'Clery's Book of Invasions contains a poem of seventy-two lines ascribed to this king himself, in which he describes these articles. He was fabled to have been accompanied on this expedition by his "bain-leannán" or fairy sweetheart, one of an interesting race of beings of whom frequent mention is made in Irish legend and saga.
The next event of consequence after the birth of Christ is the celebrated revolt led by Cairbré Cinn-cait, of the Athach-Tuatha,[10] or unfree clans of Ireland, in other words the serfs or plebeians, against the free clans or nobility, whom they all but exterminated, three unborn children of noble line alone escaping.[11]
The people of Ireland were plagued—as though by heaven—with bad seasons and lack of fruit during the usurper Cairbré's reign. As the "Four Masters" graphically put it, "evil was the state of Ireland during his reign, fruitless her corn, for there used to be but one grain on the stalk; fishless her rivers; milkless her cattle; unplenty her fruit, for there used to be but one acorn on the oak." The belief that bad seasons were sent as a punishment of bad rulers was a very ancient and universal one in Ireland, and continued until very lately. The ode which the ollav or head-bard is said to have chanted in the ears of each newly-inaugurated prince, took care to recall it to his mind, and may be thus translated:—
"Seven witnesses there be
Of the broken faith of kings.
First—to trample on the free,
Next—to sully sacred things,
Next—to strain the law divine,
(This defeat in battle brings).
Famine, slaughter, milkless kine,
And disease on flying wings.
These the seven-fold vivid lights
That light the perjury of kings!"[12]
According to the Book of Conquests the people of Ireland, plagued by famine and bad seasons, brought in, on the death of Cairbré, the old reigning families again, making Fearadach king, and the "Athach-Tuatha swore by the heaven and earth, sun, moon, and all the elements, that they would be obedient to them and their descendants, as long as the sea should surround Ireland." The land recovered its tranquillity with the reign of Fearadach. "Good was Ireland during his time. The seasons were right tranquil; the earth brought forth its fruit. Fishful its river mouths; milkful the kine; heavy-headed the woods."
There was a second uprising of the Athach-Tuatha later on,[13] when they massacred their masters on Moy Bolg. The lawful heir to the throne was yet unborn at the time of this massacre and so escaped. This was the celebrated Tuathal [Too-a-hal, now Toole], who ultimately succeeded to the throne and became one of the most famous of all the pre-Patrician kings. It was he who first established or cut out the province of Meath. The name Meath had always existed as the appellation of a small district near which the provinces of Ulster, Connacht, Leinster, and the two Munsters joined. Tuathal cut off from each of the four provinces the angles adjoining it, and out of these he constituted a new province[14] to be thenceforth the special estate, demesne, and inheritance of the High-kings of Ireland. He built, or rebuilt, four palaces in the four quarters of the district he had thus annexed, all of them celebrated in after times—of which more later on. It was he also who, under evil auspices and in an evil hour, extorted from Leinster the first Borumha,[15] or Boru tribute,—nomen infaustum—a step which contributed so powerfully to mould upon lines of division and misery the history of our unhappy country from that day until the present, by estranging the province of Leinster, throwing it into the arms of foreigners, and causing it to put itself into opposition to the rest of Ireland. This unhappy tribute, of which we shall hear more later on, was imposed during the reigns of forty kings.
Thirteen years after the death of Tuathal, Cáthaoir [Cauheer], celebrated for his Will or Testament,[16] reigned; he was of pure Leinster blood, and the men of that province have always felicitated themselves upon having given at least this one great king to Ireland. It is from him that the great Leinster families—the O'Tooles, O'Byrnes, Mac Morroughs or Murphys, O'Conor Falys, O'Gormans, and others—descend. He was slain, A.D. 123, by Conn of the Hundred Battles.[17]
There are few kings during the three hundred years preceding and following the birth of Christ more famous than this Conn, and there is a very large body of saga collected round him and his rival Eoghan [Owen], the king of Munster who succeeded in wresting half the sovereignty from him. As the result of their conflicts that part of Ireland which lies north of the Escir Riada,[18] or, roughly speaking, that lies north of a line drawn from Dublin to Galway, has from that day to this been known as Conn's Half, and that south of the same line as Owen's Half. Owen was at last slain by him of the hundred battles at the fight of Moy Léana.
Owen, as we have seen, was never King of Ireland, but he left behind him a famous son, Oilioll[19] Olum, who was married to Sadhbh,[20] the daughter of his rival and vanquisher, Conn of the Hundred Battles, and it is to this stem that nearly all the ruling families of Munster trace themselves. From his eldest son, Owen Mór, come the Mac Carthys, O'Sullivans, O'Keefes, O'Callaghans, etc.; from his second son come the Mac Namaras and Clancys; and from his third son, Cian,[21] come the so-called tribes of the Cianachts, the O'Carrolls, O'Meaghers, O'Haras, O'Garas, Caseys, the southern O'Conors, and others. There is a considerable body of romance gathered around this Oilioll and his sons and wife, chiefly connected with the kingship of Munster.
Conn's son, Art the Lonely—so-called because he survived after the slaughter of his brothers—was slain by Mac Con, Sive's son by her first husband, and the slayer ruled in his place, being the third king of the line of the Ithians, of whom we shall read later on, who came to the throne.