Gormly, the betrothed, but afterwards repudiated wife of Cormac, was also a poet, and there are many pieces ascribed to her. She was, as I mentioned, married to Caroll king of Leinster, who was severely wounded in this battle. He was carried home to be cured in his palace at Naas, and Gormly the queen was constant in her attendance on him. One day, however, as Caroll was becoming convalescent he fell to exulting over the mutilation of Cormac at which he had been present. The queen, who was sitting at the foot of his bed, rebuked him for it, and said that the body of a good man had been most unworthily desecrated. At this Caroll, who was still confined to bed, became angry and kicked her over with his foot in the presence of all her attendants and ladies.
As her father, the High-king, would do nothing for her when she besought him to wipe out the insult, and procure her reparation from so unworthy a husband, her young kinsman Niall Glún-dubh, or the Black-Kneed, took up her cause, and obtained for her a separation from her husband and restoration of her dowry. When her husband was killed, the year after this, by the Danes, she married Niall, who in time succeeded to the throne as High-king of all Ireland, and who was one of the noblest of her monarchs. He was slain in the end by the Danes, and the monarchy passed away from the houses both of her father and her husband, and she, the daughter of one High-king, the wife of another, bewails in her old age the poverty and neglect into which she had fallen. She dreamt one night that King Niall stood beside her, and she made a leap forwards to clasp him in her arms, but struck herself against the bed-post, and received a wound from which she never recovered.[9] Many of her poems are lamentations on her kinsman and husband Niall. They seem to have been current amongst the Highland as well as the Irish Gaels, for here is a specimen jotted down in phonetic spelling by the Scotch Dean Macgregor about the year 1512:
"Take, grey monk, thy foot away,
Lift it off the grave of Neill!
Too long thou heapest up the clay
On him who cannot feel.[10]
Monk, why must thou pile the earth
O'er the couch of noble Neill?
Above my friend of gentle birth
Thou strik'st a churlish heel.
Let him be, at least to-night,
Mournful monk of croaking voice,
Beneath thee lies my heart's delight,
Who made me to rejoice.
Monk, remove thy foot, I say!
Tread not on the sacred ground
Where he is shut from me away,
In cold and narrow bound!
I am Gormly—king of men
Was my father, Flann the brave.
I charge thee, stand thou not again,
Bald monk, upon his grave."
Another poet of the ninth century was Flanagan, son of Ceallach, king of Bregia. He is quoted by the "Four Masters."[11] One poem of his, of 112 lines, on the deaths of the kings of Ireland, is preserved in the Yellow Book of Lecan.
Mailmura, of Fahan, whom the "Four Masters" call a great poet, was a contemporary of his, and wrote a poem on the Milesian Migrations.[12]
Several other poets lived in the ninth century, the chief of whom was probably Flann mac Lonáin, for the "Four Masters" in recording his death style him "the Virgil of the Scottic race, the chief ollamh of all the Gaels, the best poet that was in Ireland in his time." Eight of his poems, containing about one thousand lines, have survived. He was from the neighbourhood of Slieve Echtgé, or Aughty, in South Connacht. One of his poems records how Ilbrechtach the harper was travelling over these barren mountains along with the celebrated poet Mac Liag, and, as they paused to rest on Croghan Head, Mac Liag surveyed the prospect beneath him, and said, "Many a hill and lake and fastness is in this range; it were a great topographical knowledge to know them all." "If Mac Lonáin were here," said the harper, "he could name them all, and give the origin of their names as well." "Let this fellow be taken and hanged," said Mac Liag. The harper begged respite till next day, and in the meantime Mac Lonáin comes up and recites a poem of one hundred and thirty-two lines beginning—Aoibhinn aoibhinn Echtgé árd.
Amongst other things, he relates that he met a Dalcassian—i.e., one of Brian Boru's people from Clare—at Moy Finé in Galway, who had just finished serving twelve months with a man in that place, from whom he had received a cow and a cloak for payment. On his way home to the Dalcassians with his cloak and his cow he met the poet, and said to him—
"'Sing to me the history of my country,
It is sweet to my soul to hear it.
Thereupon I sang for him the poem,
Nor did he show himself the least loath:
All that he had earned—not mean nor meagre—
To me he gave it without deduction.
The upright Dalcassians heard of this,
They received him with honour in their assembly;
They gave to him—the noble race—
Ten cows for every quarter of his own cow.'"
Mac Lonáin was the contemporary of Cormac mac Culinan, whom he eulogises.
Some other poets of great note flourished during the Danish period, such as Cormac "an Eigeas," who composed the celebrated poem to Muircheartach, or Murtagh of the Leather Cloaks,[13] son of the Niall so bitterly lamented by Gormly, on the occasion of his marching round Ireland, when he set out from his palace at ancient Aileach near Derry, and returned to it again after levying tribute and receiving hostages from every king and sub-king in Ireland. This great O'Neill well deserved a poet's praise, for having taken Sitric, the Danish lord of Dublin, Ceallachan of Munster, the king of Leinster, and the royal heir of Connacht as hostages, he, understanding well that in the interests of Ireland the High-kingship should be upheld, positively refused to follow the advice of his own clan and march on Tara, as they urged, to take hostages from Donagh the High-king. On the contrary, he actually sent of his own accord all those that had been given him during his circuit to this Donagh as supreme governor of Ireland. Donagh, on his part, not to be out-done in magnanimity, returned them again to Murtagh with the message that he, into whose hands they had been delivered, was the proper person to keep them. It was to commemorate this that Cormac wrote his poem of two hundred and fifty-six lines:—