"A Mhuircheartaigh Mheic Néill náir
Ro ghabhais giallu Inse-Fáil."[14]
But the names of the poets Cinaeth or Kenneth O'Hartigan, and Eochaidh O'Flynn, are the most celebrated amongst those of the tenth century. Allusions to and quotations from the first, who died in 975, are frequent, and nine or ten of his poems, containing some eight hundred lines, have been preserved perfect for us. Of O'Flynn's pieces, fourteen are enumerated by O'Reilly, containing in the aggregate between seventeen and eighteen hundred lines. In them we find in verse the whole early and mythical history of Ireland. We have, for instance, one poem on the invasion of Partholan; one on the invasion of the Fomorians; another on the division of Ireland between the sons of Partholan; another on the destruction of the tower of Conaing and the battles between the Fomorians and the Nemedians; another on the journey of the Nemedians from Scithia and how some emigrated to Greece and others to Britain after the destruction of Conairé's tower; another on the invasion of the sons of Milesius; another on the history of Emania built by Cimbaeth some three hundred years before Christ, up to its destruction by the Three Collas in the year 331. This poet in especial may be said to have crystallised into verse the mythic history of Ireland with the names and reigns of the Irish kings, and to have thrown them into the form of real history. O'Clery, in his celebrated Book of Invasions, has drawn upon him very largely, quoting, often at full length, no less than twelve of his poems. Hence many people believe that he was one of the first to collect the floating tribe-legends of very early Irish kings, and the race-myths of the Tuatha De Danann and their contemporaries, and that he cast them into that historical shape in which the later annalists record them, by fitting them into a complete scheme of genealogical history like that of the Old Testament. But whether all these things had taken solid shape and form before he versified them anew we cannot now decide. According to O'Reilly and O'Curry this poet died in 984, nine years after O'Hartigan; but M. d'Arbois de Jubainville remarks that he has been unable to find out any evidence for fixing upon this date.
A little later lived Mac Liag, whom Brian Boru elevated to the rank of Arch-Ollamh of Erin, and who lived at his court at Kincora in the closest relationship to him and his sons. He has been credited—erroneously according to O'Curry—with the authorship of a Life of Brian Boru, which unfortunately has perished, only a single ancient leaf, in the hand-writing of the great antiquary Mac Firbis, surviving. Several of his poems, however, are preserved,[15] containing between twelve and thirteen hundred lines in all, and are of the highest value as throwing light both on the social state and the policy of Ireland under Brian. One of his poems gives a graphic description of the tribute of Ireland being driven to Brian at his palace in Kincora in the present county of Clare. The poet went out from the court to have a look at the flocks and herds, and when he returned he said to the King, "Here comes Erin's tribute of cows to thee, many a fat cow and fat hog on the plain before thee." "Be they ever so many," said the King, "they shall be all thine, thou noble poet." Amongst the other part of the tribute which the poet describes as coming in to Brian were one hundred and fifty butts of wine from the Danes of Dublin, and a tun of wine for every day in the year from the Danes of Limerick. He describes Brian as sitting at the head of the great hall of Kincora,[16] the king of Connacht sat on his right hand and the king of Ulster on his left; the king of Tir-Eóghain [Tyrone] sat opposite to him. At the door-post nearest to Brian sat the king of Leinster, and at the other post of the open door sat Donough, son of Brian, and Malachy,[17] king of Meath. Murrough, the king's eldest son who died so valiantly at Clontarf, sat in front of his father with his back turned to him, with Angus, a prince of Meath, and the king of Tirconnell on his left. One of his poems ends with two complimentary stanzas to Brian Boru, his son Murrough, his nephew Conaing, and Tadhg [Teig] O'Kelly, the king of Ui Máine—all four of whom a short time afterwards were left stiff and stark upon the field of Clontarf.
The shadow of the bloody tragedy there enacted hangs heavily over all Mac Liag's later poems and those of his contemporaries, and there are few more pathetic pieces in the language than his wail over Kincora left desolate by the death of almost every chieftain who had gone forth from it to meet the Danes.
"Oh where, Kincora, is Brian the great!
Oh, where is the beauty that once was thine!
Oh, where are the princes and nobles that sate
At the feast in thy halls, and drank the red wine.[18]
Where, oh, Kincora?
* * * * *
And where is the youth of majestic height,
The faith-keeping prince of the Scots? Even he
As wide as his fame was, as great as his might,
Was tributary, oh, Kincora, to me!
Me, oh, Kincora.
They are gone, those heroes of royal birth,
Who plundered no churches, who broke no trust;
'Tis weary for me to be living on earth
When they, oh, Kincora, lie low in the dust!
Low, oh, Kincora."[19]
In the same strain does Mac Gilla Keefe,[20] another contemporary poet, lament, in a piece which, according to a manuscript quoted by Hardiman, called the "Leabhar Oiris," he composed when in the north of Greece, whither he had travelled in the itinerant Milesian manner on his way to try if he could find the site of Paradise. The poem begins:—
"Mournful night! and mournful WE!
Men we BE who know no peace.
We no GOLD for STRAINS of PRIDE
HOLD this SIDE the PLAINS of Greece."[21]"'I remember my setting my face to pay a visit to Brian (Boru) and he at that time feasting with Cian, the son of Mulloy,[22] and he thought it long my being absent from him.'
"'God welcome you back to us,' cried Cian, 'O learned one, who comest [back from the north] from the House of O'Neill. Poet, your wife is saying that you have almost altogether forsaken your own house.'
"'You have been away for three quarters of year, except from yesterday to to-day.' 'Why that,' said Murrough, son of Brian, 'is the message of the raven from the ark!'
"'[Come now] tell us all the wealth you have brought from the north,' said Brian, the High-king of the host of Carn i Neid, 'tell the nobles of the men of Innisfail, and swear by my hand that you tell no lie.'
"'By the King who is above me,' [said I], 'this is what I brought from the north, twenty steeds, ten ounces of gold, and ten score cows of cattle.'
"'[Why] we, the two of us, shall give him more steeds and more cattle [than that] without speaking of what Brian will give,' said Cian, the son of Mulloy.
"'[And] by the King of Heaven who has brought me into silence this night, and who has darkened my brightness, I got ten times as much as that at the banquet before Brian lay down.
"'I got seven town-lands, Oh, King of the Kings, who hast sent me from the west, and a half town-land [besides] near every palace in which Brian used to be.'
"Said Murrough, good son of Brian, 'To-morrow'—and it was scarce sensible for him—'as much as you have got last night you shall get from me myself, and get it with my love.'"[23]
Mag Liag was not at Clontarf himself, but his friend and fellow-poet, Errard mac Coisé [Cŭsha] was in the train of Malachy, king of Meath, to whom he was then attached. This poet gave Mac Liag a minute account of the battle, and Mac Liag himself visited the spot before the slain had been interred, as we see from another of his poems. In a kind of dialogue between him and Mac Coisé he makes the latter relate to him the names of the fallen, and describe the positions in which their dead bodies were found upon the battlefield. It is exceedingly probable that it was Mac Liag, perhaps with Mac Coisé's aid, who compiled that most valuable chronicle called the "Wars of the Gael with the Gaill," i.e., of the Irish with the Northmen.[24] This narrative bears both external and internal evidence of its antiquity, for there is a portion of it preserved in the Book of Leinster, a MS. of about the year 1150. "The author," says Dr. Todd, who has edited it,[25] "was either himself an eye-witness of the battle of Clontarf, or else compiled his narrative from the testimony of eye-witnesses." It is edited in 121 chapters, and is sufficiently long to fill over a hundred of these pages. Beginning with the earliest Danish invasion at the close of the eighth century, it traces the progress of the Northmen in forty chapters up to the time when Mathgamhain [Mahon] and Brian were ruling over the Dalcassians. After that the book concerns itself chiefly with the history of Brian, describing the deaths of his brother Mahon, and the revenge he took, and his gradual but irregular attainment of the High-kingship, he being the first of the race of Eber who had reached this dignity for hundreds of years. The distress suffered by the Irish at the hands of the white foreigners (the Norwegians) and the black foreigners (the Danes)—who, by the way, were bitter enemies and often fought with each other, even on Irish soil—is graphically described. The Northmen put, says the writer,
"a king [of their own] over every territory, and a chief over every chieftaincy, and an abbot over every church, and a steward over every village, and a soldier in every house, so that none of the men of Erin had power to give even the milk of his cow, or 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 this 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 the house his share or his supply durst not be lessened: although there were in the house but one cow, it must be killed for the meal of one night, if the means of supply could not be otherwise procured....
"In a word," continues the writer in a strain of characteristic hyperbole, "although there were an hundred sharp, ready, cool, never-resting, brazen tongues in each head, and a hundred garrulous, loud-unceasing voices from each tongue, they could not recount nor narrate, nor enumerate, nor tell, what all the Gael suffered in common, both men and women, laity and clergy, old and young, noble and ignoble, of hardship and of injury, and of oppression in every house, from these valiant, wrathful, foreign, purely-pagan people.
"And though numerous were the oft-victorious clans of the many-familied Erin," yet could they do nothing against the "untamed, implacable hordes by whom that oppression was inflicted, because of the excellence of their polished, ample, treble-heavy, trusty, glittering corslets, and their hard, strong, valiant swords, and well-rivetted long spears, and ready brilliant arms of valour, besides; and because of the greatness of their achievements and of their deeds, their bravery, their valour, their strength, their venom, and their ferocity, and because of the excess of their thirst and their hunger for the brave, fruitful, nobly-inhabited, smooth-plained, sweet-grassy land of Erin, full of cataracts, rivers, bays."
The book ends with the battle of Clontarf and the "return from Fingall," i.e., the march of the Dalcassians to their homes in Munster. The death of Brian in this great battle fought on Good Friday, the 23rd of April,[26] 1014, is thus described:—