A misfortune overtook Murtough soon after his return home. The Northern foreigners laid siege to his fortress, and succeeded in taking him prisoner, and carrying him off to their ships. The prince was ransomed by his people, and took his revenge by penetrating with his fleet to the Hebrides, and carrying off much booty from their Norse inhabitants. This successful foreign expedition so much increased his fame that we find him soon afterwards making a warlike circuit of the entire country, and taking hostages of all the provincial kings of Ireland. It was this circuit through Ireland that gained him his title of “Murtough of the Leather Cloaks,” from the warm cloaks of rough hide or leather which he and his attendants wore to protect them from the cold. The famous journey was performed in the depth of the winter of 942, after his return from “Insi-Gall,” or the Isles of the Foreigners, as the Hebrides were frequently called. He summoned all the clans over whom he ruled, and chose out of them a bodyguard of a thousand picked men, with whom he proceeded eastward into Antrim, then south to Dublin, thence into Leinster and Munster, and homeward through Connaught to Ulster again. Leinster and Munster threatened to oppose him, but the sight of his thousand chosen warriors seems to have deterred them. Murtough took with him his clan bard, who has written in verse which still exists an account of their journey. Their leather cloaks they used for wraps by day and for tents by night. Snow often lay deep on the ground on which they had to sleep, but they would “dance to music on the plain, keeping time to the heavy shaking of their cloaks.” Murtough returned home with an imposing array of princes as his hostages, for none dare refuse to acknowledge his supremacy. Sitric, a Danish lord of Dublin, was delivered to him by the Northmen; a prince of Leinster followed, and a young son of Tadhg of the Towers, King of Connaught, who alone went unfettered, while all the others were in chains. But his most audacious stroke was the demand that Callaghan, King of Cashel, in Munster, should be delivered to him fettered. Such an unheard-of demand was not easily acquiesced in; but Murtough would accept no other hostage, and at length, apparently at the King’s own request, he was delivered into the hands of the proud prince of the North. This fettering of a King of Munster caused a sensation at the time and was the burthen of many poems.
After his triumphal entry into his palace with his princely hostages, rejoicings and feastings went on for the space of five months, the hostages taking part in all the festivities and being royally entertained. The Queen herself waited on them and saw to all their wants. Before their arrival messengers had been sent forward to tell the Queen to send out her maidens to cut fresh rushes for the floor and to bring in kine and oxen for the feast. The Queen on her own behalf, to show her joy, supplied them all with food, and her banquets “banished the hungry look from the army.”
When the season of rejoicing was past Murtough led the captive princes out of his castle, and lest he should seem to be assuming glory and rights not properly his own, he sent them under escort to the High-King of Ireland, begging him, in courtly language, to receive them in token of his submission and respect. His message runs thus: “Receive, O Donagh, these noble princes, for there is none in Erin so greatly exalted as thyself.”
But Donagh, King of Ireland, would not accept so great a token of submission at Murtough’s hands. He replied: “Now thou art a greater prince than I, O King! Thy hand it was that took these princes captive; in all Ireland is there none thine equal.” So the captives were sent back, and apparently set free, with the blessing of the King of Ireland.
Only one year afterwards, in 943, Murtough again met the angry Northmen at the ford of Ardee, on the River Boyne, and fell by the sword of Blacaire, son of Godfrey, lord of the Foreigners. There is something romantic and unusual in every act of this Northern prince of the O’Neills, and we feel inclined to echo the despairing words of the old chronicler who records his death: “Since Murtough does not live the country of the Gael is for ever oppressed.”
It would seem to have been a daughter of this brave Murtough whose story we find in the Icelandic Laxdæla Saga, and who in these troublous times was carried away by the Norse out of her own country and sold as a slave in Northern Europe, eventually being purchased by an Icelander and carried away to Iceland. Her story is so interesting in itself and throws so much light on the conditions of the time that we will now tell it at length. If it was really Murtough of the Leather Cloaks who was father to this poor enslaved princess, torn from her home in Ireland and carried far overseas, never to return, we cease to wonder at the persistent hatred with which Murtough pursued the foes at whose hand he had received so great injuries as the death of his father and the loss of his daughter. In this case he was the grandfather of the famous Icelandic chief, Olaf Pa, or Olaf the Peacock.
Chapter XVII
The Story of Olaf the Peacock (From Laxdæla Saga)
Slavery was commonly practised in the days of which we are writing, and slaves taken in war were often carried from the British Isles to Iceland or Norway. There are many accounts of slaves with Irish or Scottish names in the Icelandic “Book of the Settlements”; they appear often to have given great trouble to their foreign masters. But it is less common to find a lady of high rank, an Irish princess, carried off from her people and sold as a slave in open market. The lady was named Melkorka, and her story is found in Laxdæla Saga, from which Saga we have already taken our account of the life and death of Unn the Deep-minded.[28] Parts of this Saga are closely connected with Irish affairs.
There was in the tenth century in Iceland a young man whose name was Hoskuld. He was of good position and held in much esteem both in Norway and at his own home in Iceland. He was appointed one of the bodyguard of King Hakon, and he stayed each year, turn and turn about, at Hakon’s Court, in Norway and at his own home in Iceland, which he called Hoskuldstead. He was married to a handsome, proud, and extremely clever woman, named Jorunn, who, the saga says, “was wise and well up in things, and of manifold knowledge, though rather high-tempered at most times.” Hoskuld and she loved each other well, though in their daily ways they made no show of their love. Hoskuld, with his wife’s money joined to his own, became a great chieftain, for Jorunn was daughter of the wealthiest land-owner in all that part of the country, and his house and family stood in great honour and renown.
Now there came a time when the King, attended by his followers, went eastward at the beginning of summer, to a meeting at which matters of international policy were discussed and settled between Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. From all lands men came to attend the meeting, and Hoskuld, who at that time was staying with his kinsfolk in Norway, went along with the rest. There was a great fair going on in the town, with eating and drinking and games and every sort of entertainment, and crowds passed to and fro along the streets. Hoskuld met many of his kinsfolk who were come from Denmark, and one day, as they went out to disport themselves, he marked a stately tent far away from the other booths, with a man in costly raiment and wearing a Russian hat on his head presiding at the door of the tent. Hoskuld asked his name. He said his name was Gilli;[29] “but most men call me Gilli the Russian,” he added, “and maybe you know me by that name.” Hoskuld said he knew him well, for he was esteemed the richest man of all the guild of merchants. “Perhaps,” he said, “you have things to sell which we might wish to buy.” Gilli asked what sort of things he might be looking for, and Hoskuld said he was needing a bondswoman, if he had one to sell. “There,” said the man, “I see that you mean to give me trouble by asking for things you don’t expect me to have in stock; but after all perhaps I can satisfy you.”