Phases of Irish History

by Eoin Mac Neill

In the meantime, the power of the kings of Cashel continued to increase. It is a remarkable thing that at least four kings of Cashel during this period were ecclesiastics. These were Ólchobor, who died in 796, a scribe and a bishop; Feidlimid, who reigned from 820 to 847, described in his obit as "scribe and anchorite," but in an earlier annal he is mentioned as carrying his crozier to battle; Cormac, the learned bishop, who fell in battle in 908; and Flaithbertach, the chief cause of Cormac's tragedy, who was abbot of Inis Cathaigh, afterwards became king of Cashel, abdicated or was deposed, and died in 944. The career of Feidlimid reads like that of a Heathen king of Norsemen. There are some churchmen who stand upon the letter of the law, and consider themselves thereby entitled to do things that are hard to reconcile with the spirit. Feidlimid began his reign by proclaiming the Law of Patrick over Munster, i.e. by enforcing there the primatial claims of Armagh. In the same year he burned the monastery of Gallen, a foundation of the Britons in the west of Meath, destroying all its dwelling places and its oratory. Three years later, in 826, he led the army of Munster into the same district and wasted it. In 827 the king of Ireland, Conchobor, met him in convention at Birr; this indicating that the two kings were on terms of equality. In 830, he was again burning and wasting over his borders in Meath and Connacht. In 831, he appeared at the head of an army of Munster and Leinster in Bregia. In 833, he attacked Clonmacnois, slaughtered its monks and burned its termon-lands up to the church gates; then handled the monastery of Durrow in the same fashion. In 836, he attacked Kildare, then a purely ecclesiastical and monastic settlement, and finding the abbot and other dignitaries of Armagh there on visitation, he carried them off as captives, no doubt holding them to ransom. Next year he again invaded Connacht, and in 838 another king of Ireland met him in convention at Cloncurry, and doubtless came to terms with him; in 840 he attacked Meath, Bregia, and Connacht, and exacted the hostages of Connacht; in 841, the year in which the Norsemen established themselves at Dublin, Feidlimid with his army encamped on Tara. This, along with his taking the hostages of Connacht, shows that his aim was to secure the high-kingship. In the same year he marched to Carman, near Mullaghmast; Carman was the assembly-place of the kings of Leinster, and Feidlimid no doubt wished to preside and so assert his sovereignty over Leinster. This time, however, he overstretched his power. The reigning high-king, Niall, came in force against him and drove him out, and a poem on this event says that in his flight the vigil-keeping Feidlimid left his crozier behind. After this check, he is not further heard of until his death in 847. In his obit he is called by the northern chronicler "optimus Scottorum," the best man of the Irish. His reign exhibits the high-water mark of the power of the Eoghanacht kings of Munster.

After 500 years of undisputed sovereignty in Munster, the Eoghanacht dynasty of Cashel reached a turning point in the battle of Belach Mugna in 908. In that year, urged on by Flaithbertach, abbot of Inis Cathaigh, an eligible prince and afterwards king of Cashel, king Cormac, the bishop, invaded Leinster. The high-kings of the line of Niall regarded the Leinster kings as their own choice vassals and jealously reserved to themselves the privilege of exacting homage and tribute from Leinster. We have seen how a high-king allowed a king of Cashel to plunder and harry in Connacht and Meath, and interfered with effect only when the Assembly of Carman and the sovereignty of Leinster were involved. So it befel with Cormac. Advancing through Ossory he compelled the king of Ossory to join forces with him, and crossing the Barrow they were confronted by the Leinster king and his army. They encamped for the night, prepared to do battle on the morrow. Flann Sinna, the high-king, must have been well warned, for when the morning came, the Munster army found not only the Leinstermen against them in front, but the high-king and the king of Connacht coming upon their left flank. The king of Ossory attempted to retreat but was cut off and killed. The battle became a rout. King Cormac was unhorsed and beheaded. Two Munster abbots fell in the slaughter. The abbot of Inis Cathaigh escaped.

A graphic account of this expedition, with all the appearance of authentic detail, is found in a book of annals apparently compiled at Durrow in Ossory. The memory of King Cormac was held afterwards in great veneration. To him is ascribed the compilation of the Irish glossary that bears his name, also of the Psalter of Cashel and the Book of Rights. The Psalter of Cashel survives only in excerpts and quotations, and to judge from these it was a collection of historical and genealogical matter. Of the Book of Rights, Professor Ridgeway once said to me that it was the most remarkable state document produced by any European country outside of the Byzantine empire in that age. We must consider its character and content on a later occasion.

This tragic battle, fought in the year 908, ended the long-established prestige of the Cashel dynasty. Six years afterwards, in 914, the Norsemen took possession of Waterford without opposition; and still six years later, in 920, they took possession of Limerick. Until these years, they had gained no foothold on the land of Munster. Another result of the weakening of the Eoghanacht power was the rapid rise of the Dalcassian kings.

Closely connected with the events of this time, a thousand years ago, was the remarkable story of Queen Gormlaith. She was daughter of the king of Ireland, Flann Sinna. Apparently she had been betrothed to Cormac, king of Cashel. He having become an ecclesiastic, Gormlaith was given in marriage to Cearbhall, king of Leinster, the same Cearbhall, victor over Cormac at Belach Mugna, to whose sword an ode written by a Leinster poet is preserved in the Book of Leinster. The Ossory collection of annals, which differs from the ordinary chronicles in expanding into narrative, tells that Cearbhall, wounded in the battle, lay long a-healing, and that once, as the queen sat on the couch at his feet, he boasted rudely over the death of Cormac. Gormlaith reproached him for his disrespect to the memory of so good a king. Her husband, remembering that she had been promised wife to Cormac, became enraged, and with his foot cast the queen from the couch to the floor. Thus affronted in the presence of others, Gormlaith left her husband and went back to her father. Flann refused to receive her, not desiring a quarrel with the king of Leinster. Gormlaith then sought protection from Niall Glúndubh, king of Ailech. Cearbhall died of his wounds the year after the battle, and Niall married Gormlaith. On the death of Flann in 916, Niall became king of Ireland.

I have shown that the annals are a record of abnormal rather than of normal matters. Another character of the annals is that they are in the main an aristocratic and personal record, having chief regard to great personages in Church and State and to the personal aspect of events as they concerned these magnates. A good exemplification of this feature of the annals is shown in the record of king Flann's death. It says: "Flann, son of Mael Sechnaill, king of Tara, who reigned thirty-six years, six months, and five days, died in the sixty-eighth year of his age, on Saturday, the 25th of May, about the hour of 1 p.m." So Gormlaith, daughter of a king of Ireland, chosen to be queen of Munster, became queen of Leinster, then queen of Ailech, and lastly queen of Ireland. There is an old poem which represents her standing by the grave of her husband Niall and commanding a monk not to set his foot upon that clay. She died in religious retirement in 948, forty years after the battle of Belach Mugna.

In the first year of his reign as king of Ireland, 916, Niall Glúndubh, as already told, restored the Assembly of Taillte. In the following year, 917, he marched against the Norsemen of Waterford. They came out to meet him. An indecisive action was fought. Then both armies fortified themselves in the field, anticipating the modern manner of warfare, and remained thus face to face for three weeks. Niall meanwhile sent to the king of Leinster requesting him to attack the Norsemen from that side. The Norsemen, however, did not wait for this attack. Keeping enough force to hold their position against Niall, they sent their main body to meet the Leinstermen, whom they completely defeated. The place of this encounter is named Cenn Fuait, and was absurdly identified by O'Donovan with Confey in Co. Kildare, apparently on the principle that there is an M in Macedon and also in Monmouth. The battle must have taken place close to Waterford Harbour on the Leinster side. Other editors of the annals content themselves with repeating O'Donovan's conjecture as authentic. After this failure, Niall withdrew, and the Norsemen held Waterford from that time until the Norman invasion.

Next year 918, Niall opened war on the Norsemen of Dublin. That is just 1000 years ago. The following year, 919, he led an army against Dublin. The Norsemen met him on the north bank of the Liffey at Islandbridge. Niall was defeated and mortally wounded. This battle is sometimes called the battle of Dublin, sometimes the battle of Cell-mo-Shámhóg, from a church in the vicinity. The latter name furnished O'Donovan with the occasion for another conjectural identification, which other editors have blindly followed. He made Cell-mo-Shámhóg to be the same as Kilmashogue, six or seven miles from Dublin on the south side and among the hills. A little reflection would have assured these editors that, just as a Leinster army coming to the relief of an army near Waterford was not likely to encounter the Norse of Waterford in the north of Leinster, so also an army from northern Ireland was not likely to meet the Norsemen of Dublin in the mountains to the south of Dublin. For the full identification of the battle site, the student may refer to the name Cell Mo Shámóc in Father Hogan's Onomasticon.

From Niall Glúndubh the O'Neills of Tyrone derive their surname and descent.

The Norsemen were now no longer the ferocious heathens of their earlier record. Most of them had adopted Christianity. Intermarriages between them and the Irish were quite frequent. Their towns soon developed into trading communities, though it is clear enough from Norse documents that a Norse trading ship went to sea well prepared to make gains by less patient methods than buying and selling. Wexford seems to have been pre-eminently a trading settlement, and the first part taken by the Wexford Norsemen in Irish wars was apparently the defence of their town against the Anglo-Normans. With their Irish neighbours they lived in peace and security. In the tenth century the Norse settlements in Ireland became part of the Irish body politic, and if they went to war in Ireland, as often as not, it was in alliance with one Irish king against another. There were still incursions of the Norsemen of outlying parts, the Isle of Man, Galloway, the Hebrides, etc., and in Ireland the struggle takes the form of resistance to these invaders, under a number of leaders of note. One of these leaders, Cellachán of Cashel, king of Munster, has a saga all to himself, but I think the story contains more than history. Some of its striking events, which we might expect to find recorded in the chronicles, find no place in them. However that may be, Cellachán's activity against the Norsemen is the last glory of the Cashel dynasty, the flame that shoots up from the candlestick before the candle goes out. Already the Dalcassian line was preparing to take the place of the declining Eoghanacht power in Munster. In the year 944, the father of Brian Bóramha, Cennétig, king of Dál gCais, with the title of king of Thomond or North Munster, gave battle to Cellachán, but was defeated. Brian was born in 941, three years before this battle. Cellachán died in 954.