This is no doubt a highly-coloured description, but it is graphic in its details, and gives us valuable information as to the state of social life at that period.
Equally graphic and interesting is the sketch which Mac Liag gives of the great achievements of Brian Boru. He tells how after Brian’s royal visitation throughout Erin, all his enemies were brought into subjection, and the country enjoyed a period of profound peace and much-needed repose. He enforced the law with a strong hand, and repressed trespass, robbery, and murder. ‘He hanged, killed and destroyed’ all thieves, robbers, and plunderers throughout Erin. He banished or enslaved the foreigners throughout the length and breadth of the land—their stewards and collectors, their swordsmen and their mercenaries, their tall and comely youths, and their fair and graceful maidens became the bond-servants of the victors. It was then that Erin enjoyed such peace and security that a lone woman journeyed from Tory Island in the north to Cliodhna’s loud-voiced wave in the south of Erin, carrying a golden ring on the top of the wand; yet no man ventured to rob, or to insult her. This blessed period of justice and peace, so rare in Erin, has been celebrated both by ancient and by modern bards.[466]
Nor was Brian less enlightened and munificent in cultivating the arts of peace. He erected many noble churches and church towers in Erin, as at Killaloe, Iniscaltra, and Tuam Greine, where the remains of the buildings erected by Brian are still to be seen. He constructed several bridges, causeways, and high roads. He strengthened all the royal fortresses of Munster both in the islands and on the mainland. He sent professors and masters to teach wisdom and knowledge, also to buy books in foreign countries, and bring them home from beyond the great sea. This was all the more necessary as the writings and the books in every church and sanctuary of Erin where they were, were all burned or thrown into the lakes and rivers by the plundering Danes. It was Brian himself, who from his own resources gave the means of purchasing this new supply of books beyond the seas.
Such was Brian Boru, a hero in peace and in war, the sword and shield of his country, during whose glorious reign Ireland reached the zenith of her power and prosperity. Mac Liag died shortly after his royal master in A.D. 1016.
Cuan O’Lochain was another very celebrated scholar who flourished during the first quarter of the eleventh century. His writings, his talents as a statesman, and his tragic end have all contributed to his celebrity. The family which derived its descent from Cormac Gaileng, son of Tadhg, grandson of Ollioll Olum, was at first settled in the territory of Ely; but afterwards removed to Gailenga Mor, on the borders of Meath and Longford. This territory took its name from Cormac Gaileng, and retains it to the present day in the name of the barony of Morgallion, which is merely another form of Gailenga Mor. It appears that the O’Lochains were chiefs of this district, and that the poet’s family was held in high esteem in Meath.
After the death of King Malachy II. (Maelseachlainn), in the year A.D. 1022, an interregnum of twenty years intervened, during which there was no recognised High King of Erin. A joint government was established during the interregnum; and it is said the regency was administered by Cuan O’Lochain, the Chief Poet of Erinn, and Corcran the Cleric; or, as it is quaintly put in Macgeoghegan’s Annals of Clonmacnoise—“A.D. 1022—After the death of King Moylesleaghlyn, this kingdom was without a king for twenty years, during which time the realm was governed by two learned men, the one called Cwan O’Lochan, a well-learned temporall man, and chiefe poet of Ireland; the other, Corcran Cleireagh, a devout and holy man, that was chief anchorite of all Ireland, whose most abiding was at Lismore. The land was governed like a free state, and not like a monarchie by them.” It is curious that we find no reference to this interregnum in any of our Annals, and hence the truth of Macgeoghegan’s statement has been questioned by certain writers. But O’Curry shows[467] that the same statement is made in the Book of Leinster, an almost contemporaneous record, although it is there stated, probably by a mistake of the scribe, that this joint government continued for forty or fifty instead of for twenty years.
It was the form of government, however, not the two governors themselves, which continued for twenty years, for the poet-regent was soon slain by the men of Teffia on the borders of his native territory in the County Longford. The sword of justice, which the great Brian had wielded so well, was broken at Clontarf and buried in the hero’s grave. Once more outrage and lawlessness with the evil spirit of discord spread throughout the land. We know not the motive or circumstances of this great crime perpetrated by the men of Teffia, but Providence itself avenged the poet’s death. According to one authority[468] God manifestly wrought a poet’s power upon the parties who killed him, for they were put to a cruel death, and their bodies putrified until the wolves and vultures devoured them—a fitting end for the wretches who violated the sacred person of the poet. Macgeoghegan says that he was killed by one of the land of Teffia, and he most probably had heard the living local tradition; “after committing which evil fact, there grew an evil scent and odour of the party that killed him, so that he was easily known amongst the rest of the land. His associate Corcran lived yett, and survived him for a long time after”—that is until A.D. 1040.[469]
O’Curry gives a very full account of six historical poems of which Cuan O’Lochain was the author. One of them to which we have already referred[470] gives an exceedingly interesting account of Cormac Mac Art, and of his great palace at Tara, which the poet describes with great fidelity and minuteness. It has been printed in Petrie’s Antiquities of Tara Hill. Another highly interesting poem of O’Lochain gives an account of the ‘prohibitions’ and ‘prerogatives’ of the High King of Tara, and the provincial sub-kings. This poem may be seen in the Book of Rights, edited by O’Donovan. Some of the prohibitions certainly savour of a pagan and superstitious origin, as, for instance, when the High King is forbidden to alight on the plain of Bregia on a Wednesday, or to traverse Cuillenn after sunset, or to launch a ship on the Monday after May-day. But his privileges are innocent enough—to have the salmon of the Boyne, which was a royal river; to eat the fruit of Man, and the deer of Luibnech; to get the bilberries of Bri-Leith, and the cresses of the river Brosnach; to drink of the spring water of Tlachtga, and hunt the hares of Naas. Cuan’s legendary poems on the Shannon are also highly interesting, but we cannot refer to them further at present.
Errard Mac Coisé was chief poet to King Malachy II., who died in A.D. 1022, and hence he was a contemporary both of Mac Liag and Cuan O’Lochain. Both Mac Liag and Mac Coisé were natives of Hy-Many, in the County Galway, and appear to have been rivals in genius, but intimate friends and associates in social intercourse. One of Mac Coisé’s most interesting works is a poetic dialogue between the two poets, which reveals their friendship, their talents, and their common love for the history and antiquities of Erin. He appears to have died the year after his royal master in A.D. 1023.
Flann of the Monastery, is, perhaps, the most justly celebrated of all those poet-historians of ancient Erin. O’Reilly calls him “Abbot of the Monastery of Bute,” and gives a list of fourteen considerable historical poems still extant in manuscript, of which he is the reputed author. It does not appear, however, that Flann was either an abbot or a monk in holy orders, although he certainly sojourned and taught at Monasterboice, in the County Louth, just as his contemporary, Conn-na-m-Bocht, did at Clonmacnoise. The death of Flann is marked in the Chronicon Scotorum at A.D. 1054; and he is described as Ferlegind, or professor of the monastery, and “the last sage of the Gaedhil both in reading and history.” In the Annals of Ulster he is called Chief-lector of Monasterboice and historical sage—sai senchusa—of Erin, under date of A.D. 1056, which is the true date. The Four Masters also describe him as a lector of the monastery of Buite, and the ‘paragon’—sai egna—of the Gaedhil in literature, in history, in poetry and in science. There is no doubt that here we have a complete list of the subjects taught in what may be called the schools of general literature in ancient Erin. In the Book of Aicill,[471] as we have already seen, it is expressly stated that Cennfaeladh attended three schools in Tuaim Drecain, a School of Literature (leigind), a School of Law (feinechais), and a School of Poetry (filidechta); these schools were held in different houses, and taught by three different professors. Cennfaeladh was a soldier, and, therefore, a layman, and hence there is no reference here to a School of Divinity, of the Canons, or of the Scriptures. In the subjects taught by Flann at Monasterboice we find no reference to the feinechas or Brehon Laws, because there does not appear to have been a School of Law in the Monastery of Buite. But there was clearly a School of General Literature, and a School of Poetry, and although Flann is described as chief professor in the former school, he is also said to have been—and his writings prove that he was—an accomplished poet. As Ferlegind, it is clear that his duty was to teach classics, including in that term the vernacular Gaedhlic tongue; for it is described as one of the four principal languages of the world. These are Gaedhlic, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. We have already furnished abundant proofs of the cultivation both of Latin and Greek in our Irish schools; and they tried their hand at Hebrew also, but we cannot say much for their success in studying that difficult language, which was then almost entirely unknown in the Western Empire.