In proof of the Danes having been the people with whom this early intercourse was maintained, the authority of a number of modern historians has been adduced, according to whose accounts it would seem that, from a period preceding the birth of Christ, a succession of invasions of this island from Denmark had been commenced; and that, for some centuries after, a course of alternate hostility and friendship marked the relations between the two countries. Imposing, however, as is the array of northern authorities for this statement, the entire value of their united evidence may be reduced to that of the single testimony of that of Saxo Grammaticus, from whose pages they have all copied; and it is well known, for all the earlier portion of this eloquent writer’s history, the foundation is as unsound and unreal as Scaldic fable and fallacious chronology could make it. The only circumstance that lends any semblance of credit to the accounts given by northern histotorians of the early fortunes of Ireland, is the known fact that the chief materials of their own history were derived from records preserved in Iceland: to which island inaccessible as it might seem to have been to the rude navigation of those days, it is certain that a number of Irish missionaries of the seventh and eighth centuries contrived to find their way. We learn, from more than one authentic source, that, when the Norwegians first arrived in Iceland, they found there traces of its having been previously inhabited by a Christian people; and the Irish books, bells, and holy staves, left behind by the former dwellers, sufficiently denoted the religious island from whence they had migrated. The title of Papas, which it appears was borne by them, has led to the conclusion that they must have been Irish priests who had adventurously fixed themselves in this desolate region; and, under the same name, they were found in the Orkneys when the Norwegians conquered those islands. Unless we were to suppose, however, that among the books left by those missionaries in Iceland, there were any relating to Irish history of which the chroniclers consulted by Saxo might have availed themselves, the incident, though curious and well attested, affords but slight grounds for placing reliance on these early northern annals, whose sources of information are known to have been spurious, and to whose general character for extravagant fiction, the few brief notices which they contain respecting Irish affairs, can hardly be expected to furnish an exception. Nor is any more serious credit due to them when they represent Dublin to have been in possession of the Danes a short time before the birth of Christ, than when they assert that London was built by these northern people about the very same period. Fabulous, however, as are these accounts, yet that, long before either the Danish or even the Saxon invasions, the coasts of the Baltic had sent forth colonies to the British Isles, is a fact to which foreign as well as domestic tradition bears testimony. The conjecture of Tacitus, that the people called Picts were a Germanic or northern race, is confirmed by the traditional accounts of this people, preserved in the chronicles of Britain; and all the early Scandinavian legends concur with the annals of Ireland in intimating, at some remote period, relations of intercourse between the two countries. We have seen, in a preceding part of this work, what almost certain grounds there are for believing that those Scyths, or Scots, who, at the time when Ireland first became known to modern Europe, formed the dominant part of her people, were a colony from some region bordering on the Baltic Sea which had, a few centuries before, gained possession of this island. From whatever part these Scythian adventurers may have arrived, whether from the Cimbric peninsula, the islands of the Baltic, or the Scandinavian shores, it may be concluded that with that region the occasional intercourse was afterwards maintained, and those alliances and royal intermarriages formed of which, in our ancient traditions and records, some scattered remembrances still remain. With respect to those swarms of sea-rovers who, throughout the dark and troubled period we are now approaching, carried on their long career of havoc and blood, though known most popularly in English history by the general name of Danes, they are but rarely, and not till a late period, thus designated in our annals. By Tigernach, the earliest existing annalist, they are invariably called Gâll, or Strangers; while, in the Annals of Inisfallen, of Ulster, and of the Four Masters, they are styled indifferently either Galls, Gentiles, Dwellers on the Lakes, or Pirates; but in not more than two or three instances are they called Normans, and as seldom Danes.[[294]]
|795 to 820.|
We must be satisfied with the general inference that Ireland was visited by the Northmen as soon, or nearly as soon, as Scotland, and the Scottish islands. The first visit of which we have any record was in 795, in the reign of Aidan, monarch of the country. Leaving Iona, the monastery of which they had laid in ashes, the sea kings proceeded to the north-western coast, landed, and ravaged the country as far as Roscommon. This was, probably, the work of years: here, as everywhere else, they would form intrenchments at the mouths of the great rivers, the banks of which, for twenty leagues round, they would lay waste as far as boats could ascend. They appear to have been twelve years in the country before any serious resistance was made. In 812 they were defeated; but defeat, so long as the sea was open, and communication with it maintained by navigable rivers, was speedily repaired. In 815, a Norwegian chief named Turges, or Thorgils, arrived with a more powerful armament, and, during thirty years, was a dreadful scourge not only to the northern, but to the eastern and southern districts of the island. Their fury was peculiarly directed against the holy places, especially the monastery of Banchor and the cathedral of Armagh, which they revisited and destroyed every time they heard of their restoration. Every cell, every chapel, every holy place to which the superstitious piety of the age resorted, naturally attracted their notice. But in the atrocities which they committed, and which the unanimous voice of every kingdom they visited—from Greece to Ireland—has immortalised, they must have been actuated by other motives than the hope of gain. If they were savage to the laity, they were demoniacal to the ecclesiastics. Probably their superior ferocity in the latter case may be explained by the deep hatred which the persecutions of Charlemagne had produced (as we have before intimated, under the term Saxons must also be included the Scandinavians, and perhaps some tribes of the great Slavonic family). But against that great man, we are not disposed to join in the hostility of some modern writers. The men with whom the emperor had to deal were without honour, without virtue of any kind, men who regarded the most solemn oaths as empty sounds, who loved war as much for the plunder which it brought as for the gratification of shedding blood. But were not the Saxons and Danes fighting for their liberties? True, and the greatest of them was the liberty to plunder the rest of the world,—to trample under foot all humanity, all moral virtue,—to be the tyrants of Europe. Charlemagne triumphed over them, and we rejoice at his success; nor, had he exterminated the whole people, should he be censured by posterity.[[295]]
|820 to 848.|
The desolation which, at this period more than any other, afflicted Ireland, might easily have been averted, had there been a central government strong enough to rally around it the hearts and arms of the people. But the monarch was merely a titular one, and less powerful than his vassals. Instead of harmony there was dissension only among the members of the body politic; and this evil was aggravated a hundred fold by the mischievous practice of hiring the aid of strangers. When, in 837, another powerful reinforcement arrived from the north, and commenced its depredations on the banks of the Liffey and the Boyne, the evil which, since 795, had afflicted the country, was increased a thousand fold. There was not, says the eloquent historian of Ireland, “a single spot of renown in the ecclesiastical history of our country, not one of those numerous religious foundations, the seats and monuments of the early piety of her sons, that was not frequently, during this period, made the scene of the most fearful and brutal excesses.” Let it not be forgotten that this frequency of destruction evinces the zeal of the Irish in rebuilding their holy places, and the intrepidity with which they repaired to them, even when assured that they should be there met by incarnate demons, and sent to aggrandise the “noble army of martyrs.” In general the higher dignitaries were spared for the sake of the ransom. The mischief was, that the head quarters of Turges always presented a rallying-point for the defeated Northmen, and for such new comers as arrived on the coast. The way in which this veteran chief at last met his fate, is romantically told by Giraldus de Barri. He had fallen in love, says that amusing Welchman, with the daughter of the king of Meath, and he made known his love to the father. Pretending to comply with his suit, a day was appointed on which Turges, attended by fifteen followers, was to meet his bride, accompanied by as many maidens, on a small island of Loch-Var. To the place of meeting, however, the Irish lady was escorted by fifteen young men in the female garb, and they destroyed the tyrant. Probably the relation of the native annalists, that he was drowned in that lake by the king of Meath, is the true one. However this be, his death was a fatal blow to the Scandinavian power in Ireland. From this period (844) we read, indeed, of their depredations, of their formidable combinations, even of their victories; but there was no longer the same hope, the same confidence in their invincibility.[[296]]
|849 to 872.|
In 849, another powerful armament arrived from the north. Their policy was not merely to plunder, but to take advantage of the civil wars which desolated Ireland, by hiring their services to the highest bidder. In 850, they were employed by the monarch in his contest with a native king, and the example was speedily followed by his royal subjects. In this year, too, we perceive that Dublin was in the power of the Northmen, and one of their chief seats: probably it had been so for half a century, or longer still. It was fortunate for the Irish that the different Scandinavian people who thus harassed them were often the enemies of each other. Sometimes they fought under the banners of Christian princes; at other times they contended alone. Thus, in 850, the Dubh-Gals, or black strangers, assailed the Fin-Gals, or white strangers, of Dublin. Who were they? Were they Scottish Highlanders? or were the former Slavonic, the latter Scandinavian, pirates? This question can never be answered to our entire satisfaction; but we cannot easily believe that any chief of the Highlands could equip so powerful an armament as that which assailed the establishment of Dublin. Three years afterwards, Anlaf, Ivar, and Sitric, all brothers, and princes from Scandinavia, arrived with a great armament, and seated themselves in three great stations,—Dublin, Limerick, and Waterford. Probably the last-named city was founded by Sitric. His two brothers considerably extended their frontiers. They appear, too, so far to have acted in concert as to compel the Irish princes to pay them an annual tribute,—something like the Danegelt, which was so oppressive to the English. Anlaf, indeed, was a remarkable character; but if the chronology be correct, which places his arrival in the year 853, he must not be confounded with the prince whom, in 924, Athelstane defeated. His kingdom of Dublin, which comprehended the county and much of its neighbourhood, was amplified no less than defended by him, with success. Not that advantages were not sometimes won from him. On one occasion he was pursued into his capital, and his territory wasted to its very gates. But this, at such a period, when everything depended on a surprise, was a very ordinary result; and that very month he might be able to extend his ravages to the centre of the island. That he frequently did so, we know,—sometimes alone, sometimes in conjunction with his brothers, at other times as the ally of the native princes. But that they were always in the country does not appear probable. If this Ivar be the man who was also king of Northumberland, his territories in England must have frequently required his presence. Anlaf, too, had a principality on this side of the channel; for he is styled king of all the Northmen in Ireland and Britain. But connected with him, with his royal brothers, and their reputed father, Ragnar Lodbrog, are so many chronological difficulties, that we can never reconcile them. One of these princes, according to the Annals of Ulster, died in 874; as all came in the middle of the century, none could long survive that period; even then, if they were the sons of the Ragnar who was killed in 794, and who immediately afterwards descended on the Northumbrian coast, they must have reached an age nearly centennial. That there has been a sad confusion of names—for all were common in the Scandinavian annals—is undoubted. Then the confusion in the orthography of proper words—Anlaf, for example, being written Alaf, Olaf, Amlain, Amlaiph, &c.—must add to the hopelessness of the historian’s task. Three kings of this name, all celebrated during the first half of the ninth century, could not be the princes who, under the same names, obtained so much celebrity during the first half of the tenth. Either, therefore, the chronology is wrong, or the events are for ever confounded. In this, as in every other case, historians have adopted the same mode of solution,—that there were two individuals of the name existing at periods considerably removed from each other.[[297]]
|872 to 1000.|
For many years after this period, we read that the Northmen were in possession of Dublin, Limerick, and Waterford, the chiefs of which had the regal title. Early in the tenth, indeed, they were expelled from the first of these cities by the people of Leinster; but the misfortune must have been soon repaired: for in a few years afterwards, we find Godfrey, grandson of Ivar, reigning there, and forcing tribute from most of the princes in the south. In 926, however, the pirates were signally defeated in Ulster, and eighty of their chiefs slain. The moral effect of these victories could be no other than to inspire the natives with new hope, and to procure them new successes. In 936, a greater loss was inflicted on the Scandinavians of Dublin. Five years afterwards, a similar advantage was gained over them; but either they must have had speedy means of reinforcing themselves, or their losses must have been grossly exaggerated. Nor could they be very unfortunate, if it be true that after their partial conversion to Christianity, in 948, they erected the great abbey of St. Mary, in the vicinity of Dublin. Yet they were sometimes tributary to Murkertach, one of the native kings, and the most celebrated hero of his age; and Dublin was frequently in the hands of the Irish; but it was as frequently retaken. These alternations of success and disaster comprehend the history of the Northmen in Ireland. But after the accession of Brian, surnamed Born, or the exacter of tributes, the decline which had for above half a century been visible in the affairs of the pirates, became signally rapid. Many were the successive engagements in which that heroic chief had the advantage. In 969, he took and destroyed Limerick; in 972, he recovered the island of Iniscathy, to which the natives attached no ordinary sanctity; in 980, a great confederation of the pirates who had penetrated into the heart of the country, were defeated by Malachi, the monarch of Ireland. This last victory deserves more than ordinary remembrance, from the fact that it gave freedom to some thousands of Irish captives. In 989, Dublin was besieged during twenty days by the monarch of Ireland; and being forced to capitulate, it agreed that every house should annually pay one ounce of gold to the native hero. Probably this convention was ill kept: for in 994, he was again before that city. The success over the common enemy would have been more signal, had not Brian and the titular monarch been frequently at war with each other. But in 997, they united their forces, and marched on Dublin. Three years afterwards, we find the Danes as vassals in the armies of Brian.[[298]]
|1000 to 1014.|