Miracles are mingled with the story of that Easter evangelization. Laoghaire, the king (pronounce him “Laery”, which has been softened into “Leary”), set out to meet him, but stopped short of the Boyne, and the Christian came into the camp chanting a verse of Scripture: “Some in chariots, some in horses, but we in the name of the Lord our God”. At his coming, Erc, the king’s chief judge, rose up and did him homage; but a druid blasphemed, and Patrick wrought a miracle of destruction. And next day he was bidden to Tara, and ambushes were set for him on the road; but he changed his people into deer, and so they escaped and reached the king’s dun, and other miracles were wrought in it. At all events, by whatever means, Patrick made converts among the king’s own kindred, and Laoghaire, though he himself would not change, left him free to preach, and probably welcomed his help in writing down the laws and customs of Ireland. For wherever Patrick went he spread the arts of peace, and Ireland was not slow to profit by them. Take one instance only. On the hill of Slane a great monastery grew up, centre of learning as well as of arts, so famous that in the middle of the seventh century, Dagobert II, heir to the throne of France, came here to be educated, away from the weltering turmoil of Continental Europe.
Of that monastery there is not even so much trace as can be seen of Tara’s greatness, yet within four miles of it are monuments of surpassing interest that show the Ireland of a day before St. Patrick, and others that show the Ireland which he made. On the north bank, at New Grange and at Dowth, are the burying places of prehistoric kings: gigantic structures of huge monoliths, stone slabs, each of them man-high, so arranged that standing stones make a passage, roofed with other huge blocks, and this passage leads to a vaulted chamber, built in the same marvellous fashion. How on earth these stones were handled no man can guess, yet there they are—Cyclopean architecture with a vengeance. But these habitations of the dead are not exposed to daylight, for over the whole structure was heaped a mound of lesser stones, so huge that the whole thing covers an acre of ground, and now, grass-grown and tree-covered, stands out like a natural hill—into whose recesses you may burrow fearfully along this amazing corridor. Strange spiral ornamentation on the stones at New Grange is the joy and bewilderment of archæologists; and though we know the names of kings who were buried there, we can only guess vaguely at the builders of these structures, comparable to the tomb under which Agamemnon rests in Mycenæ.
Nearer to Drogheda, not less interesting, and far more beautiful, are two monuments of Christian Ireland. One is the ancient monastic settlement of Monasterboice, where stand a round tower, two small ancient churches, and for its supreme interest, two huge stone crosses covered with the most elaborate sculpture, on Scriptural subjects, presenting churches, monks, and warriors as they were in Ireland of the ninth or tenth century. One of the two crosses is signed by its deviser, Muiredach, probably the Muiredach whose death is recorded at 924 A.D., and purely Celtic art has no more important monument.
A few miles off is the other ruin, which shows what point monastic civilization had reached in Ireland before yet the Normans had crossed the sea. The Cistercian Abbey of Mellifont was the first of its order in Ireland, and it was built by Irish craftsmen trained at Clairvaux, in Normandy. Enough of the ruin is left to show how noble and how pure was the work of these early builders, who brought into Ireland the Norman civilization but not the Norman rule. Yet there is also the monument of her who gets the blame of bringing in the hostile, not the peaceful, invasion. Dervorgilla is buried there, O’Rourke’s wife, whose abduction by Dermot MacMurrough led to MacMurrough’s banishment from Ireland, and so to his calling in of foreign aid.
ON THE RIVER SLANEY AT BALLINTEMPLE
De Lacy’s castle at Trim is not the only evidence that the Normans, when they came, were quick to fasten upon this fertile valley. At Randalstown, near Navan, Colonel Everard’s tobacco plantations are an object of interest to thousands to-day; but perhaps not many of them realize that this enterprising country gentleman is living to-day where his forefathers have lived since the first of them got a grant there in the twelfth century, among the other knights and squires who rode with De Lacy. Norman they were and Irish they soon became, yet here in the pale they kept far more distinct than the Geraldines of Desmond or the De Burgos of Connaught; and so they kept on the lucky side, the side whose supremacy was finally established when William of Orange fought his way across the fords at Oldbridge.
Oldbridge is only about a mile upstream from Drogheda, and an obelisk marks the site of the famous Battle of the Boyne. The battle was decided before it was fairly begun, because a large force had been thrown across the bridge at Slane, and thus turned the Irish position, which lay along the south bank from opposite the Mattock River to where the hill rises steep below Oldbridge. Schomberg fell in the ford above the island, probably some two hundred yards below the present bridge—fell rallying his Huguenots like a hero.
No record of brutality sullies that feat of arms; but at Drogheda, one of the most picturesquely situated towns in Ireland, and made more picturesque by the high viaduct which here spans the river, there are terrible memories connected with those old defences of which one part remains perfect—St. Laurence’s Gate with its two-storied tower. Here it was that Cromwell perpetrated the first of those massacres which disgrace his name. Such of the captured as were not slain were sent for slaves to the West Indies, where to-day in certain islands a debased Irish can be heard from negroes, and Irish names are general among the negro population.
Yet in that lovely valley it is hard to think of cruelties. Historic records crowd so thick in it that one has scarcely time to speak of beauty. And yet from the ridge of the hill above Monasterboice is a view which pleases me beyond almost anything I know in Ireland. Midway on that northern plain one has the Mourne Mountains beyond fertile levels to the north, the Dublin Hills beyond fertile levels to the south, and the blue sea close at hand abreast of all. Still, you may match that elsewhere in Ireland; you cannot match the river itself. From Navan a little leisurely steamer will take you to Drogheda, dodging from canal into river, from river back to canal, through scenery as fertile and as cultivated as the banks of the Thames, yet rendered far more beautiful by the charm of the river itself—a typical salmon stream, with its pools, its plunging flood, its long swirling reaches. I have written of it elsewhere and may perhaps be allowed to quote my own writing: