The following passage will furnish a fair specimen of the style of the chronicle, besides exhibiting the misery of a country divided into small kingdoms when a ferocious band of foreigners chose to make a lodgment in it:
"In a word, although there were an hundred hard-steeled iron heads on one neck, and an hundred sharp, ready, cool, never-resting, brazen tongues in each head, and an hundred garrulous, loud, unceasing voices from each tongue, they could not recount, nor enumerate, nor tell what all the Gaedhil suffered in common, both men and women, laity and clergy, old and young, noble and ignoble, of hardship, and of injury, and oppression in every house from these valiant, foreign, purely pagan people. Even though great were this cruelty, and oppression, and tyranny—though numerous were the oft-victorious clans of the many-familied Erinn—though numerous their kings, and their royal chiefs, and their princes—though numerous their heroes, and champions, and their brave soldiers, their chiefs of valor and renown, and deeds of arms—yet not one of them was able to give relief, or alleviation, or deliverance from that oppression and tyranny, from the numbers, and the multitudes, and the cruelty, and the wrath of the brutal, ferocious, furious, untamed, implacable hordes by whom that oppression was inflicted, because of the excellence of their polished, ample, treble, heavy, trusty, glittering corselets, and their hard, strong, valiant swords, and their well-riveted long spears, and their ready, brilliant arms of valor besides, and because of the greatness of their achievements and of their deeds, their bravery and their valor, their strength, and their venom, and their ferocity, and because of the excess of their thirst and their hunger for the brave, fruitful, nobly inhabited, full of cataracts, rivers, bays, pure, smooth-planed, sweet, grassy land of Erinn."
Little can the mere English reader, who may look on much of this as mere bombast, feel the charm which such substantives and epithets as the following had on the original hearers or readers of the work: "Luireach, lainndearda, luchtmara, tredualach, trom, trebhraid, taitnemach," (Loricas, polished, ample, treble, etc.)
Causes of the Invaders' Success.
The editor, alluding to the defeats suffered by the Irish forces on many occasions, finds no great difficulty in accounting for them, and this without the slightest reflection on their innate courage or skill in the use of their arms:
"The whole body of the clan were summoned to decide upon the question of war or peace. Every petty chieftain of every minor tribe, if not every individual clansman, had a voice not only in this primary question, but also, when the war was declared, in the questions arising upon subsequent military operations... The kings or chieftains were themselves chosen by the clan, although the choice was limited to those who possessed a sort of hereditary right, often complicated by a comparison of the personal merits of the rival claimants.
"The army was a rope of sand. It consisted of a number of minor clans, each commanded by its own petty chieftain, receiving no pay, and bound by no oath of allegiance to the king or chief commander. Each clan, no doubt, adhered with unshaken fidelity to its own immediate chieftain, but he on the smallest offence could dismiss his followers to their homes even at the very eve of a decisive battle.... These facts must be borne in mind if we would rightly understand the inherent weakness of warfare in ancient Ireland."
Thus many of the faults we choose to impute to our ancestors and their supposed natural propensities should be rather imputed to the circumstances in which they were placed than to themselves. A tribe could not reckon upon a continuance of peace with neighbors or strangers for a single week. A chief enjoying the strength, and courage, and wisdom of manhood was essential to their well-being, almost to their existence. The heir-apparent of the chief for the time might be a child or an incompetent youth. In this case it was but sound policy to elect during the chief's life his brother or other near relative to assume the command immediately on his decease. This was done, the election being restricted to the Duine Uasals (gentlemen) of the tribe. The scrutiny might be distinguished on occasions by the usual disagreeables of an election, but it prevented the inconveniences of an interregnum.