History of the Irish People

Front matter

HISTOEY OF THE Irish People. BY W. A. O'CONOE, B.A. SECOND EDITION. JOHN HEYWOOD, Deansoate and Ridgefield, Manchester; and 11, Paternoster Buildings, LONDON. 1886. PKEFACE. To Francis W. Newman, Emeritus Professor of University College, London. Dear Mr. Newman, I do not offer this dedication to you as a tribute of friendship, nor on a calculation of reflected literary fame, but rather because, differing from each other widely in country and creed, we are united in the assertion of principles without which religion and patriotism are dangerous in the very degree that they are sincere. The Irish difficulty must be settled by the English party of progress. All the attempts to hinder this consummation, by whomever they are made, and in whatever form they appear, come ultimately from the enemies of both countries.

Organised Christianity has made for itself out of the deadliest vapours of earth a doctrinal heaven, from which it looks complacently on all human wrongs. Abjuring merit, it reprobates Ireland. The lever that can move it must be planted on a secular fulcrum. I have come to those two conclusions unexpectedly, and avow them unwillingly ; but in proportion to the force of the reasons that overcome my prepossessions must be the distinctness of the avowal. Some persons, not indisposed to act fairly towards Ireland, are of opinion that it is inexpedient and unnecessary to revive or make known the history of the past. Concessions that are not acknowledged reversals of an evil policy are acts of impatience, not of justice, and convey by the manner of their bestowal a charge of unreasonable agitation. The

Preface

. tone of haughty superiority that prevails between rival nations should have no more right to exist in England towards Ireland than in Lancashire towards Yorkshire. The first thing to be done is to substitute in the national conscience and in all public utterances the necessity of a real and willing union with Ireland, for the necessity of a mere union. When this position is taken, the end is in view and almost gained. I am sure you are ready to take it, and that you represent a large and increasing body of Englishmen. I am, dear Mr. Newman, Sincerely yours, W. A. O'CONOR. CONTENTS.

Chapter I. Peaceful Settlers

A>"D WARLIKE INVADERS. SECTION PA0E I. — Introductory 1 II.— The Irish People 3 III. — Norman Invaders 7 The Scoti 7 IV.— The Attacotti 9 Moran 10 The Boarian Tribute 11

Chapter II. Peace Supersedes War

I.— Scotic and Irish Influences 12 Scotland Founded 13 II. — Early Irish Christians 14 Pelagius 15 St. Patrick 15 The Irish Converted 16 III.— The Irish Convert the Scoti 17 St. Columbkille 20 IV. — Irish Missionaries 23 Irish Character 27 V. — Growing Peace and Prosperity 28

Chapter III. Peace Assailed By Norman Invasions

I. — Norman Invaders 30 The Eugenians and Dalcassians 30 Turgesius 31 Irish Patience 32 II. — Fresh Invaders 33 III.— A Twofold Ireland 35 Erigena 37 IV. — Fresh Invaders 37 The Founders of Dublin 39 V.— Brian Boru 40 Battle of Clontarf 43

Chapter IV. Peace Again Supersedes War

I.— The O'Briens 45 The O'Conors 47 Dermot MacMurrogh 48 II. — Mystery of Irish History ... 49 Source of Irish Distractions 50

Chapter V. The Normans

I. — The Normans at Home 61 II. — The Normans in France 52 III. — The Normans in England 63 IV. — The Normans in Wales VI CONTENTS.

Chapter VI. Section Peace Disturbed Bi Anglo-norman Invasion

PAGE I. — Capture of Wexford «j9 Surrender of Dublin °0 II. — Landing of Raymond 61 Terrorism 62 III. — Landing of Earl Pembroke 63 Abolition of Slavery.... 64 IV.— The Faithful Norman 66 Pembroke Recalled 66 V. — Landing of Henry II 67 VI. — Possible Results of Henry's Stay 69 The Real Question 69 VII.— Murder of O'Ruark 70 Treaty of Windsor 71 VIII. — Landing of Prince John 72

Chapter VII. The O'conors

I.— Cathal Crovderg 75 Battles between Armed and Unarmed Troops 76 Distinct Classes in Ireland 77 Similar distinction in England 78 II. — King John in Ireland 79 III.— Hugh 0' Conor 83 IV. — Mildness of Irish Law 84 V.— Edward Bruce 87 Felim O'Conor 88 Battle of Athenry 90 VI.— O'Neill's Letter to the Pope 91 Battle of Faughard 92

Chapter VIII. The Fitzgeralds

I. — Consequences of Bruce's Invasion 93 Exaggeration of Irish Character 94 II. — Statute of Kilkenny 97 III. — Richard II. in Ireland 98 His Second Visit 100 IV. — Dawn of Liberty in England 101 Corrupt Deputies 103 Disintegration of Irish Chieftaincies 104 V. — English Civil Wars 106 VI. — Irish Civil Wars 109 Anglo-Norman Feuds 110 VII. — Lambert Simnel 112 Battle of Stoke 113 Poyning's Act 114 VIII.— Rebellion of Silken Thomas ...!!!!!"'!!!!!!!!"!!!! 118 IX. — Revolution in English Land Tenure 1 20 X.— Reformation in England 121 Reformation in Ireland _ 122 XI. — England and Ireland " 126 Ireland a Corn-growing Country 127 XII. — The Anglo-Norman seeks Foreign Aid " 129 Rebellion of Desmond " -^29

Chapter IX. The O'neills

I.— Shane O'Neill 131 His Character "' ,„,. His Government _ ' " ,« CONTENTS. vii.

Section II

— The Earl of Essex 13^ Rory O'More I37 The Irish People 138 III.— Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone 139 IV. — Battle of Yellow Ford 144 V. — Retrospect 140 Carew in Munster I47 VI. — Lord Mountjoy in Ulster 143 VII. — The Spaniards at Kinsale 151 VIII.— The Flight of the Earls 7.77777.7777.7. 154 Confiscation of Ulster 155

Chapter X. The Cathouc Confederation

I.— Confiscation in Leinster 158 II. — The Graces I57 III.— The English Rebellion .777.7. 77.77777.7. 158 Wentworth in Ireland I59 IV. — Puritan Governors Igl Loyal Insurrection 162 V. — Reported Massacre 163 VL — English Parliament Foments the Insurrection 165 The Adventurers 166 VIL — Convention of Kilkenny 166 Owen O'Neill 167 VIII. — Irish Troops in England and Scotland 168 Puritanism 169 IX. — Duplicity of the King 170 Battle of Benburb 172 X. — Dublin Surrendered by Ormond 172 Execution of Charles 173 Death of Owen O'Neill 174

Chapter XI. Cromwell

I.— Drogheda 177 Storm of Clonmel 180 II. — Collapse of the Royal Cause ... 181 Confiscation 183

Chapter XII. The Revolution

I.— The Restoration 185 Act of Settlement 186 II.— English Catholicism Forced on Ireland 187 III. — King James in Ireland 189 Treaty of Limerick 190 IV. — Macaulay's Account of James' Parliament 191

Chapter XIII. Parliamentary Dependence

I._Object of Penal Laws 198 II. — Prohibition of Irish Imports 200 III. — Protestants Aspire after Independence 202 Confirmation of Articles of Limerick 203 IV.— Whigs and Tories 204 Bdl to Prevent the Growth of Popery 205 Trade and Tillage Suppressed 208 Molyneux 210 Resumption of King William's Grants CONTENTS. PAGE

SECTION 91

-, V— Swift's Writings '■ 213 Froude's Interpretations 7i Berkeley's Writings jTL VI.— Wood's Halfpence 71 Swift's ModeBt Proposal j\~ VII.— Land Monopoly ■ fi° Irish Landlordism f22 The Whiteboys 224 Father Sheehy 225 VIII.— Irish Protestantism 228 Catholic Industry 229 Catholic Association 231 Catholic Relief Bill 233 IX.— Definition of Political Liberty 235 State of Irish House of Commons 236 Legislative Union Contemplated 237 Irish Volunteers 239 Independence of Irish Parliament. 241 Catholics and Protestants 241 How Freedom is Won 242

Chapter XIV. Parliamentary Independence

I.— Grattan and Flood 245 Grattan Quarrels with the Volunteers 245 II.— Police Bill 246 Orde's Propositions 248 English Trade 249 III. — Parliamentary Reform Sought 250 The Volunteer Organisation Dies Out 251 IV. — Fresh Conquest Provided For 251 United Irishmen 252 Orangeism 253 Irish Leaders Seized 255 The People Goaded to Rebellion „ 256 The French at Killala 256 Good Conduct of the Rebels 257 V.— The Union 258 Emmett's Insurrection 261

Chapter XV. Catholic Committee

I.— The Veto 265 II.— State of England in 1815 267 State of Ireland 269 III. — Catholic Association 272 Clare Election and Emancipation 274

Chapter XVI. Repeal Of The Union

I. — Repeal Association and Free Trade League 275 Clontarf Meeting Forbidden .'..!'."""."..".!" 277 O'Connell Prosecuted .. 278 Tenant Right 279 II. — Young Ireland " 28O Mitchell " 282 Famine and Feasts " " .234 Encumbered Estates Act .77.7777 285 III. — Tenant League ' " 035 Disestablishment oq« Manchester Rescue oa7 Phœnix Park Murder HISTORY OF THE IRISH PEOPLE.

CHAPTER I. Peaceful Settlers and TVablike Invaders

Section I. I SHALL attempt to sketch the history of a people who, dating their origin from a period anterior to the common distinctions of race, have been able to accommodate themselves rapidly to every phase of enlightenment, and deriving their rights from a source unreached by the usurpations of power, could never reconcile themselves to any form of slavery ; who have triumphed over the hindrances that have always been considered fatal to virtue and progress ; who protected themselves against the vices which political servitude engenders by a greater measure of that individual independence which the most liberal Constitutions often fail to produce ; who, debarred from taking their place among free States, aspired nevertheless, amidst unequalled disasters and discouragements, to discharge all the functions which mankind expect from self-regulated communities ; who, deprived of the air and light in which the fruits of civilization are ripened, successfully strove to supply the deficiency by the vigour of their genius and the warmth of their affections ; who, without a government of their own, have sent forth colonies to aid in founding vast republics, and rulers to hold the reins of empire when they proved too weighty for the grasp of ordinary kings ; without an army of their own, have directed the tide of conquest in every land ; without a parliament, have laid all legislative assemblies under obligation by the wisdom of their statesmen and the unrivalled eloquence of their orators ; without a press, have added the choicest ornaments to the classic literature of the world; without religious freedom have guided theological thought ; and without political freedom have taught other States, vainly calling themselves free, what freedom means, and how it may be permanently won.

And it will be necessary to remind the reader when presenting him with this outline, that while it reflects only the dawn of a popular life struggling through slowly dissolving clouds, it is the repetition of what once and again has already taken place in the career of the same people, — that a former day of brightness commenced for them and was overcast; and yet another day arose with brighter promise and was turned into blood ; and that therefore any temporary defeat or dull pro crastination can be to their children only as the short night of repose that invigorates them for the morning of unrepressed development that will come at last. L We have two ancestries — one retrospective and human, the other progressive and divine. In dark and barbarous ages man classed himself with the lower orders of creation, which were made after their kind, and follow in the steps of their parents by an unconscious instinct.

He supposed that he too was made after his kind, and he took pride in the brutal strength and passions of his forefathers, the objects of his emulation marking the lowness of his estimate of human destiny. He is gradually learning that he is made after the image of the just God, and that his true political birth dates from the hour when he becomes conscious of this immediate parentage. The cherished and blazoned reminiscences of ancient barbarism that from the pages of a few modern writers throw their lurid glare into our purer day, may serve to warn us from the worship of antiquity. They exhibit the habits of former generations more truly than laboured dissertations on their virtues, because they set before us the standard of ambition which their descendants have actually inherited. The savage deeds which we boastfully ascribe to our forefathers are likely to be true, because we must have received from them the savage disposition that can feel complacency in such a retrospect.

Very different from those survivals of anarchy is that loving reverence which seeks to endow the elders of our race with the pious and peaceful attributes that are to mark the era of our ultimate civilization. We are reminded by its tendency that the character of a people is made up of what the national mind originates or selects, as much as of what it indiscriminately inherits. Aspiration is more potent than transmission. Men of higher type differ from men of lower mainly in having an ideal apart from their actual lot; and if they have fed their eyes on some bright prospect of future glory until, when they look backwards, they behold its vision glowing in the dense obscurity of the past, we have no uncertain promise that, even if they fail to realise it, they at least will preserve it undefiled.

And this in itself would be a great achievement, and worthy of record. The biography of an individual does not chiefly relate whether his days sped in happiness, or were stagnant in misery, but whether his mind was beautiful, and whether it grew to greatness alike on his prosperous or adverse fortunes. So it is with the lives of nations. The tale of a career broken and deformed by calamities, or of a series of brilliant and uninterrupted successes, is not a nation's history, but whether its purpose was noble or ignoble, whether its spirit rose or sank under the blows or caresses of fortune, whether the shout of its triumph or the sigh of its disaster has most of hope for the world. The task of the historian is to help in shaping and refining the mind of his country, and in raising it above the shocks of earthly vicissitudes by training it into conformity with the unchanging purpose of creation.

He must be the representative in his work of its best qualities. He must embody its dearest and loftiest hope. By being filled with the purest national life he deciphers the past and more than prophesies the future. The presumption of undertaking to write history is not excused by the possession of great abilities, but by a motive that acts with the force of duty. INTRODUCTORY. 3 Whatever origin be assigned to man, the distinctions of race must ultimately be traced to local and political sources. The historical writer who proposes to himself any useful object, does not properly engage his thoughts on the collisions of rival sections of the humau family whose separation has been effected, but rather on the causes that produced, and are still widening their differences. It may be the part of the short sighted politician, or of the hired literary bravo, to pile fuel on the flame of national animosities and to assume the immutability of race.

But any person who can conceive an idea of man, and not merely of Kelt or Teuton, must prefer considering what unruly passion of the soul, matured into a principle in a long season of anarchy, or what abnormal correlation of interests, preventing the conclusions of reason, has warped the common children whether of heaven or earth, into a hating and scorning dissimilarity. The two influences that most powerfully affect the disposition of individuals and the organization of societies, are the family tie and conquest. The wounds inflicted by conquest may cease to bleed, but they never cease to deform. Claiming irresponsible authority, it stamps a repulsive likeness to violated virtue on its bastard progeny of laws and standards. The systematizing faculty which it arrogates it employs only to make its wrongs indelible.

Devastating in liquid fire, it cools and petrifies in legislation. The patriarchal form of government not only establishes the natural origin of all just rights, but modulates the tone in which they are to be asserted, aud supplies the weapons with which they are to be recovered when lost. To this form of government the Irish people unfalteringly aspire. Deprived of its shelter, they have never forfeited its characteristic virtues. To trace back the history of a country that has lost its liberty, and no longer pines for its restoration, is a melancholy and a worthless task. No encouragement can be won by demonstrating the high lineage of a prerogative whose very grave has not left a scar upon the soil. It is in every respect different to contemplate, as we now propose doing, the past of a people in whose veins still runs the warm blood of the world's youth, and who cannot endure the loss of their self respect.

When we examine their earliest annals, we see preparations for contests which are still future ; when we enter on the period of actual conflict, we view another part of the battle-field of to-day. The unbroken continuity of the struggle is not, however, by any means the most interesting and momentous fact that claims our notice. They who have never sur rendered their freedom, hold it and defend it by its original title of reason and nature. It is because Ireland has always striven that she now strives with the arms of argument. She remonstrates to this hour with the robber, who, before the dawn of history, ravaged her shore. We are reviewing no battle of races, but a struggle between the rational right of self-government and the irrational and inhuman wrong of conquest. Section II. In very ancient times a medium-sized, dark-haired people proceeded from the eastern cradle of our kind, and gradually spread over the west of Europe.

Some of their descendants, known as Iberi or Basques, still occupy the mountainous regions of France and Spain ; and others form a considerable though not distinct element in the population of Ireland, and in a greater degree, and with a nearer approach to distinctness, of Great Britain. From the evidence furnished by their sepulchral mounds, we learn that those primeval colonists possessed at the remotest date acces sible to investigation, remarkable capacities of refinement and intellect. In those districts where their race survives in its purity, the inhabitants are distinguished by grace of manner, gentleness of disposition, and a deeply marked religious temperament. The physical distinctions of race are produced by differences of climate and peculiarities of region, operating during many centuries.

There are probably few natural divisions of the surface of the earth which have not a tendency to mould distinct types of men by the con tinued influences of sun and soil. However long a people may have lived in any particular country, however indelible may seem the consti tutional bent which they may have received from its conditions, they cannot become dwellers in a foreign land without slowly and inevitably growing into the likeness in shape and colour of its original and indigenous inhabitants. We are, therefore, not accountable for the hue of our skins, nor for the measure of our stature, nor for those accidents of mood which have no ethical value. Here nature meant that there should be variety as unquestionably as elsewhere she meant that there should be uniformity. While all that is unimportant is beyond our control, the formation of our political bias is voluntary, and our moral standards can always be corrected by our reason.

It is the especial privilege of man that he can substitute right for precedent, and truth for tradition. Even if the sacredness of antiquity have its undeniable claims, the responsibility of selection still remains. Most modern nations have a varied stock of progenitors from any of which they may trace their descent. The choice proceeds from, and strongly re-acts upon, our moral bias. We shall only acknowledge an obvious fact and recognise a providen tial arrangement, if we adopt as the earliest representatives of our people, a tribe who took possession of our fields without human opposition, whose* progress was unmarked by bloodstained and burning homesteads, whose children were neither disciplined in cruelty by the arrogant relation of their father's crimes, nor reconciled to injustice by enjoying the proceeds of another's toil, nor perverted from the pursuit of excellence by inherit ing the fictitious and ready-made superiority of caste.

The first ancestry of the Irish people is represented by justice. Those first settlers were followed at an unknown but very remote date, by some tribes of the great Aryan family who, issuing still from the east, and travelling by some immediate route so that they did not suffer transformation into Kelt or German by the way, brought with them their arts, their customs, and their religion. The region of unshadowed skies and vast horizons is suggestive of one infinite Deity by the homogeneousness of the sphere which an intuition of the soul conceives to be His dwelling place. The Aryans worshipped light, the Heaven-Father. This sublime primitive creed THE IRISH PEOPLE. 5 degenerated into gloomy and cruel rites as it slowly filtered through the dark and savage scenery of the north, and the God of light was changed into or associated with the god of the thunder and the tempest.

No such depravation took place iu Ireland. As the earth rolls its plains and mountains towards the dawn, so rose the spirit of the western isle from the mists of the far Atlantic, to greet the message from a brighter clime. The west embraced and enshrined in all its kindling splendour the promise of the east. The fact symbolises, if it has not helped to shape, the story of our land. While other nations have lowered religion to the meanness of their desires, Ireland through all the rigours of for tune has preserved the ideal of her youth, and with unmatched fidelity has scornfully turned from the taunting challenge with which her jealous enemies would tempt her from her grand devotion. A rich crop of sacred emblems and edifices sprang from the soil at the first breath of this spiritual spring-time, and became perennial.

A new style of architecture to which a happier future will do justice was invented ; a new style of ornamentation which modern art has not rivalled was elaborated. Temples limited in size, but compact and per fect, intended to stimulate worship, and not like later structures to stand as exhaustive expressions of zeal, substitutes for holiness and monuments of human vanity, grew from the rocks. Towers of incomparable work manship, pre-Christian crosses, veritable tokens of the nation's mind, stone circles and pillars, whose ruins seem more natural than the tem pest-riven crags that stand beside them, literally covered the island, and silently testify to this day of a once prosperous, peaceful, and abounding population. No mountain is so bare, no islet so rugged, no headland so sequestered, no forest or morass so inaccessible, as not to possess im perishable relics of thronging worshippers.

The imaginative Greeks gathering hints from Phenician traders of mysterious islands in an unknown sea, and yielding to that clinging belief in some blessedness as yet unattained, which, too easily attracted by earth, droops its wearied flight towards any spot that is hallowed by distance, conceived that here were situated the Elysian fields. In the " Argonautics," a poem written 500 years before Christ, the name of Iernis occurs. In the record of an expedition, which took place as some suppose 500 years earlier, the island of the Hyberni is mentioned as having been known from ancient times as the " Sacred Isle." At a time when the most celebrated states of history did not yet exist, Ireland in her ocean solitude was running the cycle of a peculiar civilization, possessed a literature, wrought in metals, and was directing all her resources to the cultivation of a religious sentiment which was to fit her when the appointed time came for the reception of a sublimer revelation.

Her actual readiness in after days, notwithstanding the incessant inroads of barbarians which remind us of the Satanic wiles, that as legends tell us, sought to distract medieval saints from their dreams of heaven, proved that her discipline was not in vain. The unquenchable fervour traceable in part to that mystical past, was only faintly figured by the everlasting fires that burned on her shrines. The island of Anglesea, the part of South Britain nearest to her shores, borrowed her light and spread it onwards. The old myth which relates that the masses of Stonehenge were transported from Ireland has a meaning as real as the rocks themselves. Religion represents our second ancestry. A craving for the infinite is the depth in which the immortality of a people must be fixed, and a deathless sense of justice is the corner stone of its foundation.

Believers in the present, and worshippers of success, have but a feeble vitality, even in their best hours. It is the encounter with adversity that tests the toughness of a nation's life. In a world of changes like ours where the race is only beginning, and the goal and the prize are only dimly discerned, the final victory, whatever it be, can more surely be predicted as in store for those who have survived the storm, than for those who with selfish violence have monopolised the sunshine. Far-seeing ingrained justice alone can withstand and out-live triumphant injustice. States founded on wrong, and hungering only with the senses, derive all their strength from immediate success, and if they are deprived of its support, they die. The vanquished giant drew fresh vigour from contact with his mother earth, and perished when held aloft from her embrace.

The people who trust in right, which alone is immortal, when overthrown in the struggle, always fall upon heaven, and they will never perish while their nature remains unchanged. According to the ancient Irish chronicles the original owners of the country were the Fomorians, a people of prehistoric arrival and extrac tion, who supported themselves by fishing and fowling.1 They were found in possession of the island by Partholan and his followers, who, steering their course through the Mediterranean sea, and leaving Spain on their right, at length reached Ireland about 2,200 years before Christ. The four sons of Partholan bore names, whose meaning was Government, Inheritance of Property, Division of Land, and Chieftain ship ; and the names of his Druids signified Intelligence, Knowledge, and Inquiry.2 Such is the account given by the bards of the earliest colonizations of Ireland : the first by a primitive and uncultured race, whose habits are recorded in the flint weapons, most incorrectly termed Kelts, found buried in the soil ; the second by a people of whose advanced civilization the golden ornaments dug from the same source are unmistakable tokens.

The united Iberian and Aryan tribes (from the former of which the country was called Hibernia), known in Irish history respectively as Fomorians and Partholanians, were the first occupants of the land, and their descendants ever afterwards formed the bulk and basis of its population. When we speak of the Irish people, distinguishing them from the Scotic or Norman chiefs, we really refer to that portion of the inhabitants of our island who are sprung in part lineally, but altogether politically and morally, from the earliest settlers. This original people of Ireland, its rightful owners and first civilizers, were reduced to inferiority and obscurity by successive hordes of bar barian invaders. Those invaders one after the other were trodden down to the level of those whom they themselves had each helped in turn to 1 Keating, p. 116. * Ibid, pp. 119, 121, Notes.

NORMAN INVADERS. 7 subjugate and despoil. But when compelled to share their fortunes, they became participators and heirs of their rights, their virtues, and their genius ; and if we would seek for the men who, at home or abroad, have been an honour to their country, we shall not as a rule discover them either in the rank of the last conquerors, or in any preceding tribe who have gained or maintained a position in that rank, but we shall find them, in all tribes and races alike, after they have been purified by the sufferings and inspired by the faith of the Irish people. Section III. Foremost of the assailing hordes, who destroyed the ancient institutions of the country, were the Nemedians, so called from their leader Nemedius.1 They established themselves on the northern coast, and employed some of the Fomorians to build forts for them ; taking care immediately afterwards to put the architects to death, lest they might undo their work.

They then made war on the natives, and defeated them in three battles ; but were totally overcome in a fourth, and forced to leave the country, with the exception of a remnant, who were allowed to occupy a separate district under their own chiefs. The successful resistance made against the invading Nemedians, a rare occurrence in early history, proves that, though the sensitive nation ality of later times, which regards every inch of the soil as sacred, was as yet unknown, the Irish were capable of making a united effort, and when taken together with the tradition of their being builders, while their enemies were ignorant of the art, affords a confirming proof of their superior civilization. Marauding or invading tribes are by the nature of the case compelled to combine for the purposes of attack.

Nothing but a growing spirit of enlightened union will induce even two tribes, much less all the tribes of a country, to act in concert for self-defence. The conspiring instinct of invasion was as yet, however, stronger than the patriotic sentiment. A simultaneous inroad from three different quarters by the next assailants, the Belgæ, brought one half of the island under their sway. The political disintegration which naturally follows on the settlement of foreign tribes in the heart of a country and the constant and harassing attacks of fresh enemies from without, soon took place. Ireland, hitherto one, fell asunder into five States, North and South Munster, Leinster, Connaught, and Ulster, each governed by its own ruler.2 But the distracted land was not permitted sufficient time to contem plate its condition, or to devise means for repairing its losses.

A new body of invaders, the Danans, overthrew the Belgæ in one great battle, and the Irish in another, and became masters of the island. The con quered Belgæ obtained a free territory in Connaught. The next successful invaders, and the last until the time of the Anglo-Normans, were the Scoti (from whom the island was named Scotia). As all the bardic compositions which treat of ancient Ireland were written at their dictation, and to gratify their pride and vain glory, we must explain the strange tales which are told concerning their 1 Keating, p. 121. 2 Keating, p. 129. immediate predecessors, the Danans, as fables invented to exhibit the prowess and magnanimity of those who overcame them, as well as to give a sort of moral right to their conquest. . The Danans, we are told, were not only warriors who fought with the weapons of ordinary warfare, but they were moreover magicians armed with talismans of super-human efficacy.