Chapter III

EARLY HISTORY DRAWN FROM NATIVE SOURCES

The allusions to Ireland and the Irish from the third century before to the fourth century after Christ, are, as we have seen, both few and scanty, and throw little or no light upon the internal affairs or history of the island; for these we must go to native sources.

At the period when Emania was founded, that is, at the period when according to the learned native annalist Tighearnach, the records of the early Irish cease to be "uncertain," the throne of Ireland was occupied by a High-king called Ugony[1] the Great, and a certain body of saga, much of which is now lost, collected itself around his personality, and attached itself to his two sons, Cobhthach Caol-mBreagh and Leary[2] Lorc, and around Leary Lorc's grandson, Lowry[3] the mariner. It was this Ugony who attempted to substitute a new territorial division of Ireland in place of the five provinces into which it had been divided by the early Milesians. He exacted an oath by all the elements—the usual Pagan oath—from the men of Ireland that they would never oppose his children or his race, and then he divided the island into twenty-five parts, giving one to each of his children. He succeeded in this manner in destroying the ancient division of Ireland into provinces and in perpetuating his own, for several generations, when Eochaidh Féidhleach[4] once more reverted to the ancient system of the five provinces—Ulster, Connacht, Leinster, and the two Munsters. This Eochaidh Féidhleach came to the throne about 140 years before Christ, according to the "Four Masters,"[5] and it was his daughter who is the celebrated heroine Mève,[6] queen of Connacht, who reigned at Rathcroghan in Connacht, and who undertook the great Táin Bo or Cattle Raid into Ulster, that has been celebrated for nigh on 2,000 years in poem and annal among the children of the Gael; and her name introduces us to Conor[7] mac Nessa, king of Ulster, to the palace of Emania, to the Red Branch knights, to the tragedy of Déirdre and all the vivid associations of the Cuchulain cycle.

It was thirty-three years before Christ, according to the "Four Masters," that Conairé the Great, High-king of all Ireland, was slain, and he is the central figure of the famous and very ancient saga of the Bruidhean Da Derga.[8]

And now we come to the birth of Christ, which is thus recorded by the "Four Masters": "The first year of the age of Christ and the eighth of the reign of Crimhthan Niadhnair."[9] Crimhthan was no doubt one of the marauding Scots who plundered Britain, for it is recorded of him that "it was this Crimhthan who went on the famous expedition beyond the sea from which he brought home several extraordinary and costly treasures, among which were a gilt chariot and a golden chess-board, inlaid with three hundred transparent gems, a tunic of various colours and embroidered with gold, a shield embossed with pure silver," and many other valuables. Curiously enough O'Clery's Book of Invasions contains a poem of seventy-two lines ascribed to this king himself, in which he describes these articles. He was fabled to have been accompanied on this expedition by his "bain-leannán" or fairy sweetheart, one of an interesting race of beings of whom frequent mention is made in Irish legend and saga.

The next event of consequence after the birth of Christ is the celebrated revolt led by Cairbré Cinn-cait, of the Athach-Tuatha,[10] or unfree clans of Ireland, in other words the serfs or plebeians, against the free clans or nobility, whom they all but exterminated, three unborn children of noble line alone escaping.[11]

The people of Ireland were plagued—as though by heaven—with bad seasons and lack of fruit during the usurper Cairbré's reign. As the "Four Masters" graphically put it, "evil was the state of Ireland during his reign, fruitless her corn, for there used to be but one grain on the stalk; fishless her rivers; milkless her cattle; unplenty her fruit, for there used to be but one acorn on the oak." The belief that bad seasons were sent as a punishment of bad rulers was a very ancient and universal one in Ireland, and continued until very lately. The ode which the ollav or head-bard is said to have chanted in the ears of each newly-inaugurated prince, took care to recall it to his mind, and may be thus translated:—

"Seven witnesses there be Of the broken faith of kings. First—to trample on the free, Next—to sully sacred things, Next—to strain the law divine, (This defeat in battle brings). Famine, slaughter, milkless kine, And disease on flying wings. These the seven-fold vivid lights That light the perjury of kings!"[12]

According to the Book of Conquests the people of Ireland, plagued by famine and bad seasons, brought in, on the death of Cairbré, the old reigning families again, making Fearadach king, and the "Athach-Tuatha swore by the heaven and earth, sun, moon, and all the elements, that they would be obedient to them and their descendants, as long as the sea should surround Ireland." The land recovered its tranquillity with the reign of Fearadach. "Good was Ireland during his time. The seasons were right tranquil; the earth brought forth its fruit. Fishful its river mouths; milkful the kine; heavy-headed the woods."

There was a second uprising of the Athach-Tuatha later on,[13] when they massacred their masters on Moy Bolg. The lawful heir to the throne was yet unborn at the time of this massacre and so escaped. This was the celebrated Tuathal [Too-a-hal, now Toole], who ultimately succeeded to the throne and became one of the most famous of all the pre-Patrician kings. It was he who first established or cut out the province of Meath. The name Meath had always existed as the appellation of a small district near which the provinces of Ulster, Connacht, Leinster, and the two Munsters joined. Tuathal cut off from each of the four provinces the angles adjoining it, and out of these he constituted a new province[14] to be thenceforth the special estate, demesne, and inheritance of the High-kings of Ireland. He built, or rebuilt, four palaces in the four quarters of the district he had thus annexed, all of them celebrated in after times—of which more later on. It was he also who, under evil auspices and in an evil hour, extorted from Leinster the first Borumha,[15] or Boru tribute,—nomen infaustum—a step which contributed so powerfully to mould upon lines of division and misery the history of our unhappy country from that day until the present, by estranging the province of Leinster, throwing it into the arms of foreigners, and causing it to put itself into opposition to the rest of Ireland. This unhappy tribute, of which we shall hear more later on, was imposed during the reigns of forty kings.

Thirteen years after the death of Tuathal, Cáthaoir [Cauheer], celebrated for his Will or Testament,[16] reigned; he was of pure Leinster blood, and the men of that province have always felicitated themselves upon having given at least this one great king to Ireland. It is from him that the great Leinster families—the O'Tooles, O'Byrnes, Mac Morroughs or Murphys, O'Conor Falys, O'Gormans, and others—descend. He was slain, A.D. 123, by Conn of the Hundred Battles.[17]

There are few kings during the three hundred years preceding and following the birth of Christ more famous than this Conn, and there is a very large body of saga collected round him and his rival Eoghan [Owen], the king of Munster who succeeded in wresting half the sovereignty from him. As the result of their conflicts that part of Ireland which lies north of the Escir Riada,[18] or, roughly speaking, that lies north of a line drawn from Dublin to Galway, has from that day to this been known as Conn's Half, and that south of the same line as Owen's Half. Owen was at last slain by him of the hundred battles at the fight of Moy Léana.

Owen, as we have seen, was never King of Ireland, but he left behind him a famous son, Oilioll[19] Olum, who was married to Sadhbh,[20] the daughter of his rival and vanquisher, Conn of the Hundred Battles, and it is to this stem that nearly all the ruling families of Munster trace themselves. From his eldest son, Owen Mór, come the Mac Carthys, O'Sullivans, O'Keefes, O'Callaghans, etc.; from his second son come the Mac Namaras and Clancys; and from his third son, Cian,[21] come the so-called tribes of the Cianachts, the O'Carrolls, O'Meaghers, O'Haras, O'Garas, Caseys, the southern O'Conors, and others. There is a considerable body of romance gathered around this Oilioll and his sons and wife, chiefly connected with the kingship of Munster.

Conn's son, Art the Lonely—so-called because he survived after the slaughter of his brothers—was slain by Mac Con, Sive's son by her first husband, and the slayer ruled in his place, being the third king of the line of the Ithians, of whom we shall read later on, who came to the throne.

He, however, was himself killed at the instigation of Cormac, son of Art, or Cormac mac Art, as he is usually designated. This Cormac is a central figure of the large cycle of stories connected with Finn and the Fenians. He was at last slain in the battle of Moy Mochruime. His advice to a prince, addressed to his son Cairbré of the Liffey, will be noticed later on, and, so far as it may be genuine, bears witness to his reputed wisdom, "as do the many other praiseworthy institutes named from him that are still to be found among the books of the Brehon Laws."[22] This Cormac it was who built the first mill in Ireland, and who made a banqueting-place of the great hall of Mi-Cuarta,[23] at Tara, which was one hundred yards long, forty-five feet high, one hundred feet broad, and which was entered by fourteen doors. The site is still to be seen, but no vestige of the building, which, like all early Irish structures, was of wood.

Cairbré of the Liffey succeeded his father Cormac, and it was he who fought the battle of Gabhra (Gowra) with the Fenians, in which he himself was slain, but in which he broke, and for ever, the power of that unruly body of warriors.

About the year 331 the great Ulster city and palace of Emania, which had been the home of Conor and the Red Branch knights, and the capital of Ulster for six hundred years, was taken and burnt to the ground by the Three Collas, who thus become the ancestors of a number of the tribes of modern Ulster. From one of them descend the Mac Mahons, the ruling family of Monaghan; the Maguires, barons of Fermanagh; and the O'Hanlons, chiefs of Orior; while another was the ancestor of the Mac Donalds of Antrim and the Isles, of the Mac Dugalds, and the Mac Rories. The old nobility of Ulster, whose capital had been Emania, were thrust aside into the north-east corner of Ulster, whence most of them were expelled by the planters of James I.

We now come to Eochaidh [Yohee] Muigh-mheadhoin [Mwee-va-on] who was father of the celebrated Niall of the Nine Hostages. From one of his sons, Brian, come the Ui [Ee] Briain, that is, the collection of families composed of the seed of Brian—the O'Conors, kings of Connacht; the Mac Dermots, princes of Moylurg, afterwards of Coolavin; the O'Rorkes, princes of Breffny; the O'Reillys, O'Flaherties, and Mac Donaghs. From another son of his, Fiachrach, come the Ui Fiachrach, who were for ages the rivals of the Ui Briain in contesting the sovereignty of Connacht—the O'Shaughnesies were one of the principal families representing this sept.[24]

Eochaidh Muigh-mheadhoin was succeeded in 366[25] by Crimhthan [Crivhan], who was one of those militant Scots at whose hands the unhappy Britons suffered so sorely. He "gained victories," say the annals, "and extended his sway over Alba, Britain, and Gaul," which probably means that he raided all three, and possibly made settlements in South-west Britain. He was poisoned by his sister in the hope that the sovereignty would fall to her favourite son Brian. In this, however, she was disappointed, and it is a noticeable fact in Irish history that none of the Ui Briain, or great Connacht families, ever sat upon the throne of Ireland, with the exception of Turlough O'Conor, third last king of Ireland, ancestor of the present O'Conor Don, and Roderick O'Conor, the last of all the High-kings of the island.

Brian being set aside, Niall of the Nine Hostages ascended the throne in 379. It was he who first assisted the Dál Riada clans to gain supremacy over the Picts of Scotland. These Dál Riada were descended from a grandson, on the mother's side, of Conn of the Hundred Battles. There were two septs of these Dál Riada, one settled in Ulster and the other in Alba [Scotland]. It was from the conquests[26] achieved by the Scots [i.e. Milesians] of Ireland that Alba was called Lesser Scotia. In course of ages the inconvenient distinction of the countries into Lesser and Greater Scotia died away, but the name Scotia, or Scotland, without any qualifying adjective, clung to the lesser country to the frightful confusion of historians, while the greater remained known to foreigners as Erin, or Hibernia.[27] This Niall was surnamed "of the Nine Hostages," from his having extorted hostages from nine minor kings. He mercilessly plundered Britain and Gaul. The Picts and Irish Gaels combined had at one time penetrated as far as London and Kent, when Theodosius drove them back.[28] It was probably against Niall that Stilicho gained those successes so magniloquently eulogised by Claudian, "when the Scot moved all Ierne against us and the sea foamed under his hostile oars." Niall had eight sons, from whom the famous Ui [Ee] Neill are all descended. One branch of these, the branch descended from his son Owen, took the name of O'Neill in the eleventh century, not from him of the Nine Hostages, but from King Niall of the Black Knee, a less remote ancestor, of whom more later on. This was the great family of the Tyrone O'Neills. So solidly did the posterity of Niall establish itself, and upon so firm a basis was his power perpetuated, that almost all the following kings of Ireland were descended from him, besides multitudes of illustrious families, "nearly three hundred of his descendants, eminent for their learning and the sanctity of their lives," says O'Flaherty, "have been enrolled in the catalogue of the saints."[29] He it was who, while plundering in Britain or Armorica, led back amongst other captives the youth, then sixteen years old, who was destined, under the title of the Holy Patrick, to revolutionise Ireland.

St. Patrick's own "Confession" and his Epistle to Coroticus have come down to us—the former preserved in the Book or Armagh, a manuscript copied by a scribe named Ferdomnach in 807 (or 812 according to a truer chronology), apparently from St. Patrick's own copy, for at the end of the Confession the scribe adds this note: "Thus far the volume which Patrick wrote with his own hand."[30] In this ancient manuscript (itself only a copy of older ones so damaged as to be almost illegible[31] to the scribe who copied them in 807, a little more than three hundred years after St. Patrick's death), we find nearly a dozen mentions of Niall of the Nine Hostages, of his son Laeghaire [Leary], and several more who lived before St. Patrick's arrival, and so find ourselves for the first time upon tolerably solid historical ground, which from this out never deserts us. St. Columcille, the evangeliser of the Picts and the founder of Iona, was the great-great-grandson of this Niall, and the great-grandson of Conall Gulban, so celebrated even to this day in Irish romance and history.[32]

Ascertainable authenticated Irish history, then, begins with Niall and with Patrick, but in this chapter we have gone behind it to see what may be learned from native sources—rather traditional than historical—of Irish life and history, from the founding of Emania three hundred years before Christ down to the coming of St. Patrick. But for all the things which we have recounted we have no independent external testimony, nor have we now any manuscripts remaining of which we could say, "We have here documentary evidence fifteen or twenty centuries old attesting the truth of these things." No; we are entirely dependent for all that pre-Patrician history upon native evidence alone, and that evidence has come down to us chiefly but not entirely in manuscripts copied in the twelfth and in later centuries.