Note 43 — Chapter II · INTERCOURSE BETWEEN THE GAILL AND THE GAEDHIL DURING THE VIKING PERIOD.

With the Gaill-Gaedhil are often identified a body of plunderers, members of Meath and Cavan clans, who in the year 845 devastated large tracts of territory “after the manner of the Gentiles” (Annals of Ulster, A.D. 845). The Annalists call them “sons of death” (maic báis), possibly a term applied by the monastic chroniclers to a people who had abandoned their Christian baptism, and who had profaned churches and religious houses. (Cf. Marstrander, op. cit., p. 7, n.)