was not, unfortunately, the last of the Land Leapers! More and more
they came, sweeping in from the north, and all seem to have made direct
for the plunder of the monasteries, into which the piety of centuries
had gathered most of the valuables of the country. The famous round
towers, or "Clocthech" of Ireland, have been credited with a hundred
fantastic origins, but are now known not to date from earlier than about
the eighth or ninth century, are always found in connection with
churches or monasteries, and were unquestionably used as defences
against these northern invaders. At the first sight of their unholy
prows, rising like water snakes above the waves, all the defenceless
inmates and refugees, all the church plate and valuables, and all sickly
or aged brothers were hurried into these monastic keeps; the doors--set
at a height of from ten to twenty feet above the ground--securely
closed, the ladders drawn up, food supplies having been no doubt already
laid in, and a state of siege began.

It is a pity that the annalists, who tell us so many things we neither
care to hear nor much believe in, should have left us no record of any
assault of the Northmen against one of these redoubtable towers. Even at
the present day they would, without ammunition, be remarkably difficult
nuts to crack; indeed, it is hard to see how their assault could have
been successfully attempted, save by the slow process of starvation, or
possibly by fires kindled immediately below the entrance, and so by
degrees smoking out their inmates.

[Illustration: KELLS ROUND TOWER. _(From a drawing by George Petrie,
LL.D.)_]

If any one ever succeeded in getting into them, we may be sure the Land
Leapers did! Before long they appear to have gathered nearly the whole
spoil of the country into the towns, which they built and fortified for
themselves at intervals along the coast. Cork, Waterford, Limerick,
Wexford, and Dublin, all owe their origin in the first instance to the
Northmen; indeed it is a curious fact that Dublin can never be said,
save for very short periods to have belonged to the Irish at all. It was
first the capital of their northern invaders, and afterwards that, of
course, of the English Government.

Three whole centuries the Danish power lasted, and internecine war
raged, a war during which almost every trace of earlier civilizing
influences, all those milder habits and ways of thought, which
Christianity had brought in and foste