l consciousness is kindled can a race enter
the wider path of national life, where vivid and intense individuals
unite their forces to a common end, reaching a common consciousness, and
holding their power in common for the purposes of all. After the lessons
of fighting come the lessons of work. For these lessons of work, for
the direct touch with the everlasting Will gained in all honest work,
our own age is to be valued, far more than for the visible and material
fruits which that work produces.

In like manner the old epoch of war is to be esteemed for the lessons it
taught of high valor, sacrifice, heroic daring. And to what admirable
ends these same qualities may tend we can see in a life like that of
Colum Kill, "head of the piety of the most part of Ireland and Scotland
after Patrick."

Yet the days of old were grim enough to live in. Let this record of some
half-century later testify. It is but one year culled from a long red
rank of years. We give the Chronicler's own words: "645: The sixth year
of Conall and Ceallac. Mac Laisre, abbot of Bangor, died on May 16.
Ragallac son of Uatac, King of Connacht, was killed by Maelbrigde son of
Motlacan, of which was said:

"Ragallac son of Uatac was pierced on the back of a white
steed;

Muiream has well lamented him; Catal has well avenged him.

Catal is this day in battle, though bound to peace in the
presence of kings;

Though Catal is without a father, his father is not without
vengeance.

Estimate his terrible revenge from the account of it related:

He slew six men and fifty; he made sixteen devastations;

I had my share like another in the revenge of Ragallac,--

I have the gray beard in my hand, of Maelbrigde son of Motlacan."

These are evidently the very words of one who fought in the battle. Nor
need this in any way surprise us, for we have far older Chronicles set
down year by year in unbroken record. The matter is easy to prove. The
Chronicles of Ulster record eclipses of the sun and moon as early as
495,--two years after Saint Patrick's death. It was, of course, the
habit of astronomers to reckon eclipses backwards, and of annalists to
avail themselves of these reckonings. The Venerable Bede, for example,
has thus inserted eclipses in his history. The result is that the
Venerable Bede has the dates several days wrong, while the Chronicles of
Ulster, where direct observation took th