tems of the Mediterranean world, giving the names of
months and cycles in Hebrew, Greek and Egyptian, and telling of his
researches into the true time of Easter, while on a journey to Italy and
Rome. This letter, which has come down to our days, is first-hand
testimony to the learning of the early Irish schools.

[Illustration: Ancient Cross, Glendalough.]

Fifty years later, in 683, we hear of the Saxons for the first and
almost the last time in the history of Ireland. It is recorded that the
North Saxons raided Mag Breag in the East of Meath, attacking both
churches and chieftains. They carried away many hostages and much spoil,
but the captives were soon after set at liberty and sent home again, on
the intercession of a remarkable man, Adamnan, the biographer of Colum
of the Churches, whose success in his mission was held to be miraculous.

For more than a century after this single Saxon raid Ireland was wholly
undisturbed by foreign invasion, and the work of building churches,
founding schools, studying Hebrew and Greek and Latin, went on with
increasing vigor and success. An army of missionaries went forth to
other lands, following in the footsteps of Colum of the Churches, and of
these we shall presently speak. The life of the church was so rich and
fruitful that we are led to think of this as a period of childlike and
idyllic peace.

Nothing, however, could be further from the truth. The raids,
devastations and wars between province and province, tribe and tribe,
went on without a year's interruption. This was the normal course of the
nation's life, the natural outlet of the nation's energy: not less a
visible sign of invisible inward power than the faith and fervor of the
schools. We shall get the truest flavor of the times by quoting again
from the old Annals. That they were recorded year by year, we have
already seen; the records of frosts, great snow-storms, years of rich
harvests and the like, interspersed among the fates of kings, show how
faithfully the annals were kept,--as, for example, the winter of great
cold, "when all the rivers and lakes of Ireland were frozen over," in
the year after the Saxon raid.

Here again, under the year 701, is the word of a man then living: "After
Loing Seac son of Angus son of Domnall had been eight years in the
sovreignty of Ireland, he was slain in the battle of Ceann by Cealleac
of Lough Cime, the son of Ragallac, as Cealleac himself testifies:

"'For his d