ey came to one
place, it happened, through a miracle of God, that they separated from
each other for that time without slaughter or one of them spilling a
drop of the other's blood." That entry better than any other shows the
restless spirit of the times. It shows, too, that the first shock of
Norse invasion had not in any sense warned the people and chieftains of
Ireland of coming danger, nor had it in any degree checked the steady
course of the nation's growth through storm and strife to personal
consciousness, as the stepping-stone to the wider common consciousness
of the modern world.

The year following we read of "a plundering of Howth by the Gentiles,
who carried off a great prey of women." These captives were doubtless
the first to bring the Message of the New Way to the wild granite lands
of the north, where the mountains in their grandeur frown upon the long
inlets of the fiords. They taught to their children in those wild lands
of exile the lessons of grace and holiness, so rudely interrupted when
the long ships of the Norsemen were sighted from the Hill of Howth.

A year later, in 820, the raiders had found their way to the
southernmost extremity of the island; to Cape Clear, off the coast of
Cork. This once again brings to our notice the position of so many of
the early religious settlements,--on rocky islands off the coasts, well
out of the turmoil of tribal strife which raged uninterrupted on the
mainland. St. Patrick's Island and Lambay on the east, Clear Island on
the south, and Inismurray on the northwest, so well protected by the sea
from disturbance at home, were, by that very isolation, terribly exposed
to these foreign raiders from the sea. Howth, Moville and Bangor, all on
peninsulas, all by the seashore, enjoyed a like immunity and were open
to a like danger. Therefore we are not surprised to find that, two years
later, Bangor was "plundered by the Gentiles."

It will be remembered that St. Patrick's first church was built on land
given him by Dicu, chieftain of the district round Downpatrick, a name
which commemorates the presence of the Messenger. Two sons of this same
Dicu had been held as hostages by Laogaire the king, and their marvelous
escape from durance was recorded in the name, Dun-da-lath-glas, the
Dwelling of the Two Broken Fetters, given to Downpatrick. The place was
of old renown. Known to Ptolemy as Dunum, it was, during Concobar's sway
at Emain of Maca, the fortress of the stron