fill their thinning ranks. Their force was finally
shattered at the battle of Clontarf, which the Annalist thus records:
"1013: The Foreigners of the west of Europe assembled against Brian and
Maelseaclain, and they took with them a thousand men with coats of mail.
A spirited, fierce, violent, vengeful and furious battle was fought
between them, the likeness of which was not to be found in that time, at
Cluain-tarb, the Lawn of the Bulls. In this battle was slain Brian son
of Ceinneidig, monarch of Ireland, who was the Augustus of all the west
of Europe, in the eighty-eighth year of his age."

The scene of this famous conflict is on the coast, between Dublin and
the Hill of Howth. A wide strand of boulders is laid bare by the
receding tide, with green sea-grass carpeting the stones. At the very
verge of the farthest tide are two huge sand-banks, where the waves roar
and rumble with a sound like the bellowing of bulls, and this tumultuous
roaring is preserved in the name of the place unto this day.

XI.

THE PASSING OF THE NORSEMEN.

A.D. 1013-1250.

There was, as we have seen, no "Danish Conquest" of Ireland, nor
anything approaching a conquest. What really happened during the ninth
and tenth centuries was this: Raiders from the shores of the Northern
seas, from the Scandinavian peninsula and the Western Isles of Scotland,
sailed in their long ships among the islands of the Irish coast, looking
for opportunities to plunder the treasuries of the religious schools,
and carrying off the gold and silver reliquaries and manuscript cases,
far more valuable to these heathen seamen than the Latin or Gaelic
manuscripts they contained.

These raids had little connection with each other; they were the outcome
of individual daring, mere boat's-crews from one or another of the
Northern fiords. A few of the more persistent gradually grew reluctant
to retreat with their booty to the frozen north, and tried to gain a
footing on the shores of the fertile and wealthy island they had
discovered. They made temporary camps on the beach, always beside the
best harbors, and threw up earthworks round them, or perhaps more
lasting forts of stone. Thus they established a secondary base for raids
inland, and a place of refuge whither they might carry the cattle, corn
and captives which these raids brought them from the territories of the
native clans. These camps on the shore were the germ of a chain of
sea-ports at Dublin, Wexford, Wa