ability, to obtain the supreme rule. The Archbishop of Armagh
and the clergy strove twice to avert hostilities, but their interference
was almost ineffectual. "A year's peace" was all they could obtain. In
the year 1100, Murtough brought a Danish fleet against the northerns,
but they were cut off by O'Loughlin, "by killing or drowning." He also
assembled an army at Assaroe, near Ballyshannon, "with the choice part
of the men of Ireland," but the Cinel-Connaill defended their country
bravely, and compelled him to retire "without booty, without hostages,
without pledges." In 1101, when the twelvemonths' truce obtained by the
clergy had expired, Murtough collected a powerful army, and devastated
the north, without opposition. He demolished the palace of the Hy-Nials,
called the Grianan of Aileach.[234] This was an act of revenge for a
similar raid, committed a few years before, on the stronghold of the
O'Briens, at Kincora, by O'Loughlin. So determined was he on
devastation, that he commanded a stone to be carried away from the
building in each of the sacks which had contained provisions for the
army. He then took hostages of Ulidia, and returned to the south, having
completed the circuit of Ireland in six weeks. The expedition was called
the "circuitous hosting." His rather original method of razing a palace,
is commemorated in the following quatrain:--

"I never heard of the billeting of grit stones,
Though I heard _[sic]_ of the billeting of companies,
Until the stones of Aileach was billeted
On the horses of the king of the west."[235]

Murtough appears to have been a not unusual compound of piety and
profanity. We read in one place of his reckless exploits in burning
churches and desecrating shrines, and in others of his liberal
endowments of the same.

The Danes had now settled quietly in the mercantile towns which they had
mainly contributed to form, and expended all their energies on commerce
instead of war; but the new generation of Northmen, who had not yet
visited Ireland, could not so easily relinquish the old project of
conquering it. About the year 1101, Magnus planned an expedition to
effect this purpose. He arrived in Dublin the following year; a "hosting
of the men of Ireland came to oppose him;"[236] but they made peace with
him for one year, and Murtough gave his daughter in marriage to his son
Sitric, "with many jewels and gifts." The year 1103 was distinguished
for sanguinary conflic