sorts of
violence. The country was divided into five kingdoms--DESMOND, THOMOND,
CONNAUGHT, ULSTER, and LEINSTER--each governed by a separate King, of
whom one claimed to be the chief of the rest. Now, one of these Kings,
named DERMOND MAC MURROUGH (a wild kind of name, spelt in more than one
wild kind of way), had carried off the wife of a friend of his, and
concealed her on an island in a bog. The friend resenting this (though
it was quite the custom of the country), complained to the chief King,
and, with the chief King's help, drove Dermond Mac Murrough out of his
dominions. Dermond came over to England for revenge; and offered to hold
his realm as a vassal of King Henry, if King Henry would help him to
regain it. The King consented to these terms; but only assisted him,
then, with what were called Letters Patent, authorising any English
subjects who were so disposed, to enter into his service, and aid his
cause.

There was, at Bristol, a certain EARL RICHARD DE CLARE, called STRONGBOW;
of no very good character; needy and desperate, and ready for anything
that offered him a chance of improving his fortunes. There were, in
South Wales, two other broken knights of the same good-for-nothing sort,
called ROBERT FITZ-STEPHEN, and MAURICE FITZ-GERALD. These three, each
with a small band of followers, took up Dermond's cause; and it was
agreed that if it proved successful, Strongbow should marry Dermond's
daughter EVA, and be declared his heir.

The trained English followers of these knights were so superior in all
the discipline of battle to the Irish, that they beat them against
immense superiority of numbers. In one fight, early in the war, they cut
off three hundred heads, and laid them before Mac Murrough; who turned
them every one up with his hands, rejoicing, and, coming to one which was
the head of a man whom he had much disliked, grasped it by the hair and
ears, and tore off the nose and lips with his teeth. You may judge from
this, what kind of a gentleman an Irish King in those times was. The
captives, all through this war, were horribly treated; the victorious
party making nothing of breaking their limbs, and casting them into the
sea from the tops of high rocks. It was in the midst of the miseries and
cruelties attendant on the taking of Waterford, where the dead lay piled
in the streets, and the filthy gutters ran with blood, that Strongbow
married Eva. An odious marriage-company those mounds o