They set out as soon as it was dark. When they came to the cross roads Finn and Tim saw a pile of turf and wood with old people and young people about it. A cart came from the bog and a man threw down more turf and more bog-wood. Before the fire was lighted, Finn and Tim had their first adventure. A couple of little boys were sent to get furze to put round the pile and on top of it, and Finn and Tim went with them. They found a ditch with withered furze bushes placed on top of it and they started to pull them down. But in the middle of the operations a cross old man appeared and accused them of breaking down his fences. Suddenly he produced a stick and struck at the boys. They all ran. Tim was the only one who held on to the furze bush he had secured.

As they came back to the pile they saw a blaze spring up on a ridge half a mile across the country. There was one fire lighted! A boy that was by the pile ran into a cottage and came back carrying a lighted coal at the end of a long pair of tongs. He thrust it into the heap. The fire lighted. It reached the bog-wood and leaped up into a blaze that could be seen across the country. The children standing by watched the mounting flames with wonder and delight. It was as grand a fire as Finn ever saw. The boys and girls wanted to dance but no one who could make music had come as yet. Someone sang. Then when the song was over music began. It was Tim in the shadows playing his tin-whistle. He was brought forward and the young men and women asked him to play for their dances.

Old men stayed at the ditch holding sticks in their hands, and the children stayed with them watching the flames or watching the young men and women dancing. After a while Finn and the other children played hide-and-seek away from the firelight and the crowd. Once they came back and found the whole company gathered around a young man who was holding something in his hand. It looked like a piece of iron. But somebody said that it was an ancient sword. Whatever it was it had been found in the bog by the people who had brought the turf to the fire. Father Gildea, who was with the old men, took the iron out of the man's hand and examined it. He said it was a sword and that it belonged to the time when the Norsemen were forming their settlements in Ireland. The people asked him to tell them a story of the time when that sword was used, and Father Gildea told them this:—

  He won his first great victory over the Norse in 968. In the year 998 he and King Malachi divided Ireland between them. In the year 1002 he became High King. In the year 1014 he defeated the Norse at the battle of Clontarf. He was killed after this battle.") ?>

It was at the end of the eighth century that the people whom we call the Danes began to make descents upon Ireland. Not all of them came from Denmark, but they were from Scandinavia, of which Denmark is a part. The people who write histories call them Norsemen. They were very hardy men and very good fighters, and they began their attacks by bringing their boats up our rivers and into our lakes and then making a dash into the country, slaying men and carrying off what they could plunder. One Norse chief made a settlement in the west and such numbers of his own people joined him there that he had the thought of subduing the whole of Ireland. But an Irish king named Malachi came alone into his castle one night, seized the Norse chief, bound him, and drowned him in the lake. Afterwards other parties of Norsemen came to Ireland; they took possession of places along the coast, Dublin, Waterford, Cork and Limerick, and they tilled the land and built up important trading towns. As soon as the Norse settled in Ireland they and the Irish people drew closer to each other. From the Norse the Irish learnt many things in trade and commerce, and from the Irish the Norse learnt many things in literature and art. They married amongst each other, and Irish princes had Norse mothers and Norse earls Irish mothers. Irish bards made poems in praise of Norse nobles, and Norse poets sang the praise of Ireland in their own language.

In the southwest of Ireland, around Limerick, a very important Irish clan called the Dalcassians had their territory. It was the privilege of this clan to form the van of the army when entering an enemy's territory and the rear when leaving it. Two young princes were heads of this clan, Mahon and Brian, a younger and an elder brother. When the Norse entered their territory these two young men fought resolutely against them. But after a while Mahon, the elder brother, made peace with the invaders on condition that they left his territory to his own rule. Brian would not submit. He gathered his followers around him and asked them whether they would make peace with the invaders or enter upon a new war. They all declared for war. Then Brian led his followers into a forest where he formed his camp. From this forest he carried on the war; he ate little and he slept on the ground; he fought night and day and he made himself a great soldier. He won for himself a name that all the Norse dreaded and all the Irish loved.

Mahon became ashamed of the peace he had made and he joined Brian with the rest of the Dalcassian clan. Then they were able to make open war on the invaders; they captured the royal town of Cashel and established themselves there. But a great battle was still to be fought before the brothers reconquered the whole of their territory. There were Irish chiefs who hated the Dalcassians and these made alliance with the Norse and a great host marched against Brian and Mahon. But the brothers were victorious; they defeated the Norse and their allies, followed their retreat and captured the Norse stronghold at Limerick.

Now when Mahon was killed, Brian became sole prince of the Dalcassians. His fame through all Ireland was great. But there was another man who was regarded as Brian's equal, and he was Malachi who had defeated the Norse in the middle and the east of Ireland and had taken Dublin from them. Malachi was an able soldier and statesman and a very noble man. He was made High King of Ireland. But he fully recognized the great abilities of the Dalcassian Prince and he made it his first act to divide Ireland into two spheres, giving the southern to Brian and keeping the northern under his own rule.

The High King of Ireland had never the authority of a modern king; inside their own territories the princes and the lesser kings were almost independent of him, and could offer resistance to his edicts. The King of Leinster was not pleased with the decision that placed his territory under the rule of Brian, and he rebelled. Brian and Malachi joined forces and marched against the King of Leinster and defeated him in Wicklow. The Norse were again in possession of Dublin; Brian marched against the city and captured it. He had now drawn his conquests from the south up to the middle and the east of Ireland.

Should he now make himself High King of Ireland and depose Malachi, his ally and his friend? No doubt his ambition urged him to do it, and no doubt it was whispered to him that the time had come when the whole of Ireland should be under the rule of one strong king. Brian was not young and he could not hope to live long enough to break the power of the minor kings and princes and make Ireland a kingdom with a single ruler. But he had sons and grandsons, and these, he must have hoped, would form a dynasty that would attract the loyalty of every part of Ireland. With the whole country united under a single king no foreigners would be able to obtain a foothold.

We do not know how much his ambition urged him, how much a dream of his youth came back to him, or how much his councillors pleaded with him. But we know that the other countries in Western Europe were on the point of finding their masters in single kings and it was time that one king should endeavour to place the whole of Ireland under a single government. Brian determined to take the High Kingship from Malachi. He formed an alliance with his late enemies, the Norse, and marched into Malachi's territory. He came to Tara, to the ancient seat of the High Kings of Ireland and demanded that Malachi should submit to him. This Malachi did. Each king retained his own territories but now Brian had the authority of High King.

Under his government Ireland became settled and prosperous. Schools and universities flourished and important works were written. It was Brian's design to make a Gaelic Empire that would include Ireland, and part of Scotland. The Norse were still in Ireland, but they no longer troubled the life of the country, while their trade and commerce added to its wealth.

One part of Ireland Brian treated with severity—the kingdom of Leinster. He had imposed a heavy tax upon this part of the country, but he was now striving to make a treaty by which this tax would be abolished. The King of Leinster came to Brian's court at Kincora in the County Clare, and he was treated with great honour. But one day, at a game of chess, a foolish quarrel was begun between him and Brian's son Murrough. The young Prince taunted the King of Leinster with his defeat in Wicklow and repeated the story that he had been found in a yew tree during the battle. The King of Leinster left Kincora declaring for war. Straightway he made an alliance with the Norse in the east of Ireland. The foreigners saw in the quarrel between Brian and the King of Leinster a chance of destroying Brian's power. They summoned their friends and allies from the Western Islands, from Scotland and from the coasts of the North Sea. A year was spent in preparing for the war. Malachi joined with Brian, and the Gaelic clans in Scotland sent their best fighting men to help him.

The war was decided in one battle that took place near Dublin in 1014. Sitric, the Norse King, had his armies within and around the walls of Dublin. The battle was begun by Brian and Malachi attacking their positions. Towards evening the Norse and their allies gave way and retreated across the strand towards their ships. The Irish forces swept after them and before Sitric's men could gain their ships whole companies of them were destroyed. This was the battle of Clontarf, the last great battle between the Irish and the Norse—indeed the last battle fought in Europe between Christian and Pagan armies,—for the Norse who were raiding outside their own country had not yet adopted Christianity.

But King Brian did not survive the victory that would have enabled him to establish his dynasty in Ireland. His grandson Turlough pursued an enemy far into the sea and was drowned, his son Murrough was slain in and the King himself was slain in his tent by a Norseman.

Had Brian survived his victory, or had his surviving sons been able to carry out his policy, Ireland would have become a kingdom strong enough to resist all invaders. Malachi became High King again, but after Malachi's death there was no king strong enough to rule the whole country. Brian's own example prompted one king after another to seize the High Kingship by force. For over a hundred years after Brian's death there was discord in Ireland. The absence of a strong government enabled the Normans   They came into Ireland in 1170.") ?> who had just conquered England to invade Ireland in 1169. Dublin was made the capital of a Norman-English government whose policy it was to keep Ireland in an unsettled condition. But it took four hundred years of warfare to reduce the Irish princes and lords to submission.