44 



when " the Damnonians of Connaught were warring against Ulster."* 

 The histories of the Northern nations vaunt of giving him a more 

 meritorious opportunity of evincing his courage, one more in keeping 

 with the heroes with whom he has been poetically associated ; and 

 although Dr. O'Conor and other antiquarians insist that Ireland was 

 never invaded by the Danes until the ninth century, and although 

 the name of Danes was certainly unknown in Europe until the sixth,-f 

 yet, what Campbell perhaps unhappily terms " a cloud of authori- 

 ties".!, foreign and domestic, establish the fact of a descent of 

 Northern pirates from their ancient country on Ireland even at this 

 early period, but -whether under the name of Goths or Ostmen, Nor- 

 mans or Scandinavians, or more sonorously, "the sons of Lochhn," 

 is of very little importance. 



Saxo Grammaticus, who flourished in the twelfth century, and 

 having collected the materials of his history from the old Danish 

 poets and the Icelandic chronicles, delivered them to posterity with 

 an elegance of style that excited the admiration of Erasmus, men- 

 tions,§ that some short time previous to the birth of Christ the city of 

 Dublin (" Duflynum oppidum") was taken by a band of Danes under 

 the command of Fridlevus the first, by means of a stratagem more 

 fully detailed in Des Roches's " Histoire de Dannemarc ;"ll and Albert 

 Krantz, a writer of the fifteenth century, records** the same event. 

 Again does the latter historian, whose well known character for integ- 

 rity and industry in his researches, attaches superior credit to his 

 accounts, inform us in his Chronicon Dania^.f-f that precisely about 



* "Damnonii Connaciae bellum gerebant contra Ultoniam." — O'Conor Rer. Hib. Script. 

 V. 2. p. 12. n. 41. 



-(• O'Conor, Rer. Hib. Script, v. 2. p. 24. n.— Campbell's Strictures, p. 90. 



+ Strictures, pp. 90 and 91. § Hist. Dan. p. 67.— See post, per 1. sect. 6. 



11 Vol. 1. p. 133. ** Chronicon Daniae, lib. 1. c. 27. If Lib. 1. c. 32. 



