srs 



serve their children from the influence of magic ; they had their 

 prophetesses and fortune-tellers, their charms, their oracles, their in- 

 spired dreams, &;c. In reference to which last supposed source of 

 revelation, the battle of Clontarf was said to have been foreshown in 

 a dream to a warrior in the ^budas, which the supernatural herald is 

 made thus to recount ; 



" Ipse fui praesens homines ubi conseraere 

 Praelia, personuit gladius regione in Hiberna, 

 Multa ubi scuta congressa fuere, metaJla 

 Stridula clangebant, galearum in murmure fusco."* 



Broder too, one of the Danish warriors at that battle, is represented 

 as having consulted augury to forelearn the fate of the day.-f* - 



Early in the tenth century, however, conversion began its work 

 among this people too. In or about 920 special notice occurs of the 

 baptism of Arius, a chieftain of their race.;]: About the year 948 

 they are said to have built that Abbey of Saint Mary near Dublin, for 

 monks of the Benedictine order, which still gives name to a street 

 upon its ancient site. And in 964, as has been remarked, the great 

 majority embraced Christianity ; the conversion, however, was even 

 then neither universal nor unwavering, of which the Broder already 

 mentioned, furnishes a remarkable instance. § 



* Ant. Celt. Scand, p. 128. 



f " Hoc per veneficia explorante quemadmorfum abitura esaet pugna, responsum oraculi 

 sic tuleiat, &c." — Ant. Celt. Scand. p. 121. 



X " Arius revertendi copiam non habuit, ibique baptizatus est. Hsec Rafn Limrecipeta, 

 qui Limreci in Hibernia diu commoratus fuerat, primus retulit." — Ant. Celt. Scand. 



§ " Broder, qui religionem Christianam olim amplexus, atque diaconi officio functus eam 

 rejecerat, factusque Dei maledictor nunc gentilia numina colebat, erat multo omnium artis 

 magicae peritissimus, armatuque instructus militari, qui omne respuebat ferrum, porro et sta- 

 tttra grandi et magnis viribus, promissaque adeo coma ut earn balteo subtexuerit, colore nigri- 

 cante."— Ant. Celt. Scwd.p, 113- 



