102 IRELAND PREVIOUS TO THE INVASION BY THE ENGLISH. 



of the country was that no doubt which was common to Britian, as its 

 priests or professors were Druids. Of this order nothing is recorded to 

 distinguish them from the Druids of Britain. Like them they had the 

 direction of all religious ceremonies : they enjoyed the same reputation 

 for wisdom ; their advice was asked with the same readiness in all mat- 

 ters of policy or emergency ; and their directions were followed with an 

 attention equally scrupulous. They excelled in divination, and in all its 

 mystical concomitants ; and to them, as bards, was assigned the task of 

 embodying in verse, and adapting to the music of their harp, the deeds 

 of departed valour. Their verses and their music were alike the lan- 

 guage of passion ; and to this period may, possibly, be ascribed the ori- 

 gin of several of those airs, the effects of which at the present day are 

 neither slight nor transient. 



DANISH CONQUEST. 



About the end of the 8th century, the Irish were destined to expe- 

 rience a share of those depredations which the Danes, Norwegians, and 

 other northern adventurers, had previously committed in Britain ; and 

 who, in the reign of Hugh V., of Milesian extraction, landed on the 

 coast of Munster, in very considerable force, from a fleet of fifty ships. 

 To these other adventurers followed, and so successful were their plans of 

 subjugation, that, in less than half a century from the period of their in- 

 vasion, a Norwegian of the name of Turges or Turgesius was proclaimed 

 monarch of all Ireland, A.D. 845. Though the unfortunate feuds and 

 conflicting animosities which prevailed among its princes, rendered Ireland 

 an otherwise easy prey to foreign conquest, yet, amid their humiliation, 

 the spirit of resistance in the breasts of Irishmen, towards these scourges 

 of their peace, seems never to have been extinguished. Repeated battles 

 were fought between the invader and the invaded, with various success ; 

 the attempt of Magnus, a Norwegian king, to subjugate the island, was 

 unsuccessful, and a blow to the Danish power, from which it never re- 

 covered, was given by the forces of a celebrated king, named Brian Bo- 

 riome, near Clontarf. Though thus conquered, and having the supreme 

 power thus wrested from them, the Danes and Norwegians yet possessed 

 great influence in the country ; as they were in possession of the princi- 

 pal seaports and forts, which the native princes, with great simplicity, 

 allowed them to occupy, with the view of encouraging commerce. Such, 

 then, was the state of Ireland, her fortresses and seaports in the posses- 

 sion of these Scandinavian adventurers called Easterlings or Ostmeu — 



