497 
obstructed by embankments and walls, could not have differed many 
minutes on the 23rd April, 1014, from 
5° 30™ A. M. ; 
the evening tide being full in at 
5* 55™ P.M. 
In the following narrative, the full tide in the morning is said to 
have coincided with the sunrise: and as the sun rises from 5" 30™ to 4° 
30™ in the month of April, the truthfulness of the narrative becomes 
strikingly evident. The extract is taken from the ‘‘ Wars of the Gaed- 
hil with the Gaill;’”’ or, ‘‘ The Wars of the Irish with the Danes and 
other Foreigners,” a work which Dr. Todd is editing in the original 
Trish, with a translation and notes, and which will form one of the series 
of Historical Chronicles of Great Britain and Ireland, now in course of 
publication under the authority of the Government. The following 
narrative occurs in ch. evil. of this work:— 
CVII.—“‘ However, now, they continued in battle array and fighting 
from sunrise to evening. This is the same length of time as that 
-which the tide takes to come, and to flood and to ebb. For it was at 
the full tide the foreigners came out to fight the battle in the morning, 
and the tide had come to the same place again at the close of the day, 
when the foreigners were defeated; and the tide had carried away 
their ships from them, so that they had not at the last any place to fly 
to, but into the sea, after all the mail-coated foreigners had been 
killed by the Dal Cais. An awful rout was now made of the foreigners 
and of the Laighin (Leinstermen), closely and simultaneously, and 
they shouted their respective cries, and whoops of rout, and retreat, 
and running; but they could only fly to the sea, because they had 
no other place to retreat to, seeing they were cut off between it and 
the head of Dubhghall’s Bridge; and they were cut off between it and 
the wood on the other side. They retreated therefore to the sea, like 
a herd of cows in heat, from sun, and from gadflies, and from insects; 
and they were pursued closely, rapidly, and lightly ; and the foreigners 
were drowned in great numbers in the sea, and they lay in heaps and 
in hundreds, confounded, after parting with their bodily senses and un- 
derstanding, under the powerful, stout, stern mauling, and under the 
tremendous, hard-hearted pressure with which the Dal Cais, and the 
Connachtmen, and as many as were also there of the nobles of Erinn, 
pursued them.” 
T shall leave to Dr. Todd and others, well informed of the cireum- 
stances and localities of the battle of Clontarf, to draw further conclu- 
sions from the calculation I have presented to the Academy. To my 
mind it appears to throw considerable light on the foregoing narrative, 
and to establish conclusively that portions of it, at least, must have 
been written from the testimony of actual eye-witnesses, as none others 
could have invented the fact that the battle began at sunrise, and that 
the tide was then fullin. The importance of the time of tide became 
R. I, A. PROC.—YVOL. VII 44 
