Westropp — Early Italian Maps of Ireland from lSOO—1600. 375 



the land on which she stranded is entitled to a share of "foreign nuts, 

 goblets, and to an escu}) vessel of wine or of honey." The body of the code 

 was revised or compiled by Cennfaeladh, son of Oilell,' wounded in the Battle 

 of Magh Eath, a.d. 642. 



I need not go into the many early allusions to wine; history and romance 

 are full of them. " A cask of wine from the land of the Franks " was brought 

 to Clonmacnois, in the heart of Ireland, in St. Kieran's lifetime, ante 548,' 

 and his contemporary, Diarmait mac Cerbaile, is called " a king with whom 

 wine used to be dealt out in splendour." The authorities in Southern Gaul, 

 about A.D. 610, deported St. Columbanus from Nantes to Erin in a ship 

 " engaged in the commerce of the Scots."^ Domnall, the High King (627- 

 641), provided wine, as well as ale and mead, for his guests, if the wild Saga 

 of " Magh Eath " be correct here. Indeed, the mere need of wine for the 

 Sacrament, especially before the cup was withdrawn from the laity, in about 

 900, implies a certain amount of trade in wine, and also in foreign fabrics for 

 the vestments of the clergy and the robes of the chiefs.' 



In the Norse period we frequently hear of wine ; Cormac, King-Bishop 

 of Cashel (slain 902), gives in his Glossary — " escopfina, a vessel used for 

 measuring wine among the Norsemen and Franks."^ This well defines the 

 route of the wine trade from France through the Norse and Danish seaports. 

 The latter foreigners paid a large wine tribute to the High King Brian 

 (1000-1014) at Kincora near Killaloe. It is said by contemporary writers' 

 to have amounted to a cask of 32 gallons each day from Limerick, and 

 150 casks per annum from Dublin. In the pathetic elegy on the great king 

 by his bard, Mac Liae, we hear, " where are the nobles and sons of kings with 

 whom we drank wine in thy halls ? " William of Malmesbury, in the following 

 century, mentions a considerable trade between Biistol and Ireland" before 



1 Senchus M6r, vol. i, p. 129 ; vol. iv, p. 75. 



'Ibid., p. 311. 



^ Life of St. Kieran. 



* Jonas' "Life of St. Columtanus," cap. xxii, "quae Scottonim commercia veierat " : see 

 Reeves' " Adamnan's Life of St. Cohimba." 



^ The Irish, too, had far advanced in cosmography; note how the Bishop of Salzburg, an 

 Irishman, taught that the earth was round, and " that tliere were (inhabitants in the) Antipodes." 

 He was condemned by Pope Boniface, 722. (See, inter alia, "Historical and Chronological 

 Deductions of the Origin of Commerce," p. 65.) 



^ Cormac's " Glossary" ed. Whitley Stokes. 



' Poems of Mac Liac ; see " Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irisli," vol. ii, pp. 118-121. 



' " De Gestis Pontificum," Book iv, " Bristowe nomine, in quo est nauium portus ab Hibernia 

 et Norvegia et caeteris." It was a centre of the slave trade to Ireland in the time of Wulstan, 

 Bishop of Worcester, who died in 1095 ; and Earl Eobert, after his marriage, in 1119, to the daughter 

 of Robert FitzHamon, raided the surrounding districts, and sold his slaves to the Irish. Nearly a 

 hundred years later the Irish regarded the Norman invasion as a punishment for this vile traffic " in 

 the bodies and souls of men." 



