MACALiSTEii — On a Runic Inscription at Killaloe Cathedral. 497 



These Limerick ScandiDavians are often spoken of as the " Limerick 

 Danes." The term is colloquial and inexact. They belonged to the Fionn- 

 ghaill or " White Foreigners " — that is, the Scandinavians proper, who first 

 appeared on the Irish coast about the year 793. The Ihibh-glmill or " Black 

 Foreigners," that is the Danes — so called because the Danes are, actually, 

 darker than the Scandinavians — do not appear in Irish history till 851. 

 The redoubtable Turgeis was of the earlier invaders.' 



The Fionn-ghaill were such notorious foes to Christianity, that according 

 to a curious story preserved for us by Mac Firbis,^ their enemies, the Danes, 

 coming to attack them, put themselves under the protection of St. Patiick. 

 It was, however, inevitable that they should gradually begin to fuse with the 

 native population among which they settled. The union seems to have been 

 practically complete about a hundred years after their first appearance. If 

 we turn over the pages of the Four Masters, we find that in 951 they made 

 friendly compact with the men of Munster to raid Clonmacnois ; and a little 

 later their leader is found to have two sons, one called by the Teutonic name 

 of Amhlaoibh (Olafr), the other bearing the Celtic name Duibh-chend 

 (A. Q. M., A.D. 975). Analogous with this is the owner of the Greenmoiuit 

 sword, with his Celtic name Domhnall. It would, therefore, not be surpris - 

 ing that the Christian religion of the native Irish should have made some 

 progress among the invaders; though there is very little definite record pre- 

 served of conversion among them, whatever inferences we may legitimately 

 draw from reading between the lines of the Annals. The native historians 

 could not bring themselves to see any good in the reivers, and uniformly 

 represent them as bloodthirsty pagans. Here, at last, we have such a record : 

 for Thorgrim, in spite of his heathenish name, must have been at least 

 Christian enough to erect a cross. 



As to the date of the inscription, I should put it somewhere between the 

 middle of the tenth century (when we find this evidence of fusion to which I 

 have referred) and the date of the Greenmount rune ; the poor ornamentation 

 on this latter object is late, and most probably it belongs to somewhere in the 

 first half of the twelfth century. Perhaps the first half of the eleventh 

 century is the most likely period to which to assign the stone before us. 



' Various attempts have been made to identify Turgeis with persons in Scandinavian 

 record — Ragnarr LotSbrok and others. These are all quite unnecessary. Turgeis was 

 simply the local pirate, who looms large in Irish record because his depredations came 

 home to the Irish who suffered from them ; and there is no reason to suppose that he 

 had any importance outside Ireland. It seems to have escaped notice that (if we may 

 trust Stephens) the name occurs on a late tombstone at Saltune in Denmark (0. N. Bunic 

 Mommients, vol. ii, p. 777). 



^ Three Fragments of Irish Annald, ed. O'Donovan, pp. 120-1. 



