Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/567

 560 Comgall did so, and he then said, “Speak thou, Druid, and tell us how the court shall fare this night.”

“This,” said the Druid, “is what I have often foretold. Your foes are powerful, and will use every effort for your destruction: you are therefore bound to guard your court well and vigilantly.”

“it shall be done,” they all replied with one voice; “for let Nabgodon come with ever so strong a force, we shall defeat him.”

This announcement was received with a loud shout by Ridoun’s men: then did Comgall assume his kingly place in the court, and he said to one of his chiefs—

“Good, Fergus! Where will you take your seat this night?”

“I will sit in the northern seat,” answered Fergus, “because, should Nabgodon arrive, it is at the northern port he will enter.”

So Fergus sat in the northern champion’s seat. And Muirehead Mergach (Murray the rusty), son to the King of Scotland, sat in the other champion’s seat opposite Fergus. And Anadal, the heroic, Prince of Kerry, with 300 warriors of his own tribe (who were all in political exile from their own country), took up their position at the door nearest to Comgall in the court. Then came Crimthan, the victorious son of Fergus, and Carbery Conganenes, son of Carbery Crone, to the other door. Ridoun sat on Comgall’s right, with the chiefs of Rachraun behind him, and Taise Taebgel, with her train of maidens behind her, was placed at the other side of Comgall. Frachna the poet, and Fraoch, the Druid, also sat in Comgall’s presence; and although they had some dread of the expected invasion, they did not the less make merry at their cups, their music, and their conversation.

While these events were taking place in Rachraun, Nabgodon was sailing southwards with a well-appointed fleet and an army of chosen men who were resolved to accomplish their purpose, or die.

The details of the voyage, the landing of the Norwegians on the island, and their attack on Ridoun and Comgall, are given at such full length in the original, that if translated here they would fill seven dozen pages. Suffice it to say, that after many heroic acts on the part of the defenders, they were, after a long and bloody struggle, victorious; the Norwegians were repulsed with great slaughter, and Comgall and his fair bride, having had the good fortune to recover their territory, were the progenitors of a long line of princes, who for many years afterwards reigned in Ulster.

With reference to the foregoing story, it is interesting to find that there is some confirmation in history of at least one of the principal characters mentioned in it. At the celebrated burying-ground at Clonmacnoise there is a carved tomb-stone, of which an engraving is given in Dr. Petrie’s essay on the round towers of Ireland, and which bears the following inscription in the Irish character:

If this Conaing is the son of the hero of the story, he must have abjured the Druidism of his ancestors and embraced Christianity, which had probably begun to spread in different parts of Ireland; for, on referring to the Irish annals, the death of Conaing, son of Comgall, King of Teffia (or Ulster), is recorded as having taken place in the year 822, before which time St. Columba had established a church here, which was, however, destroyed by the Danes, as recorded by the four masters in the year 790.

Clonmacnoise was a celebrated burying-place of the Ulster princes, and on the same tomb is the name of another prince of Ulster, who died A.D. 979. The upper inscription—that of the son of Comgall—is obviously older and contemporaneous with the carving on the stone, which agrees with the early date of his death as recorded in the Irish annals.

At a very early period it appears that Rathlin was one of those islands which was selected as the residence of the first Christian teachers who came to Ireland: and in the Irish annals there is a list of the bishops and abbots of Rathlin, commencing with the name of Segenius, Abbot of Iona, as the first who built and established a church in the island, A.D. 630, although St. Comgall, Abbot of Bangor (county of Down), had attempted to place a colony of monks here about the latter end of the preceding century, but apparently without success, for, as his biographer says, “When St. Comgall would have built a cell in the isle named Rachrain, there came thirty soldiers, who, holding his hands, drove him out.” St. Columba, who appears to have had a partiality for remote islands, did not overlook Rathlin in his peregrinations through Ireland, previous to his settling down in Iona. His biographer, Adamnan, relates of him that—“When he was sojourning in the island Rachlin (Rachrea), a certain peasant named Luigne (Looney), very much deformed, came to him to complain that his wife hated him, and made his life miserable. The saint called the wife before him, and, admonishing her of her duty, asked her why she made herself so disagreeable to her husband. She answered that she would obey the saint in everything else, but she could not live with Looney; she was ready to go into a nunnery rather than continue his wife, for her soul abhorred him. The saint answered:

“This cannot be so long as thy husband liveth—they whom God hath joined together cannot by man be put asunder: but come, let us three—thou, thy husband, and I—fast and pray the Lord for this one day.”

To this they consented. The wife and husband fasted and prayed with the saint for that day, and then he said to the woman on the following morning:

“O woman, wilt thou now say as thou didst yesterday, that thou desirest to separate from thy husband, and enter a nunnery?”

She answered: “Now I know that thy prayer has been heard of the Lord, for him whom I detested yesterday I now love. This night—I know not how—my heart has been changed from hatred to love.”

And so it was, that from that day to her death, she continued a most loving and faithful wife to her husband.