A Literary History of Ireland, from Earliest Times to the Present DayHyde, Douglas
History
A Literary History of Ireland, from Earliest Times to the Present Day
Hyde, Douglas
Civilization, Celtic, in literature; Irish literature -- History and criticism; Language and culture -- Ireland
There was a second uprising of the Athach-Tuatha later on,[13] when
they massacred their masters on Moy Bolg. The lawful heir to the
throne was yet unborn at the time of this massacre and so escaped.
This was the celebrated Tuathal [Too-a-hal, now Toole], who ultimately
succeeded to the throne and became one of the most famous of all the
pre-Patrician kings. It was he who first established or cut out the
province of Meath. The name Meath had always existed as the appellation
of a small district near which the provinces of Ulster, Connacht,
Leinster, and the two Munsters joined. Tuathal cut off from each of the
four provinces the angles adjoining it, and out of these he constituted
a new province[14] to be thenceforth the special estate, demesne,
and inheritance of the High-kings of Ireland. He built, or rebuilt,
four palaces in the four quarters of the district he had thus annexed,
all of them celebrated in after times--of which more later on. It was
he also who, under evil auspices and in an evil hour, extorted from
Leinster the first Borumha,[15] or Boru tribute,--_nomen infaustum_--a
step which contributed so powerfully to mould upon lines of division
and misery the history of our unhappy country from that day until the
present, by estranging the province of Leinster, throwing it into the
arms of foreigners, and causing it to put itself into opposition to
the rest of Ireland. This unhappy tribute, of which we shall hear more
later on, was imposed during the reigns of forty kings.
Thirteen years after the death of Tuathal, Cáthaoir [Cauheer],
celebrated for his Will or Testament,[16] reigned; he was of pure
Leinster blood, and the men of that province have always felicitated
themselves upon having given at least this one great king to Ireland.
It is from him that the great Leinster families--the O'Tooles,
O'Byrnes, Mac Morroughs or Murphys, O'Conor Falys, O'Gormans, and
others--descend. He was slain, A.D. 123, by Conn of the Hundred
Battles.[17]
There are few kings during the three hundred years preceding and
following the birth of Christ more famous than this Conn, and there
is a very large body of saga collected round him and his rival Eoghan
[Owen], the king of Munster who succeeded in wresting half the
sovereignty from him. As the result of their conflicts that part of
Ireland which lies north of the Escir Riada,[18] or, roughly speaking,
that lies north of a line drawn from Dublin to Galway, has from that
day to this been known as Conn's Half, and that south of the same line
as Owen's Half. Owen was at last slain by him of the hundred battles at
the fight of Moy Léana.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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