A Popular History of Ireland : from the Earliest Period to the Emancipation of the Catholics — CompleteMcGee, Thomas D'Arcy
History
A Popular History of Ireland : from the Earliest Period to the Emancipation of the Catholics — Complete
McGee, Thomas D'Arcy
Ireland -- History
In the third quarter of this century there arose in the Isle of Man a
fortunate leader, who may almost be called the last of the sea kings.
This was Godard _Crovan_ (the white-handed), son of an Icelandic
Prince, and one of the followers of Harald Harfagar and Earl Tosti, in
their invasion of Northumbria (A.D. 1066). Returning from the defeat of
his chiefs, Godard saw and seized upon Man as the centre of future
expeditions of his own, in the course of which he subdued the Hebrides,
divided them with the gallant Somerled (ancestor of the MacDonalds of
the Isles), and established his son Lagman (afterwards put to death by
King Magnus _Barefoot_) as his viceroy in the Orkneys and Shetlands.
The weakened condition of the Danish settlement at Dublin attracted his
ambition, and where he entered as a mediator he remained as a master.
In the succession of the Dublin Vikings he is assigned a reign of ten
years, and his whole course of conquest seems to have occupied some
twenty years (A.D. 1077 to 1098). At length the star of this Viking of
the Irish sea paled before the mightier name of a King of Norway, whose
more brilliant ambition had a still shorter span. The story of this
_Magnus_ (called, it is said, from his adoption of the Scottish kilt,
Magnus _Barefoot_) forms the eleventh Saga in "the Chronicles of the
Kings of Norway." He began to reign in the year 1093, and soon after
undertook an expedition to the south, "with many fine men, and good
shipping." Taking the Orkneys on his way, he sent their Earls prisoners
to Norway, and placed his own son, Sigurd, in their stead. He overran
the Hebrides, putting Lagman, son of Godard Crovan, to death. He spared
only "the holy Island," as Iona was now called, even by the Northmen,
and there, in after years, his own bones were buried. The Isles of Man
and Anglesea, and the coast of Wales, shared the same fate, and thence
he retraced his course to Scotland, where, borne in his galley across
the Isthmus of Cantyre, to fulfil an old prophecy, he claimed
possession of the land on both sides of Loch Awe. It was while he
wintered in the Southern Hebrides, according to the Saga, that he
contracted his son Sigurd with the daughter of Murkertach O'Brien,
called by the Northmen "Biadmynia." In summer he sailed homeward, and
did not return southward till the ninth year of his reign (A.D. 1102),
when his son, Sigurd, had come of age, and bore the title of "King of
the Orkneys and Hebrides." "He sailed into the west sea," says the
Saga, "with the finest men who could be got in Norway. All the powerful
men of the country followed him, such as Sigurd Hranesson, and his
brother Ulf, Vidkunner Johnsson, Dag Eliffsson, Sorker of Sogn, Eyvind
Olboge, the king's marshal, and many other great men." On the
intelligence of this fleet having arrived in Irish waters, according to
the annals, Murkertach and his allies marched in force to Dublin,
where, however, Magnus "made peace with them for one year," and
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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