When the marauding Northmen first raided Ireland, they seem not to have had the most remote idea of either conquering the country or making permanent settlements in it. They may not have despised Irish beef and mutton, but what they wanted above all was gold and silver. When Christianity was firmly established in Ireland, the monasteries became the great depositories of the wealth of the country, and the clergy may be said to have become its bankers. The monasteries, therefore, became, to a certain extent, what banks are now, and it was to the monasteries the Danes gave their first attention. It can hardly be proved from Irish history that the Danes ever tried to conquer Ireland but once, and that was at the battle of Clontarf. Even under Turgesius, when they succeeded in establishing themselves almost everywhere there was salt water or fresh water to float their ships, they played the part of raiders and not of conquerors, and never formed a permanent settlement out of sight of their galleys. In England and in France they acted quite differently. They conquered and kept all England and a considerable part of France. They went to England and France to establish themselves, but they went to Ireland to plunder. The question to be solved is, Why did the Danes act so differently in Ireland from the way they acted in England and in other countries? There seems to be no way to answer this question except by saying that there was so much more of the precious metals in Ireland, that to get them, and not to conquer the country or form permanent settlements in it, was their prime object. If history was absolutely silent about the doings of the Northmen in Ireland, we would, from a surer guide than history, know that plunder and not settlement was what they had in view. That guide is place names. There are more Scandinavian place names to be found in some parishes in the north-east of England than there are in all Ireland. There are hardly a dozen Scandinavian place names in Ireland, and they are _all_ on the sea coast but _one_. That one is Leixlip, and it is only a few miles from the sea, on a river which the galleys of the Northmen could easily ascend. The only time at which a serious attempt seems to have been made by the Northmen to become possessed of Ireland was shortly before the battle of Clontarf, and that attempt seems to have owed its origin to that horrible but beautiful woman, Gormfhlaith, sister to the king of Leinster, and whose last of many husbands was Brian Boramha. That attempt utterly failed, and no other was ever made. If the Northmen cannot be said to have seriously contemplated the conquest of Ireland prior to the time immediately before the battle of Clontarf, it does not seem to have been from lack of men in the country, for Irish annals and history speak of their vast numbers in such a way as hardly leaves a doubt as to the awfulness of the scourge they were to the country at large.