Breasal appears to have held the abbacy without challenge for nearly thirty years; and, five years after his accession, he seems to have been fully recognised by the Columban monasteries in Ireland, as we find that the law of Columcille was enforced in 778 by Donnchadh, king of Ireland, and head of the Northern Hy Neill, and by him as abbot of Iona.[535] In 782 we have the first notice of a new functionary in Iona, in the death in that year of Muredach son of Huairgaile, steward of Iona.[536] His functions were probably connected with the law of Columcille, which involved the collection of tribute. We find, too, during this period, some incidental notices of two of the other foundations in the Isles. In 775 dies Conall of Maigh Lunge,[537] the monastery founded by Columba in Tyree. In 776 the death of Maelemanach, abbot of Kingarth[538] in Bute, and in 790 that of Noe, abbot of the same monastery, are recorded.[539] We learn, too, that while Breasal was abbot two Irish monarchs retired to Iona and died there. Niall Frosach, formerly king of all Ireland, died there in 778.[540] Airtgaile, son of Cathail, king of Connaught, assumed the pilgrim’s staff in 782, and in the following year retired to Iona, and died there after eight years spent in seclusion.[541] The last connection of the Scots, too, with Dalriada was severed for the time by the removal of the relics of the three sons of Erc, the founders of the colony, who had been buried in Iona, to the great cemetery of Tailten in Ireland.[542] [Sidenote: A.D. 794. First appearance of Danish pirates, and Iona repeatedly ravaged by them.] Breasal’s tenure of the abbacy, however, was to be characterised by a greater event, which was to exercise a fatal influence on the fortunes of the Scottish monasteries for many a long and dreary year. This was the appearance in the Isles, in 794, of a host of sea pirates from the northern kingdom of Denmark, who were to render the name of Dane equivalent in the ears of the Columban monks to the spoliation of their monasteries and the slaughter of their inmates. In 794 there appears in the Irish Annals the ominous entry of the devastation of all the islands of Britain by the Gentiles, as they were at first called, followed, in 795, by the spoliation of Iae Columcille, or Iona, by them. Again, three years after, the spoliation of the islands of the sea between Erin and Alban by the Gentiles.[543] The Danes soon discovered that the richest spoil was to be found in the monasteries, and directed their destructive attacks against them. Breasal, however, though doomed to witness these acts of spoliation, was spared the sight of the total destruction of his monastery; for in 801 he died, in the thirty-first year of his tenure of the abbacy.[544] [Sidenote: A.D. 801-802. Connachtach, abbot of Iona.]