The native Irish met their fierce invaders with dauntless courage, but they had been so long at peace that they were no longer expert in the use of arms, and the Danes were all-powerful on the seas. Those Norsemen were pagans, and had no respect for revealed religion, literature, works of art, architecture, or, in, short, anything except land-grabbing and plunder. It must be remembered that most of northern Europe, at the period written of, was in a benighted state, and that Great Britain itself was barely emerging from the intellectual and spiritual gloom of the Dark Ages. The Norse invaders, whenever successful in their enterprises against the Irish chiefs, invariably demolished the churches and colleges, murdered the priests, monks, and nuns—often, however, carrying the latter into captivity—and burned many of the priceless manuscripts, the pride and the glory of the illustrious scholarship of ancient Ireland. In the middle portion of the ninth century—about 840—when Nial III was Ard-Righ of Ireland, came the fierce Dane Turgesius, at the head of an immense fleet and army. He at once proceeded to ravage the exposed portions of the coast, and then forced his way inland, laying the country under tribute of all kinds as he advanced. He made prisoners of Irish virgins and married them, by main force, to his barbarous chiefs. He even occupied the celebrated monastery of Clonmacnois and its university as a headquarters, converted the great altar into a throne, and issued his murderous edicts from that holy spot. Clonmacnois, translated into English, means “the Retreat of the Sons of the Noble,” and was the Alma Mater of the princes and nobility of Ireland. This crowning outrage, coupled with insults offered to Irish ladies, finally aroused the spirit of burning vengeance in the breasts of the Irish people. Tradition says that thirty handsome young men, disguised as maidens, attended a feast given at Clonmacnois by Turgesius and his chiefs. When the barbarians were sated and had fallen into a drunken stupor, the youths rose upon and slew them all. The body of Turgesius, with a millstone tied around the neck, was thrown into a neighboring lake. Then the nation, under the brave Nial III, rose and drove the Norsemen back to the seacoast, where they rallied. Another raid on the interior of the island was attempted, but repelled. Sad to relate, the gallant King Nial, while attempting to save the life of a retainer who fell into the Callan River, was himself drowned, to the great grief of all Ireland. The name of the river in which he perished was changed to the Ownarigh (Ownaree) or King’s River—a designation which, after the lapse of ages, it still retains.