Closely connected with the events of this time, a thousand years ago, was the remarkable story of Queen Gormlaith. She was daughter of the king of Ireland, Flann Sinna. Apparently she had been betrothed to Cormac, king of Cashel. He having become an ecclesiastic, Gormlaith was given in marriage to Cearbhall, king of Leinster, the same Cearbhall, victor over Cormac at Belach Mugna, to whose sword an ode written by a Leinster poet is preserved in the Book of Leinster. The Ossory collection of annals, which differs from the ordinary chronicles in expanding into narrative, tells that Cearbhall, wounded in the battle, lay long a-healing, and that once, as the queen sat on the couch at his feet, he boasted rudely over the death of Cormac. Gormlaith reproached him for his disrespect to the memory of so good a king. Her husband, remembering that she had been promised wife to Cormac, became enraged, and with his foot cast the queen from the couch to the floor. Thus affronted in the presence of others, Gormlaith left her husband and went back to her father. Flann refused to receive her, not desiring a quarrel with the king of Leinster. Gormlaith then sought protection from Niall Glúndubh, king of Ailech. Cearbhall died of his wounds the year after the battle, and Niall married Gormlaith. On the death of Flann in 916, Niall became king of Ireland. I have shown that the annals are a record of abnormal rather than of normal matters. Another character of the annals is that they are in the main an aristocratic and personal record, having chief regard to great personages in Church and State and to the personal aspect of events as they concerned these magnates. A good exemplification of this feature of the annals is shown in the record of king Flann's death. It says: "Flann, son of Mael Sechnaill, king of Tara, who reigned thirty-six years, six months, and five days, died in the sixty-eighth year of his age, on Saturday, the 25th of May, about the hour of 1 _p.m._" So Gormlaith, daughter of a king of Ireland, chosen to be queen of Munster, became queen of Leinster, then queen of Ailech, and lastly queen of Ireland. There is an old poem which represents her standing by the grave of her husband Niall and commanding a monk not to set his foot upon that clay. She died in religious retirement in 948, forty years after the battle of Belach Mugna.