After his triumphal entry into his palace with his princely hostages, rejoicings and feastings went on for the space of five months, the hostages taking part in all the festivities and being royally entertained. The Queen herself waited on them and saw to all their wants. Before their arrival messengers had been sent forward to tell the Queen to send out her maidens to cut fresh rushes for the floor and to bring in kine and oxen for the feast. The Queen on her own behalf, to show her joy, supplied them all with food, and her banquets “banished the hungry look from the army.” When the season of rejoicing was past Murtough led the captive princes out of his castle, and lest he should seem to be assuming glory and rights not properly his own, he sent them under escort to the High-King of Ireland, begging him, in courtly language, to receive them in token of his submission and respect. His message runs thus: “Receive, O Donagh, these noble princes, for there is none in Erin so greatly exalted as thyself.” But Donagh, King of Ireland, would not accept so great a token of submission at Murtough’s hands. He replied: “Now thou art a greater prince than I, O King! Thy hand it was that took these princes captive; in all Ireland is there none thine equal.” So the captives were sent back, and apparently set free, with the blessing of the King of Ireland. Only one year afterwards, in 943, Murtough again met the angry Northmen at the ford of Ardee, on the River Boyne, and fell by the sword of Blacaire, son of Godfrey, lord of the Foreigners. There is something romantic and unusual in every act of this Northern prince of the O’Neills, and we feel inclined to echo the despairing words of the old chronicler who records his death: “Since Murtough does not live the country of the Gael is for ever oppressed.” It would seem to have been a daughter of this brave Murtough whose story we find in the Icelandic Laxdæla Saga, and who in these troublous times was carried away by the Norse out of her own country and sold as a slave in Northern Europe, eventually being purchased by an Icelander and carried away to Iceland. Her story is so interesting in itself and throws so much light on the conditions of the time that we will now tell it at length. If it was really Murtough of the Leather Cloaks who was father to this poor enslaved princess, torn from her home in Ireland and carried far overseas, never to return, we cease to wonder at the persistent hatred with which Murtough pursued the foes at whose hand he had received so great injuries as the death of his father and the loss of his daughter. In this case he was the grandfather of the famous Icelandic chief, Olaf Pa, or Olaf the Peacock. Chapter XVII The Story of Olaf the Peacock (FROM LAXDÆLA SAGA)