Irish Nationality

								

been consecrated in England (1036-1161), was the last to hold out
against the union of churches, till this strife was healed by St.
Lorcán ua Tuathail, the first Irish bishop consecrated in Dublin. He
carried to that battleground of the peoples all the charity, piety,
and asceticism of the Irish saint: feeding the poor daily, never
himself tasting meat, rising at midnight to pray till dawn, and ever
before he slept going out into the graveyard to pray there for the
dead; from time to time withdrawing among the Wicklow hills to St.
Kevin's Cave at Glendalough, a hole in the cliff overhanging the dark
lake swept with storm from the mountain-pass, where twice a week bread
and water were brought him by a boat and a ladder up the rock. His
life was spent in the effort for national peace and union, nor had
Ireland a truer patriot or wiser statesman.
Kings and chiefs sat with the clergy in the Irish synods, and in the
state too there were signs of a true union of the peoples. The Danes,
gradually absorbed into the Irish population, lost the sense of
separate nationality. The growing union of the peoples was seen in the
increasing power of the Ardri. Brian's line maintained at Cachel the
title of "kings of Ireland," strengthening their house with Danish
marriages; they led Danish forces and were elected kings of the Danes
in Dublin. But in the twelfth century it was the Connacht kings who
came to the front, the same race that a thousand years before had
spread their power across the Shannon to Usnech and to Tara. Turlough
O'Conor (1118-1156) was known to Henry I of England as "king of
Ireland"; on a metal cross made for him he is styled "king of Erin,"
and a missal of his time (1150) contains the only prayer yet known for
"the king of the Irish and his army"--the sign, as we may see, of
foreign influences on the Irish mind. His son, Ruaidhri or Rory, was
proclaimed (1166) Ardri in Dublin with greater pomp than any king
before him, and held at Athboy in Meath an assembly of the "men of
Ireland," archbishops and clergy, princes and nobles, eighteen
thousand horsemen from the tribes and provinces, and a thousand Danes
from Dublin--there laws were made for the honour of churches and
clergy, the restoring of prey unjustly taken, and the control of
tribes and territories, so that a woman might traverse the land in
safety; and the vast gathering broke up "in peace and amity, without
battle or controversy, or any one complaining of another at that
meeting." It is said that Rory O'Conor's procession when he held the
last of the national festivals at Telltown was several miles in
length.
The whole of Ireland is covered with the traces of this great national
revival. We may still see on islands, along river-valleys, in lonely
fields, innumerable ruins of churches built of stone chiselled as
finely as man's hand can cut it; and of the lofty round towers and
sculptured high crosses that were multiplied over the land after the