what was or was not a legal transfer in Ireland.

His purpose achieved, "inflamed," says Giraldus, "with the desire to see
his native land," but really the better to concoct his plans, he
returned home, landing a little south of Arklow Head, and arriving at
Ferns, where he was hospitably entertained during the winter by its
bishop. The following spring, in the month of May, the first instalment
of the invaders arrived under Robert FitzStephen, a small fleet of Welsh
boats landing them in a creek of the bay of Bannow, where a chasm
between the rocks was long known as "FitzStephen's stride."

Here they were met by Donald McMurrough, son of Dermot, and ten days
later drew up under the walls of Wexford, having so far encountered no
opposition.

In this old Danish town a stout fight was made. The townsfolk, no longer
Vikings but simple traders, did what they could in their own defence.
They burnt their suburbs, consisting doubtless of rude wooden huts; shut
the gates, and upon the first two assaults drove back the assailants. So
violently were they repelled, "that they withdrew," Giraldus tells us,
"in all great haste from the walls." His own younger brother, Robert de
Barri, was amongst the wounded, a great stone falling upon his helmet
and tumbling him headlong into one of the ditches, from the effects of
which blow, that careful historian informs us incidentally, "Sixteen
years later all his jaw teeth fell out!"

Next morning, after mass, they renewed the assault; this time with more
circumspection. Now there were at that time, as it happened, two bishops
in the town, who devoted their energies to endeavouring to induce the
citizens to make peace. In this attempt they were successful, more
successful than might have been expected with men descended from the old
Land Leapers. Wexford opened its gates, its townsmen submitting to
Dermot, who thereupon presented the town to his allies, FitzStephen,
true to his Norman instincts, proceeding forthwith to build a castle
upon the rock of Carneg, at the narrowest point of the river Slaney, the
first of that large crop of castles which subsequently sprang up upon
Irish soil.

The next sharers of the struggle were the wild Ossory clans, who
gathered to the defence of their territory under Donough McPatrick, an
old and especially hated enemy of Dermot's. The latter had now three
thousand men at his back, in addition to his Welsh and Norman allies.
The Ossory men fought, as Gira