and were cast headlong into the
sea and so drowned."

Shortly after this satisfactory beginning, Strongbow himself appeared
with reinforcements. He attacked Waterford, which was taken after a
short but furious resistance, and the united forces of Dermot and the
Earl marched into the town, where the marriage of the latter with Eva,
Dermot's daughter, was celebrated, as Maclise has represented it in his
picture, amid lowering smoke and heaps of the dead and dying.

Dermot was now on the top of the wave. With his English allies and his
own followers he had a considerable force around him. Guiding the latter
through the Wicklow mountains, which they would probably have hardly got
through unaided, he descended with them upon Dublin, and despite the
efforts of St. Lawrence O'Toole, its archbishop, to effect a pacific
arrangement, the town was taken by assault. The principal Danes, with
Hasculph, their Danish governor, escaped to their ships and sailed
hastily away for the Orkneys.

Meath was the next point to be attacked. O'Rorke, the old foe of Dermot,
who held it for King Roderick, was defeated; whereupon, in defiance of
his previous promises, Dermot threw off all disguise and proclaimed
himself king of Ireland, upon which Roderick, as the only retaliation
left in his power, slew Dermot's son who had been deposited in his hands
as hostage.

It was now Strongbow's aim to hasten back and place his new lordship at
the feet of his sovereign, already angry and jealous at such unlocked
for and uncountenanced successes. He was not able however to do so at
once. Hasculph the Dane returned suddenly with sixty ships, and a large
force under a noted Berserker of the day, known as John the Mad,
"warriors," says Giraldus, "armed in Danish fashion, having long
breast-plates and shirts of mail, their shields round and bound about
with iron. They were iron-hearted," he says, "as well as
iron-armed men."

In spite of their arms and their hearts, he is able triumphantly to
proclaim their defeat. Milo de Cogan, the Norman governor of Dublin,
fell upon his assailants suddenly. John the Mad was slain, as were also
nearly all the Berserkers. Hasculph was brought back in triumph, and
promptly beheaded by the conquerors.

He was hardly dead before a new assailant, Godred, king of Man, appeared
with thirty ships at the mouth of the Liffy. Roderick, in the meanwhile,
had collected men from every part of Ireland, with the exception of the
nor