their land being burned by him up to the door of the
church." Thus the progress of tribal struggle was uninterrupted by the
Gentile raids.

Four years later, a fleet of sixty Norse fighting galleys sailed up the
Boyne. Sixty long ships entered the Liffey in the same year, and a year
later they captured the fortress of the Ford of the Hurdles,
At-Cliat,--the old name of Dublin. Three years later we find the king of
Munster plundering Meath and West Meath, showing that no sense of common
danger disturbed the native kings. This strengthens the view we have
already taken: that the attacks of the Norse sea-kings were only an
interlude in the incessant contests between the tribes of province and
province; contests perfectly natural and normal to the development of
the land, and through which every country has at some period passed.

[Illustration: Round Tower, Antrim.]

It would seem that the Northmen who captured the Ford of the Hurdles
departed from their former usage. Fortifying themselves, or
strengthening the existent fortress, they determined to pass the winter
in Ireland, instead of returning, as they had always done up to this
time, before the autumn storms made dangerous the navigation of the wild
northern seas. Their presence in this fort gave the native powers a
center upon which to concentrate their attack, and as a result the year
846 was marked by a signal victory over the Northmen, twelve hundred of
those at At-Cliat being slain. Four other successful contests with the
raiders are recorded for the same year, and we can thoroughly trust the
Annalists who, up to this time, have so faithfully recorded the
disasters of their own race.

About the same time the Northmen gained a second point of vantage by
seizing and fortifying a strong position where the town of Cork now
stands. Indeed their instinct of seamanship, their knowledge of good
harbors and the conditions which make them, led them to fix their first
entrenchments at Dublin, Cork and Limerick,--which remained for
centuries after the great ports of the country on the east, south and
west; and the Norse flavor still lingers in the names of Carlingford,
Wexford and Waterford, the Fiords of Cairlinn, Weis and Vadre. A
wonderful side-light on the whole epoch is shed by this entry for 847:
"In this year sevenscore ships of the Gentiles from abroad fought
against the Gentiles in Ireland." It would seem that the earlier comers,
who had drawn up their long ship