In Early Times.

CHAPTER II.

In Early Times

The** **size of the cromlech which lies within the demesne of Howth, and the absence of megalithic monuments from the rest of the northern part of the county of Dublin, go far to prove that in the most remote past the peninsula was recognized as a place of extraordinary importance. It is estimated that the roof-rock of this cromlech weighs no less than 70 tons. This weight is a third more than that of the roof-rock of the great cromlech near Rathfarnham, at Mount Venus, which of the cromlechs in the county of Dublin is the specimen most nearly approaching the dimensions of the Howth one; and it is only exceeded in the case of the roof-rocks of two other cromlechs in the whole of Ireland.

[See Borlase’s “Dolmens of Ireland,” ii, 376, and Journal, R.S.A.I., ii, 40. To the sketch of this monument, made in 1775, Gabriel Beranger appends the following note:- “The cromlech at Howth called by the country people ‘Fan McCool’s quoit,’ had six supporters, off which it was thrown down by some violent shock; it is composed of grit of a peculiar kind, in the grain of which are seen large pieces of marble and various coloured stones. Its situation is in a field at the foot of a rocky mountain at the back of Lord Howth’s improvements.” (Gabriel Beranger’s Sketch Book in the possession of the Royal Irish Academy.)]

But the annals and legends of Ireland leave no doubt that from the beginning of things human the peninsula has been one of the well-known places of Ireland. Under the name Benn Etar, or the peak of Etar, the peninsula comes into notice with the commencement of the history of Ireland, and is a landmark in the dimness that surrounds the advent of the earliest colonists.

At a period which approximates to the time of the Flood, the Grecian parricide, Partholon, is said to have settled on the plain of Etar, and there the great multitude of his followers, who according to tradition were buried at Tallaght, are supposed to have perished. By one legend the origin of the name is attributed to the time of the Firbolgs, the successors of the Partholonians, and is said to have been connected with the wife of one of the five chieftains, under whose conduct the Firbolgs came from Greece

Five wives they brought hither,

The five sons of Dela without stain,

The fifth famous woman was

Etar, the splendid and stately;

‘Twas she died here, first of all

Before the wife of any King, ‘tis well known,

Of grief* *for long-limbed radiant Gand,

Is* *Benn Etar suddenly.

But according to another legend the name Benn Etar is derived from a chieftain of later times, Etar the son of Etgaeth. He was a great yarrior, known as far as “the shores of Alba,” and is said to have possessed “in wealth and plenty” the peninsula on whose summit he found his last resting-place.

At the time of his death Etar had to wife a lady “fierce as to prowess of spears,” called Mairg, from whom the Slieve Margy hills are said to have derived their name; but an alliance with the radiant Aine, daughter of Manannan, and one with a lady called Bethi, are also ascribed to him.

The name of the last lady is said to have been borne as well by a daughter of Mairg by a former marriage; and this Bethi is said to have given her hand to a son of Etar by a former marriage, Aes by name, and to have perished with her husband tragically in the pool of the Liffey.

At the commencement of the Milesian settlement, which is approximated to the time of Moses, the erection of a fortress upon the peninsula is recorded by the Four Masters. It was similar to one then placed upon Dalkey Island, and its erection above the great waved sea is attributed to a chieftain called Suirge

Dun Sobairce afterwards erected,

By brave Sobairce of the white side;

Deilinis by Segda with ci, cerfulness:

Dun Etar by Suirge, the slender.

[Dun Sobairce = Dun Severick in Antrim]

Coming down after a lapse of many centuries to the beginning of the Christian era, Benn Etar appears as the abode of a monarch of Ireland called Crimthann, or Criffan, as the name is pronounced.

His fame lingers more in fable than in fact, and is preserved chiefly in connexion with an expedition made by him across the seas, about which marvellous things are told. On this expedition he is said to have been accompanied by a female sprite, whose care for his welfare earned him the appellation of “Nair’s champion,” and froni it to have brought back spoils of precious metal sparkling with gems.

But there is doubtless some basis of reality in the take, and the golden chariot and chess-board, and all-conquering sword and spear, may be taken as symbolical of Crimthann’s wealth and authority, and indicative of the prosperity and importance of Benn Etar in his time. There, as tradition has it, his bones lie buried in a valley between Shelmartin and the Dun Hill, and cairns on those hills, the one on Shelmartin being represented now by a modern pile of stones, have been connected with his memory.

By the Ordnance Survey the fortified headland at the eastern extremity of the peninsula, where the Baily lighthouse stands, has been marked with his name, and its remains deserve more attention than they have hitherto received. “As was usual in forts of the kind,” says the President of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, Mr. T. J. Westropp, M.A., “the bilders selected a position where natural features contribute to the defence. They found two deep gullies across a long headland, with a pyramidal rock at the end, and strengthened this natural fortification by fencing the gullies on their seaward faces with earthworks. On the outer gully the earthworks have been greatly defaced by modern roads, fences, and walls; but along the more northern portion of the gully there still exist two lines of mounds, each over 20 feet in width, with an intervening fosse about 15 feet in width, which are dimensions that constantly recur in the fortified headlands on the south and west coasts of Ireland. A road connecting with the main road to the lighthouse has been cut through these earthworks, and on the southern side of the main road a single rampart only remains. It has been nearly removed, but sufficient exists to show that it ran in a curve across the back at the top of the slope inside the mounds and fosse. The outer ward, which, so far as can he seen, contains no middens or undoubtedly early earthworks, is at its northern side over 750 feet across: but it is irregular. On the inner gully remains of a rampart which seems to have been single are still to be found.

Some portions are five or six feet in height, and 27 feet in thickness ; but along the steeper part and the northern cliff the entrenchment was slight. Indeed, at the latter place it might he considered a late fence only for a midden of limpet and periwinkle shells, which are evidently of great age, in the embankment at the head of a path leading down to an old quarry. The inner ward, which measures 790 feet, extends from the hollow to the Lighthouse, and on the rock now occupied by that triumph of modern engineering skill, where a midden similar to the one just mentioned was found, stood the citadel or keep of the ancient fort. In the county of Waterford, at Dane’s Island and Island Hubbock, and in the county of Clare, at Bishop’s Island, there were similar entrenchments on the land, with nearly detached rock citadels, smaller in size, but more impressive from their greater height”

But with regard to the position on the peninsula of Crimthann’s dwelling there can he no certainty. As his dun is said to have been visible from the county of Meath, its site seems more probably to have been on the northern than on the eastern side. To a height on the northern side, over the harbour, on which part of the town of Howth has been built, the place-name Dunbo, or the fort of the cow, has been attached, thus identifying it as the scene of an ancient historic tale called the “Siege of Etar.”

This tale, which is one of the compositions of the cycle of the Red Branch Knights, is contemporaneous with Crimthann’s period. The dun mentioned iii it was large enough to contain seven hundred cows as well as the defenders, and strong enough to resist for many days the attacks of an armed host.

The besieged were Ulstermen, to whom the tale attributes the erection of the dun, and they are said to have been forced to take refuge on Benn Etar through the exactions of a fellow-countryman called Athairne the Importunate, from whose use of hurdles to bring his prey across the Liffey Dublin is said to owe its original name, Athcliath. The tale dwells at length on the outrages commmitted by Athairne, who was a poet, but, in the character attributed to him, greatly belied his calling, arid it gives little information about the events at Benn Etar.

Amongst the few incidents mentioned as taking place there are that the Red Branch hero Cuchulain defended with spears a gap, which he disdained to fence, and that his foster-son, who was only overcome by 300 heroes, guarded the entrance to the dun. [In the 18th century it was believed Howth had been a seat of Druidical worship, the Mona of Ireland, and that Athairne belonged to a college of their bards

In early times for solitude so famed,

That here our bards their soft asylum chose,

Whose song divine the savage soul reclaimed,

And martial manners soothed to sweet repose.

(”Howth, a Descriptive Poem,” by Abraham Bosquet: Dubi., 1787.)]

While excavations were being made forty years ago on the supposed site of Athairne’s dun, a cist and various traces of burials were found, and in connexion with these discoveries it was mentioned that the site had been originally surrounded on three sides by the sea.

The next person mentioned in connexion with the peninsula is the hero of the Fenian cycle of Irish literature, Finn MacCumhaill, who flourished in the third century. While sitting in the east, over the sea at the hill of Etar,” he is said to have seen a vision of the future invasion of Ireland, and the peninsula is represented as a resort of his followers, who set out from it to the disastrous battle of Gabhra, and as one of the places to which Finn MacCumhaill assigned a special guard under the command of some of his captains.

There also his affianced bride, Grainne, is said to have sought refuge with her lover, Diarmuid, in a cave, which has been identified as one of those near Drumleck Point, and his grandson, Oscar, found a wife in Aideen, daughter of Angus of Benn Etar.

In the apocryphal tales of that period there are also frequent references to the peninsula, and there is indication that it was then a noted port and hunting-ground in stories which tell of a proud fleet, from which a giantess landed on the peninsula, arid of a great chase, in which a son of the King of Britain joined on the hill.

With the Fenian period local tradition loves to connect the great cromlech. According to one legend it was a quoit thrown by Finn MacCumbaill from the Bog of Allen, and according to another it was raised to mark the resting-place of Aideen, who died of grief for the loss of her husband, Oscar, in the battle of Gabhra2

Imperfect in an alien spceeh,

When, wandering here, some child of chance

Through pangs of keen delight shall reach

The gift of utterance,

To speak the air, the sky to speak,

The freshness of the hill to tell

Who roaming bare Benn Etar’s peak

And Aideen’s briary dell,

And gazing on the cromlech vast

And on the mountain and the sea,

Shall catch communion with the past,

And mix himself with me.

By Ptolemy, who has shown it on his map as an island, the peninsula is called Edrou Heremos, or the desert of Edros; but it is said by Camden to have been at one time covered with oaks, although it was in his time bare of trees. Camden’s view is also taken in two Irish quatrains which have been thus translated

Hill that beyond every tulach is verdant-surfaced,

Whose summit is green-treed and tremulous;

Eminence famed for sword-blades, forest-clad, gentian-growing;

A hill variegated, having jutting points and flowing mane;

Hill the most beautiful that dominates Ireland’s coast-line;

Sweetly melodious there is the grill over the sea;

To us the leaving of it is an act of pain,

Lovely and pleasurable hill of Etar.

Further support is given to the opinion that the peninsula was less bare in early times than now in verses which are said to have been written by three bards who chose the scenery of Howth as the subject of a competition for supremacy. These verses have been thus translated

Delightful it is to he at Benn Etar,

Truly melodious it is to be upon its white fortress,

A hill ample, shipful, populous,

A peak in wine, in cairns, in feasts abounding;

A hill on which Fionn and the Fianna used to meet,

A hill where horns and cups overflow,

A hill to which O’Duibhne, the dauntless,

Brought Grainne from her close pursuers;

A wave-green hill surpassing each tulach,

And its green-tree tapering summit;

A hill of cairns, wild garlic and fruit-trees;

A variegated, pinnacled, woody hill;

The loveliest hill in Erin’s isle,

A hill brighter than the gull on the shore,

To part is sore grief to me,

The delightful, pleasant Benn Etar.

Oft beneath the grassy hill are seen

Champions and sails without debility,

Till the gunwales of their keeling ships are level

With the deathful waves which dash against the tall cliffs.

Beautiful its plains and tall peaks,

And its lands overhanging the stormy waves,

Till it reaches the cairn of the gentle Fionn

From the delightful mansion of lofty Etar.

A bill exceeding in height all tulachs,

Each peak equally green and steep;

A hill covered with herbs and plants,

A steep hill covered with woods and wild garlic.

There are seen from the top of its peaks

Ships laden and heroes falling;

A plank is driven through the ship’s side

By the violence of her dash against the tall cliffs;

Woe it is the bonds that are broken

By the fierce might of thy visit,

And that a wave bursts with a heaving crash

A rib in the overladen vessel.

Soon after the dawn of Christianity in Ireland heralds of God’s love established themselves on the peninsula and its island. They were induced to do so, as in many other places similarly circumstanced, by the hope that isolation would secure for them safety; but their dream was before long dispelled, and their proximity to the sea was found to be a source of danger rather than of protection.

With the island three holy men, Dichull, Munissa, and Neslug, are identified. They were the sons of one Nessan, who traced descent from Cathair Mor, King of Ireland, and from them the island hitherto called Inisfaithleen, or the grassy or elder island, and Inisereann, or Eria’s island, became known as Inis-meic-Nessan, or the island of the Sons of Nessan. They are said to have been disciples of a saint famous in the Celtic Church, St. Maidoc of Ferns, and by him Dichull was placed in charge of the monastery of Clonmore.

In the martyrologies the sons of Nessan are recorded to have been men of exceptional piety and love of peace. “They loved soft prayer to Christ, did the sons of Nessan from the isle” says the Martyrology of Oengus, and “against every miserable slaughterous conflict be Nessan’s three saintly sons,” says the Martyrology of Gorman.

During the seventh century, in which they are believed to have flourished, there was much warfare to depress them, and in the middle of that century a battle raged on Howth, round Crimthann’s stronghold. It was between Conall and Ceallach, the sons of Maelcobha, and Aenghus, son of Domhnall. Conall and Ceallach, who were descendants in the northern line of Niall of the Nine Hostages, were then joint kings of Ireland, arid Aenghus was a rival for the throne. The result was a victory for the kings, and not only was Aenglius killed, hut also Cathasach, son of Domhnall Breac, who is believed to have been a relation of Aenghus, and next in succession to him.’

Fifty years later the navigators of a British fleet are said to have taken refuge during a storm on the island home of the sons of Nessan, and during their detention there to have slain the king of a neighbouring territory. As an ancient legend tells us, “This Irgalach (for so the king was named) was slain, after having in the night before he was killed himself seen the manner of his death. On the morrow of this vision, therefore, Irgalach came forth, and, standing upon a high rock, heard a loud voice cry, “Spread yourselves over the country round about, and burn and scorch and harry it.” Then he saw great bands and companies that spoiled the land, and he came and stood abreast of Innis-meic-Nessan, where at that self-same hour a British fleet was by a great tempest constrained to refuge. Of which Britons a certain warrior likewise had in the past night a dream: as it were a herd of wild boars that grunted about him, and the largest boar he had killed with a javelin-stroke. A presage verified exactly, for that boar signified Irgalach, and the rest of the herd his retinue of sinners; and with a single javelin-cast Irgalach there and then was destroyed by that warrior.”

In the later part of the last century a cist containing human remains was discovered on Ireland’s Eye, and it was suggested that these might have been the remains of Irgalach. It was argued that, although indicating a Christian mode of burial, the circumstances of the interment tended to prove that the body was not that of a cleric, and that a piece of iron, which was found in the grave, and which was thought to resemble part of a sword, pointed to the body having been that of a warrior.

The only church on Ireland’s Eye of which anything is known cannot have been the oratory of the sons of Nessan, and has been assigned to so late a date as the 12th century. It consisted of a nave and chancel, with an arch and a round-headed doorway, and was unique in its design, inasmuch as over its chancel, which was vaulted, there rose a small round tower. Its ruins existed on Ireland’s Eye in the early part of the last century, and an attempted reproduction now occupies their site. According to a ground-plan in Lord Dunraven’s “Notes on Irish Architecture,” the nave and chancel were rectangular buildings, the nave being 34 feet long externally by 10 feet three inches wide internally, with walls two feet eight inches thick, and the chancel was 11 feet long by 13 feet three inches wide externally.

The doorway, which was in the western end, is shown to have been three feet wide, and in the north and south walls of the nave a window-slit is marked, arid also in the east and north walls of the chancel.

As the late Dr. Cochrane, one of the esteemed Presidents of the Royal Society of Antiquaries, and Inspector of Ancient Monuments in Ireland, has mentioned in a learned paper on the “Ecclesiastical Antiquities of Howth,” in the reproduction of the ruins the nave and chancel deviate from the rectangular, and are of smaller dimensions than those of Lord Dunraven’s plan.

With Ireland’s Eye and the father of its saints there has been associated a seventh-century copy of the Gospels. This manuscript, which is illuminated, is preserved among the treasures in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin, and came to that Library through Archbishop Ussher. It has been recorded by Archbishop Alen that the manuscript was held in such veneration that men scarcely dared to take an oath on it, the common belief being that God’s vengeance had fallen upon those who had sworn falsely upon it; and in connexion with it a curious legend has been preserved by the same authority to the effect that on being tempted by an evil spirit Nessan pursued his assailant over the sea and ordered him to enter the northern cliffs of Howth, where his most horrid image remains affixed in stony form on Puck’s Rock.

About the same period that the sons of Nessan settled upon Ireland’s Eye, a holy man called Fintan established himself on the southern side of the peninsula of Howth. As Dr. Cochrane remarks in the paper to which reference has been made, it is impossible owing to the number of saints called Fintan to identify with certainty the particular one whom Howth claims as its patron.

His monument survives, however, in a ruined church on the southern side of the peninsula at he base of Shelmartin. This church is a simple oblong building, with a belfry rising over the gable of its western wall. It deviates from the rectangular, measuring internally on the north 16 feet six inches, on the south 16 feet eight inches, on the east seven feet seven inches, and on the west eight feet one inch.

In the opinion of Dr. Cochrane it is of late date, and comprises the remains of a primitive oratory and of a mediaeval church of larger dimensions. Amongst the details Dr. Cochrane describes the east window, which has a semi-circular head and is grooved for glass; windows in the north and south walls near the north-west and south-east angles; the doorway, which is in the western end and has a pointed arch; a recess in the north wall and two recesses in the south wall, which are constructed of stones cut for other purposes; and a small circular window, which is made out of a solid block, and has four short arms grooved, over the doorway.

He suggests that there may have been originally a group of churches on the site, and draws attention to the disproportion of the belfry to the rest of the building as indication of more enthusiasm than discretion on the part of its designer.

Besides this church some of the Howth place-names denote a connexion with early Christian worship. The site of a cairn hi the eastern part of the peninsula, on what is known as the Black Heath, hears the name of the Cross, and was formerly known as St. Patrick’s Cross; and a field in the southern part of the demesne, in which remains of an ancient settlement have been found, bears the name of Cross Garvey (i.e. the rough cross).2

The invasions of the Norsemen began in the closing decade of the eighth century, and fell with exceptional severity on the Dublin coast. At first the islands suffered most, and it is not until more than 20 years had elapsed that a descent on Howth is recorded. It was evidently a notable one, and denoted a new departure. Hitherto the raids had been directed mainly against property, but now human beings were the spoil, and a world of misery is revealed in the laconic entry of the Four Masters under the year 819:- ” The plundering of Etar by the foreigners, who carried off a great prey of women.”

The Irish appear to have retained a hold on the peninsula after the Norsemen had established themselves in Dublin. In 866 a prince of a territory north of Dublin, known as Bregia, Flann son of Conaing, is called by the Four Masterss “the great King of Etar,” and in 891 the heir apparent to that princedom, Cinaedh son of Flannagan is said to have died on the peninsula at Carrickbrac.

But the disuse of the Irish “Etar ” as the name of the peninsula, and substitution of the Danish “Hoved,” show that the peninsula must have become one of the Norsemen’s chief seaports, and in 897 it is recorded that Danes from Dublin were besieged on Ireland’s Eye, when flying to Scotland.

As the Danish section of the invader’s gained a footing in the adjoining parish of Baldoyle, it may be assumed that Howth saw something of the conflict between them and the Norwegian section, and in the 10th century Howth was the scene of a struggle for the sovereign power in Dublin, in which Amlaib, “the hundred-strong,” gained the victory.

In the same century, in the year 960, his son is said to have descended upon the peninsula by sea with the help of a captain called Lagmann for the purpose of plunder. But indications of actual occupation of the peninsula by the Norsemen are not wanting. Too much significance, perhaps, ought not to be attached to the fact that ancient remains on Carrickbrac are known as the Danish fort, but the names of several families connected with the peninsula bespeak a descent from the Northern invaders. More particularly is this the case in regard to a family called Harford, whose members are still found there in considerable numbers. They exhibit a character worthy of their forbears, and are distinguished as a race by their tall stature, fair complexion, and bright blue eyes. [The other names which have been suggested as denoting descent from the Norsemen are Thunder, Waldron, and Rickard.]

Not long before 1014, the year of the memorable battle of Clontarf, King Malachy invaded the territory of the Norsemen, and burned the country as far as Howth. At Howth he is said to have encountered their force, and to have gained the victory; but on his return from this expedition he was defeated by them at Drinan, near Swords. Although the actual conflict did not extend so far, much of the horror of the deadly battle of Clontarf reached Howth.

The northern pirates had left there their boats, arid after the battle the peninsula was a place of refuge for the fugitives. In spite of this defeat, it was not until the middle of that century that the sovereignty of the Norsemen was finally broken in Fingal.

No sooner had it ended than war broke out among the Irish themselves, and the men of Leinster encountered the men of Munster at Howth. Under the year 1087 the Four Masters thus record the result of the battle:- “The battle of Rath-Etar between the men of Leinster and Munster, where Muircheartach Ua Briain and the men of Munster defeated the Leinstermen, and Domhnall son of Maelnambo and Diarmaid Ua Briain and Enda son of Diarmaid, and where a great slaughter was made of the Leinstermen together with the son of Murchadh Ua Domhnaill, Lord of Ui Drona, and Conall Ua Ciarmhaic, and Ua Neill of Maghdachon.”

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