Cork, like Dublin, is a place of considerable antiquity. It does not figure in the annals or history of pagan Ireland, but Christian establishments were founded there very soon after the time of St Patrick. Its Irish name, and the one by which it is mentioned in all ancient Irish annals and history is Corcach MÓr Mumhan, literally, the great swamp of Munster. A very inappropriate name seemingly, for, although the place where the city is built might have been a swamp, it never could have been a big one, as it is a narrow, and by no means a long, valley. It is, however, clear that the word mÓr—big—was not intended to relate to the size of the swamp, but to the greatness of either the town or ecclesiastical establishments that grew up in it.
The earliest notice of Cork that appears in Irish annals is in the still unpublished “Annals of Inisfallen,” where it is stated, under the year 617, that “In this year died Fionnbarre, first bishop of Cork, at Cloyne. He was buried in his own church at Cork.” Under the year 795, the following curious entry occurs in the same annals:—“In this year the Danes first appeared cruising on the coast [of Ireland] spying out the country. Their first attacks were on the ships of the Irish, which they plundered.” The same annals say that Cork, Lismore, and Kill MolaÏse were plundered by the Danes in the year 832, and that in 839 they burned Cork; and that in 915 they plundered Cork, Lismore, and Aghabo. They also state that in 978 Cork was plundered twice, presumably by the Danes. The Chronicon Scottorum says that Cork was also plundered by the Danes in 822. It was so often plundered by them that it is hardly to be wondered at that the annalists should not have been able to keep account of every time it was harried by the Northmen. But the Danes were not the only parties by whom the south of Ireland suffered, for we read in the Four Masters, that in the year 847 Flann, over-king of Ireland, for what reason does not appear, harried Munster from Killaloe to Cork. They say also that a great fleet of foreigners (Northmen) arrived in Munster in 1012 and burned Cork. They were, however, defeated by Cahall, son of Donnell. This fleet had evidently come to Cork for the purpose of making a diversion in the south of Ireland, so that the great Danish army, whose headquarters were in Dublin, and who contemplated the entire conquest of the country, should not have the men of Munster to oppose them. The Danish army that came to Cork in 1012 (the correct date seems to be 1013), were not able to give any assistance to their countrymen at the battle of Clontarf by making a diversion in Munster, for it would appear that they were wholly destroyed. There is no record in the Irish annals of the Danes making any attack on Cork after the battle of Clontarf.
The situation of Cork, like that of Dublin and Belfast, is at the mouth of a river, and on low-lying land. While the country round the city is exceedingly fine, it has not, like the country in the neighbourhood of Dublin and Belfast, any places from which extensive views can be had. The country round Cork is by no means flat, but there is nothing near it that could be called a mountain, or even a high hill. It is, however, as beautiful as any country of its kind could be, with green, rounded eminences, but not as much wood on them as there should be to make them look to best advantage. The river between Cork and the Cove, or Queenstown, as it is now called, is one of the finest six or eight miles of river scenery to be found anywhere. The people of Cork are proud of it, as they may well be.
Cork, unfortunately, is not growing as Dublin and Belfast are. There is a curious belief, partly a prophecy, that it will yet be the capital of Ireland. “Limerick was, Dublin is, but Cork will be the capital,” is frequently heard in the south of Ireland. So far, there is not much sign that the southern city will overtake Dublin, nor is it quite clear that Limerick was ever the principal city of Ireland. It was, however, a very important place during the greater part of the eleventh century. Limerick seems to have been in the possession of the Danes for nearly a hundred years, until Brian Boramha took it from them about the year 970. It continued to grow as long as his descendants retained political power, which they did for nearly a century after his death. Giraldus Cambrensis calls Limerick “a magnificent city,” but it must have begun to decline even before he saw it, about the year 1190, for the O’Briens, or descendants of Brian Boramha, had by that time lost a great deal of their political power. Cork has, for at least two centuries, been a more important place than Limerick.
Some of the streets and public buildings in Cork are very fine, and will compare favourably with those of any city. But it is evident that the city was built too far up the river. Cork should be where Queenstown is. If it were, there would be a chance of its becoming at some future day the capital of Ireland. It is curious that almost all cities that are built on rivers, and that were founded in ancient times, are generally at the head of navigation. This habit of building cities as far up rivers as ships could go was followed in order to give greater security from attacks by sea. The farther up a river a city was, the more easily it could be defended from attacks by sea. In olden times, when the largest ships drew no more than eight or ten feet of water, Cork was as advantageously situated for trade where it is as if it were where Queenstown is. But such is not the case now. This defect of being too far up the river is the only thing in its situation that is not favourable. It has one of the finest harbours in Europe, and one of the finest in the world, but the harbour is too far from the city.
If there is a single place on the whole of the west coast of Europe especially adapted for the site of a great city, it is the spot on which Queenstown is built. It was nothing but the constant warfare of ancient times that prevented Cork from being built there. There is that magnificent harbour that the mightiest ironclad leviathan that floats can enter at any state of the tide and be in it in five minutes from the time she leaves the main ocean. Then there is that splendid site for a great city on a gentle ascent, where street behind street and terrace behind terrace could deck the hill-side, and all look down on that glorious land-locked bay where a thousand ships could anchor.
There cannot be any doubt that with the ever-growing trade and passenger traffic between Europe and America, both Cork and Queenstown must be benefitted. Even if an American packet station were established at Galway, it would hardly interfere seriously with Queenstown or Cork, for harbours like the Cove are too scarce on the coasts of Europe, and the trade between Europe and America is too great and increasing too fast to leave Loch Mahon[17] in the slightest danger of being deserted. As long as ships navigate the Atlantic they must enter it. Nothing but the establishment of aËrial traffic between Europe and America can ever leave the Cove of Cork shipless.
The country round Cork is very fine, and there are many splendid and well-kept gentlemen’s seats in its suburbs. It would be hard to find any city more picturesque in its situation, although built very nearly at the mouth of a river. It is, more than any large place in Ireland, a city of hills and hollows. Some of its streets are very steep, rather too much so for pleasant walking. But this hillyness makes it all the more picturesque, and makes the drainage all the better. Cork is a beautiful city, and—surrounded by a beautiful country. If it has not the busy appearance of Belfast, or the metropolitan appearance of Dublin, it is, nevertheless, a fine city, and on account of its magnificent harbour, it has, in all probability, a great and prosperous future before it.
The antiquities of Cork have almost entirely disappeared. It suffered so much from the Northmen and was so often plundered and burned by them that it is not to be wondered at that so few of its ancient monuments exist. It had a fine round tower, of which nothing is left but the foundation. It was, presumably, the Northmen who destroyed it. Every vestige of the old church founded by St Finnbar has disappeared long ago. The fact that Cork was so often plundered by the Danes and other Northmen shows that it must have been an important place, at least in the matter of churches and monasteries. The Danes knew that wherever the largest religious establishments were the most wealth was. This is proved by history and annals telling us that Armagh, Kildare, Cork, Glendaloch, Downpatrick, Clonmacnois, and other important religious centres, were most frequently plundered by them. Just in proportion to the importance of a place in an ecclesiastical point of view, the more frequently it was plundered by the Danes. When they began their attacks on Ireland, they seem to have known, as well as the Irish themselves, where the principal wealth of the country would be found.
As Cork is the last large place that suffered greatly from the Danes that shall be mentioned in this work, it cannot be uninteresting or out of place to give an extract from the Earl of Dunraven’s book on ancient Irish architecture about those terrible Vikings, and the causes that made them a terror to all the maritime nations of Europe for so many years, more especially as such an expensive work is not generally read, and not within reach of the masses: “Dense as is the obscurity in which the cause of the wanderings and ravages of the Scandinavian Vikings is enveloped, yet the result of the investigations hitherto made on the subject is, that they were, in a great measure, consequent on the conquests of Charlemagne in the north of Germany, and on the barrier which he thereby—as well as by the introduction of Christianity—set on their onward march. It can hardly be attributed to accident that, with the gradual strengthening of the Frankish dominions, the hordes of Northmen descended on the British Isles in ever-increasing numbers. The policy of Charlemagne in his invasion of Saxony, and the energy by which he succeeded in driving his enemies beyond the Elbe and the German Ocean, were manifestly intensified by religious zeal. The Saxons were still heathens; and the first attack made by the Frankish King was on the fortress of Eresbourg, where stood the temple of Irminsul, the great idol of the nation. We read that he laid waste their temples and broke their idols to pieces.... However it may appear from ancient authorities that for some centuries before then, the Scandinavians had occasionally infested the southern shores of Europe; yet in the added light that is cast by the Irish annals on the subject, we perceive that from this date their piratical incursions afford evidence not before met with of preconcerted plan and incessant energy; and these events in the reign of Charles may lead us to discover what was the strong impulse that thus tended, in some measure, to condense and concentrate their desultory warfare. Impelled by some strong, overmastering passion, these hordes of northern warriors held on from year to year their avenging march; and such was the fury of their arms that even now, after the lapse of a thousand years, their deeds are in appalling remembrance throughout Europe, not only in every city on the sea-shore, or on river, but even in the peasant traditions of the smallest village.”
It is curious, and for the Irish a source of very legitimate pride, that of all the countries attacked by the Northmen, they got the hardest blows and the most terrible, as well as the most frequent, defeats in Ireland. They seem to have made more frequent attacks on it than on any other country, and to have poured more men into it than into any other country. This appears not only from Irish annals and history, but from Icelandic literature, which was the common property of all the Scandinavian nations, and the only literature in which the doings of the Vikings are recorded by writers who were nearly contemporary with them. There appears to be more written about Ireland and its people in the Icelandic Sagas than about any other country or people the Vikings harried. The terrible defeat the Northmen suffered at Clontarf in 1014 is fully acknowledged in the Icelandic Sagas. It must, however, in truth be admitted that that battle, while it turned out to be a national one, originated in a family quarrel, and was brought about, as many battles had been brought about before, by a bad and beautiful woman. If Gormfhlaith and King Brian had not quarrelled, if Broder had not been desperately enamoured of her, and if she had not been of the royal blood of the terribly maltreated and so often ravaged province of Leinster, the battle of Clontarf never would have been fought. Brian was an elderly man when he became over-king, and was quite willing to allow the Danes to hold Dublin and other sea-ports as trading points, for after a time they became traders and carriers. He was willing to let them alone provided that they let him alone. This is proved by his having given one of his daughters in marriage to Sitric, the Danish King or Governor of Dublin. The Danes, knowing they had the entire strength of the province of Leinster at their back by Brian’s quarrel with Gormfhlaith, who was sister to the King of Leinster, seem, probably for the first time, to have seriously contemplated the complete conquest of Ireland.That the Irish suffered some terrible defeats from the Northmen has to be admitted. In justice to those who compiled the various Irish annals, it must be said that they always freely acknowledge when the invaders had the best of it in a battle. It is, however, evident that, taking the almost continuous fighting between the invaders and the invaded for two hundred years, or from about the year 814 to the time of the battle of Clontarf in 1014, the net gains of the fighting was decidedly on the side of the Irish. Many of those well-versed in Irish history think that if Ireland had been really under the dominion of one sovereign, even as England was under the later Saxon Kings, the Northmen would certainly have conquered Ireland and held it as they held, for a time, England, Normandy, and other countries. Very few of those called Irish chief kings were such except in name. Their vassals used to lick them as frequently as they licked their vassals. The Northmen defeated in battle and killed more than one Irish chief king, but that does not seem to have brought them any nearer the conquest of the island, for the provincial kings used to fight them on their own account. The Northmen had too many heads to cut off, and none of the heads controlled the destinies of the country. The most terrible defeat that was probably ever inflicted on the Irish by the Northmen was at the battle of Dublin in 917. The over-king, Niall Glundubh, was killed in it, and from what the Irish annals say, it would seem that his whole army was cut to pieces; but the victory was of little use to the invaders, for the very next year they suffered a defeat from the Irish in Meath, in which their whole army was destroyed and almost all their leaders slain. We are told that only enough of the Danes were left alive to bear tidings of their defeat. How the Irish managed to get the better of the Danes and at the same time do so much fighting amongst themselves is one of those historic puzzles the solution of which seems hopeless.
Many thoughtful persons among the Irish regret that Ireland had not been thoroughly conquered by the Northmen. They say that had it been conquered by them it would have been united under one supreme ruler, the provincial divisions would have been obliterated, a strong central government formed, and intestine wars brought to an end. Such a state of things might have come to pass; but it seems clear that the Northmen were not capable of building up a nation. They failed to do it whenever they tried. They had complete control in England for two generations when they were at the height of their power, but they failed to keep their grip on England, although having had the advantage of a large, and what might be called an indigenous, Scandinavian population north of the Humber. Hardly a trace of their nearly three hundred years’ rule in some Irish cities remain, and in the entire island all the traces left of their language is to be found in less than a dozen place names. They became great in Normandy only when they ceased to be Northmen and mingled their blood with that of the people whom they had conquered, and became French.
Whatever benefit other countries may have received from the Danes or Northmen, Ireland received none. To her they were nothing but a curse. If they had conquered her, they might, in the long run, have benefitted her. It would be not only difficult, but absolutely impossible, to point out a single way, except, perhaps, by an admixture of a little new blood, in which Ireland was benefitted by the visits of the Northmen. In spite of their very great skill in ship-building and navigation, they introduced not a single art into Ireland. Confused as the political state of the country was before they came to it, it was still more confused when they ceased to be plunderers and became merchants. They had nothing themselves that could be called literature, and were the greatest enemies that Irish literature had ever encountered, for the number of books they must have destroyed is beyond calculation. Not a monastery or church from one end of Ireland to the other escaped being plundered by them, and most of the monasteries were plundered ten times during the two hundred years their plunderings lasted. Iona, though not in Ireland, was an Irish establishment; it was so often plundered by them, and its entire population so often killed, that it had to be entirely abandoned in the ninth century. It became a ruin, and remained such until the Northmen ceased their raids; its treasures, or what remained of them, were removed to Kells in Ireland. Nothing can show more plainly the knowledge the Northmen possessed of the country, and their determination to leave nothing in it unplundered, than their having plundered the anchorites’ cells on the Skelligs rocks, off the coast of Kerry. It is said that there is but one spot at which a boat can land on these rocks, and then only on the very finest and calmest day; but the Northmen found out the landing-place, plundered the cells, and, of course, killed every one they found in them.
It is very curious how it came to pass that a people so very brave as the Northmen undoubtedly were should be so lacking in almost every quality that goes to form a great, conquering people and builders up of nations. They never impressed themselves on any nation or province they conquered. A very large part of the north of England was not only conquered but settled by them, and three Danish kings reigned in England, yet it remained Saxon England until the battle of Hastings. In France they not only lost their language, but lost their identity in less than three generations, and became absolutely French. They did not even call themselves Northmen, or Normans; for on the Bayeux Tapestry we find the legend, Hic Franci pugnant, showing plainly that they regarded themselves as nothing but French. They conquered the greater part of the island of Sicily, but, as usual, have left hardly a trace of their occupation in it. It need hardly be repeated that in Ireland, in spite of their having held and ruled some of its chief cities for three hundred years, and in spite of their many alliances with Irish chiefs and nobles, all they have left that in any way shows that they ever set foot on Irish soil are less than a dozen place names. The Northmen might well be forgiven for their plunderings and burnings if it were not for the quantity of books they burned. But for them, ancient Celtic literature would be so immense that it would be regarded with respect even by those who would be most hostile to the nation that produced it.
The successful resistance of the Irish against the Northmen is a very curious historic fact. Of all countries in Europe in the middle ages, it ought to have been, no matter what might be the valour of its inhabitants, the most easy of subjugation on account of its political divisions, and the consequent state of almost continual war that existed among the provinces. Yet in spite of all, in no part of Europe which the Northmen attacked, did they encounter such strong and such long-sustained resistance as in Ireland, in spite of the fact that for many years before the battle of Clontarf, the province of Leinster, whose soldiers from time immemorial had been considered the bravest in Ireland, was in alliance with the invaders. The successful resistance the Irish made against the Northmen is proved from sources that are neither Scandinavian nor Irish; for the Norman Chronicle says, “that the Franks, or French, were grateful to the Irish for the successful resistance they made against the Danes; and that in the year 848 the Northmen captured Bordeaux and other places which they burned and laid waste; but that the Scotts (Irish) breaking in on the Northmen drove them victoriously from their borders.” It is absolutely sickening to read of all the plunderings, murderings, and burnings committed by the Northmen in Ireland. When we think of all the similar sort of work the Irish practised on one another, we wonder how it happened that there were any people left in the island; and we are almost driven to the conclusion that if it had not been for the extraordinary fecundity of the race, it would have become depopulated. It was not only the numbers of Irish that were killed by the Northmen, but also the numbers that were brought into captivity by them that tended to depopulate the country.
Under the year 949 the Annals of the Four Masters state that Godfrey, a Danish king or general, plundered Kells and other places in Meath, and carried off three thousand persons into captivity, and robbed the country of an enormous quantity of gold, silver, and wealth of all kinds. That sort of work had been carried on for nearly two hundred years, and it is a wonder that the entire country was not utterly ruined.An interesting as well as gruesome illustration of what Ireland suffered from Danish raids was revealed some few years ago while workmen were levelling ground for the erection of a house at Donnybrook, near Dublin. They unearthed the skeletons of over six hundred people, of almost all ages; from those of full-grown men to those of babies, all buried in one grave, and only about eighteen inches under the surface. This vast grave was close to the banks of the little river Dodder. The Northmen had evidently gone up the river in their galleys, for at full tide it had enough of water to float them. By some chance the leader, or one of the leaders, of the Danes was killed in the foray, for his body was found a little distance from the grave of the victims. His sword was buried with him; it was of recognised Danish make, and had a splendid hilt inlaid with silver. Not a vestige of clothing or ornaments was found on the bodies of the slain, save a common bronze ring on the finger of one of them. Everything they had seems to have been taken. A village had evidently stood in the locality; it was raided by the Danes, the inhabitants all killed, and everything of value they possessed, even to their clothing, taken; for if they had been buried in their clothing, which must have been almost entirely of woollen material, which resists decay for a long time, some vestige of it would have been discovered. The remains of the victims of the massacre were carefully examined by the most eminent scientists and archÆologists of Dublin, among them Dr Wm. Fraser, who wrote an article on the discovery that may be seen in the transactions of the Royal Irish Academy. Irish history and annals are silent about this terrible massacre, and it is hardly to be wondered at that they should not have mentioned it, for such things were of such frequent occurrence in Ireland during the time of the Northmen that it was impossible to keep track of them all.
It is hard to agree with the Earl of Dunraven in what he says in the passage that has been quoted a few pages back, as to the cause of the invasions and plunderings of the Northmen. The victories of Charlemagne over the Saxons could scarcely have caused the vast outpourings of Northmen on southern and western Europe. The Saxons were Germans, pure and simple; but there seems to have been a very great difference between Northmen and Germans. They may both have belonged originally to the same race, and their languages may have been, and undoubtedly were, closely allied, but they seem to have had very little in common. One was an essentially seafaring people, and keeps up a love for the sea to the present day. The other was not a seafaring people, and hardly yet takes kindly to maritime life. The Norse and German races lived side by side in England for some centuries, but they lived apart, quite as much apart as the Celts and Scandinavians lived apart in Ireland. It would rather seem as if it was want, added to a bold and restless nature, that was the primary cause of Norsemen’s raids on the south-western coasts of Europe. Their own country was barren, and cold, and unable to support a dense population. It sometimes happens that people multiply faster than they can be supported. Such a state of things occurred in Ireland in the early part of the present century. Not that Ireland could not have supported a much larger population than it ever contained, provided the social condition of the country was different; but under the conditions that existed, the people multiplied beyond their means of support. The same thing may have occurred in Scandinavia. The people may have been forced by hunger to seek a living by foul means or fair, somewhere else than in their own country. Cruel as they were, they were probably not more cruel than any other people of their time would have been under the same circumstances. It would seem that it was exhaustion of population in Scandinavia that put an end to Scandinavian raidings. Its people having become Christians may have had some effect in softening their manners; but it is certain that it was not hatred of Christianity that prompted them to plunder Christian nations. It was love of plunder, intensified, in all probability, by want and semi-starvation at home. It is, however, very curious that the people who were once the terror of southern Europe should have become what they are to-day, and what they have been for some centuries, as peaceable and as law-abiding nations as there are in the world.
