in the time of Charlemagne. To the Southlands their road by land
was henceforth closed. Then begins the day of the Vikings, who,
for two hundred years and more, "held the world at ransom."
Under many and brave leaders they first of all came round the
"Western Isles" (2) toward the end of the eighth century; soon
after they invaded Normandy, and harried the coasts of France;
gradually they lengthened their voyages until there was no shore
of the then known world upon which they were unseen or unfelt. A
glance at English history will show the large part of it they
fill, and how they took tribute from the Anglo-Saxons, who, by
the way, were far nearer kin to them than is usually thought. In
Ireland, where the old civilisation was falling to pieces, they
founded kingdoms at Limerick and Dublin among other places; (3)
the last named, of which the first king, Olaf the White, was
traditionally descended of Sigurd the Volsung, (4) endured even
to the English invasion, when it was taken by men of the same
Viking blood a little altered. What effect they produced upon
the natives may be seen from the description given by the unknown
historian of the "Wars of the Gaedhil with the Gaill": "In a
word, although there were an hundred hard-steeled iron heads on
one neck, and an hundred sharp, ready, cool, never-rusting brazen
tongues in each head, and an hundred garrulous, loud, unceasing
voices from each tongue, they could not recount, or narrate, or
enumerate, or tell what all the Gaedhil suffered in common --
both men and women, laity and clergy, old and young, noble and
ignoble -- of hardship, and of injury, and of oppression, in
every house, from these valiant, wrathful, purely pagan people.
Even though great were this cruelty, oppression, and tyranny,
though numerous were the oft-victorious clans of the many-
familied Erinn; though numerous their kings, and their royal