them at the battle of Clontarf in the year 1014, though they were
aided by other Celtic tribes who hated Brian and his schemes even more
than they hated the foreigners. Important though this battle was, its
effect has been much exaggerated and misunderstood. It certainly
did not bring the Danish power in Ireland to an end; Dublin was a
flourishing Danish colony long afterwards--in fact it was thirty years
after the battle that the Danish king of Dublin founded the Bishopric.

But Brian was slain in the moment of victory. The soldiers of his
army murdered his only surviving son, and began fighting amongst
themselves. Brian's dream of a united Ireland came to an end, and the
country relapsed into chaos. If the immediate result of the battle
was a victory of Celt over Dane, the lasting effect was a triumph of
anarchy over order. It was on the Celtic people that the ruin fell;
and the state of things for the next two centuries was if possible
worse than it had ever been before.

It will be readily understood that throughout this terrible period of
history anything like a peaceful cultivation of the soil or a regular
election to the office of chief was out of the question. It was quite
an ordinary thing for a chief to obtain his position by murdering his
predecessor. The annalists give us a long list of Kings of Ireland
dating from before the Christian era until the arrival of the Normans.
Of course the word "king" can mean little more than "prominent
chief," for no one man ever had real authority over the whole of the
distracted land. Even of these prominent chiefs, however, according
to the annalists, very few died natural deaths. Some fell in battle,
others were assassinated; but the most common fate for a monarch was
to be "slain by his successor." If this was true of the most powerful
men in the country, to speak of the office of chief as elective is