They resolved to hold these against all comers, and they have been
faithful to their resolve down to our own times. Fourteen hundred years
of history since Patrick preached to them proves it clearly enough.

First, then, although the Germanic tribes of the first invasion,
as it is called, did not reach their shore, for the reason that
the Germans, as little as the Celts, never possessed a navy--although
neither Frank, nor Vandal, nor Hun, renewed among them the horrors
witnessed in Gaul, Spain, Italy, and Africa--they could not remain
safe from the Scandinavian pirates, whose vessels scoured all the
northern seas before they could enter the Mediterranean through
the Straits of Gibraltar.

The Northmen, the Danes, came and tried to establish themselves
among them and inculcate their northern manners, system, and
municipal life. They succeeded in England, Holland, the north of
France, and the south of Italy; in a word, wherever the wind had
driven their hide-bound boats. The Irish was the only nation of
Western Europe which beat them back, and refused to receive the
boon of their higher civilization.

As soon as the glories of the reign of Charlemagne had gone down
in a sunset of splendor, the Northmen entered unopposed all the
great rivers of France and Spain. They speedily conquered England.
On all sides they ravaged the country and destroyed the population,
whose only defence consisted in prayers to Heaven, with here and
there an heroic bishop or count. In Ireland alone the Danes found
to their cost that the Irish spear was thrust with a steady and
firm hand; and after two hundred years of struggle not only had
they not arrived at the survey and division of the soil, as wherever