is the last resort, and is only to be tried when all
other means have failed.

Twice during this reign the whole island was stricken
with panic, by extraordinary signs in the heavens, of
huge serpents coiling themselves through the stars, of
fiery bolts flying like shuttles from one side of the
horizon to the other, or shooting downward directly to
the earth. These atmospheric wonders were accompanied by
thunder and lightning so loud and so prolonged that men
hid themselves for fear in the caverns of the earth. The
fairs and markets were deserted by buyers and sellers;
the fields were abandoned by the farmers; steeples were
rent by lightning, and fell to the ground; the shingled
roofs of churches caught fire and burned whole buildings.
Shocks of earthquake were also felt, and round towers
and cyclopean masonry were strewn in fragments upon the
ground. These visitations first occurred in the second
year of Donogh, and returned again in 783. When, in the
next decade, the first Danish descent was made on the
coast of Ulster (A.D. 794), these signs and wonders were
superstitiously supposed to have been the precursors of
that far more terrible and more protracted visitation.

The Danes at first attracted little notice, but in the
last year of Donogh (A.D. 797) they returned in greater
force, and swept rapidly along the coast of Meath; it
was reserved for his successors of the following centuries
to face the full brunt of this new national danger.