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V.- THE DEATH OF KING CONOR MAC NESSA.

HAVE alluded to doubts suggested in my mind by the facts of authentic history, as to whether King Conor Mac Nessa was likely to have played the foul part attributed to him in this celebrated bardic story, and for which, certainly, the "sureties" Fergus, Duthach, and Cormac, held him to a terrible account. All that can be said is, that no other incident recorded of him would warrant such an estimate of his character; and it is certain he was a man of many brave and noble parts. He met his death under truly singular circumstances. The ancient bardic version of the event is almost literally given in the following poem, by Mr. T. D. Sullivan:

DEATH OF KING CONOR MAC NESSA.

'Twas a day full of sorrow for Ulster when Conor Mac Nessa went forth

To punish the clansman of Connaught who dared to take spoil from the North;
For his men brought him back from the battle scarce better than one that was dead,
With the brain-ball of Mesgedra* buried two-thirds of its depth in his head.
His royal physician bent o'er him, great Fingin who often before
Staunched the war-battered bodies of heroes and built them for battle once more,
And he looked on the wound of the monarch, and heark'd to his low-breathed sighs,
And he said, "In the day when that missile is loosed from his forehead, he dies.

II.

"Yet long midst the people who love him King Conor Mac Nessa may reign,
If always the high pulse of passion be kept from his heart and his brain;
And for this I lay down his restrictions:-no more from this day shall his place
Be with armies, in battles, or hostings, or leading the van of the chase;
At night, when the banquet is flashing, his measure of wine must be small,
And take heed that the bright eyes of woman be kept from his sight above all;
For if heart-thrilling joyance or anger awhile o'er his being have power,
The ball will start forth from his forehead, and surely he dies in that hour."

* The pagan Irish warriors sometimes took the brains out of champions whom they had slain in single combat, mixed them up with lime, and rolled them into balls, which hardened with time, and which they preserved as trophies. It was with one of these balls, which had been abstracted from his armory, that Conor Mac Nessa was wounded as described in the text.

III.

Oh! woe for the valiant King Conor, struck down from the summit of life,
While glory unclouded shone round him, and regal enjoyment was rife—
Shut out from his toils and his duties, condemned to ignoble repose,
No longer to friends a true helper, no longer a scourge to his foes!
He, the strong-handed smiter of champions, the piercer of armor and shields,
The foremost in earth shaking onsets, the last out of blood-sodden fields—
The mildest, the kindest the gayest, when revels ran high in his hall-
Oh, well might his true-hearted people feel gloomy and sad for his fall!

IV.

The princes, the chieftains, the nobles, who met to consult at his board, Whispered low when their talk was of combats, and wielding the spear and the

sword:

The bards from their harps feared to waken the full-pealing sweetness of song,
To give homage to valor or beauty, or praise to the wise and the strong;
The flash of no joy-giving story made cheers or gay laughter resound,
Amidst silence constrained and unwonted the seldom-filled wine-cup went round :
And, sadder to all who remembered the glories and joys that had been,
The heart-swaying presence of woman not once shed its light on the scene.

V.

He knew it, he felt it, and sorrow sunk daily more deep in his heart;
He wearied of doleful inaction, from all his loved labors apart.
He sat at his door in the sunlight, sore grieving and weeping to see
The life and the motion around him, and nothing so stricken as he.
Above him the eagle went wheeling, before him the deer galloped by,
And the quick-legged rabbits went skipping from green glades and burrows a-nigh.
The-song-birds sang out from the copses, the bees passed on musical wing,
And all things were happy and busy, save Conor Mac Nessa the king!

VI.

So years had passed over, when, sitting midst silence like that of the tomb,
A terror crept through him as sudden the noonlight was blackened with gloom.
One red flare of lightning blazed brightly, illuming the landscape around,
One thunder-peal roared through the mountains, and rumbled and crashed un-
derground;

He heard the rocks bursting asunder, the trees tearing up by the roots,
And loud through the horrid confusion the howling of terrified brutes.
From the halls of his tottering palace came screamings of terror and pain,
And he saw crowding thickly around him the ghosts of the foes he had slain i

VII.

And as soon as the sudden commotion that shuddered through nature had ceased.
The king sent for Barach, his druid, and said: "Tell me truly, O priest,

What magical arts have created this scene of wild horror and dread?
What has blotted the blue sky above us, and shaken the earth that we tread?

Are the gods that we worship offended? what crime or what wrong has been done?
Has the fault been committed in Erin, and how may their favor be won?
What rites may avail to appease them? what gifts on their altars should smoke?
Only say, and the offering demanded we lay by your consecrate oak."

VIII.

“O king,” said the white-bearded druid, “the truth unto me has been shown,
There lives but one God, the Eternal; far up in high Heaven is His throne.
He looked upon men with compassion, and sent from His kingdom of light
His Son, in the shape of a mortal, to teach them and guide them aright.
Near the time of your birth, O King Conor, the Saviour of mankind was born,
And since then in the kingdoms far eastward He taught, toiled, and prayed, till this

morn,

When wicked men seized Him, fast bound Him with nails to a cross, lanced his side, And that moment of gloom and confusion was earth's cry of dread when He died.

IX.

"O King, He was gracious and gentle, His heart was all pity and love,

And for men he was ever beseeching the grace of his Father above;

He helped them, He healed them, He blessed them, He labored that all might attain

To the true God's high kingdom of glory, where never comes sorrow or pain;
But they rose in their pride and their folly, their hearts filled with merciless rage,
That only the sight of his life-blood fast poured from His heart could assuage:
Yet while on the cross-beams uplifted, His body racked, tortured, and riven,
He prayed-not for justice or vengeance, but asked that His foes be forgiven."

X.

With a bound from his seat rose King Conor, the red flush of rage on his face,
Fast he ran through the hall for his weapons, and snatching his sword from its place,
He rushed to the woods, striking wildly at boughs that dropped down with each blow,
And he cried: "Were I midst the vile rabble, I'd cleave them to earth even so!
With the strokes of a high king of Erinn, the whirls of my keen-tempered sword,
I would save from their horrible fury that mild and that merciful Lord.”
His frame shook and heaved with emotion; the brain ball leaped forth from his head,
And commending his soul to that Saviour, King Conor Mac Nessa fell dead.

VI. THE "GOLDEN AGE" OF PRE-CHRISTIAN ERINN.

S early as the reign of Ard-ri Cormac the First-the first years of the third century-the Christian faith. had penetrated into Ireland. Probably in the commercial intercourse between the Irish and continental ports, some Christian converts had been made amongst the Irish navigators or merchants. Some historians think the monarch himself, Cormac, towards the close of life adored the true God, and attempted to put down druidism. "His reign," says Mr. Haverty, the historian, "is generally looked upon as the brightest epoch in the entire history of pagan Ireland. He established three colleges; one for War, one for History, and the third for Jurisprudence. He collected and remodelled the laws, and published the code which remained in force until the English invasion (a period extending beyond nine hundred years), and outside the English Pale for many centuries after! He assembled the bards and chroniclers at Tara, and directed them to collect the annals of Ireland, and to write. out the records of the country from year to year, making them synchronize with the history of other countries, by collating events with the reigns of contemporary foreign potentates, Cormac himself having been the inventor of this kind of chronology. These annals formed what is called the 'Psalter of Tara,' which also contained full details of the bounderics. of provinces, districts, and small divisions of land throughout Ireland; but unfortunately this great record has been lost, no vestige of it being now, it is believed, in existence. The magnificence of Cormac's palace at Tara was commensurate with the greatness of his power and the brilliancy of his actions; and he fitted out a fleet which he sent to harass the shores of Alba or Scotland, until that country also was compelled to

acknowledge him as sovereign. He wrote a book or tract called Teaguscna-Ri, or the Institutions of a Prince,' which is still in existence, and which contains admirable maxims on manners, morals, and government." This illustrious sovereign died A. D. 266, at Cleitach, on the Boyne, a salmon bone, it is said, having fastened in his throat while dining, and defied all efforts of extrication. He was buried at Ross-na-ri, the first of the pagan monarchs for many generations who was not interred at Brugh, the famous burial place of the preChristian kings. A vivid tradition relating the circumstances of his burial has been very beautifully versified by Dr. Ferguson in his poem, “The Burial of King Cormac":

"Crom Cruach and his sub-gods twelve."

Said Cormac "are but craven treene;
The axe that made them, haft or helve,
Had worthier of our worship been:

But He who made the tree to grow,
And hid in earth the iron-stone,
And made the man with mind to know
The axe's use, is God alone."

The druids hear of this fearful speech and are horrified:

Anon to priests of Crom was brought
(Where girded in their service dread
They ministered on red Moy Slaught)—
Word of the words King Cormac said.

They loosed their curse against the king,
They cursed him in his flesh and bones,
And daily in their mystic ring

They turned the maledictive stones.

At length one day comes the news to them that the king is dead, "choked upon the food he ate," and they exultantly sound "the praise of their avenging God." Cormac, before he dies, however, leaves as his last behest a direction that he shall not be interred in the old pagan cemetery of the kings at Brugh, but at Ross-na-ri :

But ere the voice was wholly spent

That priest and prince should still obey,

To awed attendants o'er him bent

Great Cormac gathered breath to say:

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