The Highland monthly - National Library of Scotland

52 The Highland Monthly.
of Patrick, of Colum-Cille and of Ciaran, and most of the
seniors of Ireland, who " sung masses, hymns, psalms, and
canticles for the welfare of his soul." In the island in
which he died there are still the remains of a small castle
or stone house, and on the banks of the lake, which are
now adorned by many beautiful seats of noblemen and
gentlemen, are still to be seen the remains of Malachy's
Dun, or Fort, consisting of several concentric earthen
ramparts.
On the death of Malachy, it seems to have occurred to
the Provincial Kings of Leinster, Munster, and Connacht
that each of them was entitled to play the role of Brian and
to become supreme King of Ireland, while the head of the
northern Hy Niells asserted his hereditary right to the
alternate succession to the Crown. Wars were the result
of the rival pretensions. After a time, Donnachadh
O'Brien, the son of Brian and Gormflath, who, to make
way for his pretensions, procured the murder of his brother
Tadg, appears as the most successful competitor, and is
sometimes styled King of Ireland ; but, in 1064, he is said
to have been deposed, and to have gone to Rome, where
he died. Some accounts say that he carried the Crown of
Ireland with him, and that it remained in Rome until the
Pope presented it to Henry II., but this is a manifest fable.
We next hear of Diarmad of Leinster as attaining a kind
of supremacy, and in the notice of his death in the Annals
of Ulster, in the year 1072, he is styled " King of Ireland^
Wales, and of the Danes of Dublin, and protector of the
honour of Leth Cuinn." After him, Turlogh O'Brien, a
grandson of Brian Boroime, seems for a long time to have
been the most successful competitor, and he was addressed
as King of Ireland by the Pope, and by Lanfranc, Archbishop
of Canterbury, in 1084, v/hen they wrote him
complaining of the ecclesiastical irregularities permitted
in his kingdom ;
but he was never fully acknowledged, and,
in recording his death, the Four Masters style him King of
Ireland " with oppo:3ition." On his death, a fierce contest