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8 LEINSTER
mountains which separate it from the vast central
plain, nearly all of which is Leinster.
This mountain range, trending south and a little
west from Dublin, is the main feature of Leinster
well marked in history. All the rest of the province
was the most fertile, the most accessible region in
Ireland, and therefore the first to be subdued. The
Normans made, indeed, their first landings in Wex-
ford and Waterford, but they quickly consolidated
their power in Dublin, which was itself a city of
foreign origin—which, even when they came in the
twelfth century, was Danish rather than Irish. Cen-
turies after that, when southern Ireland had slipped
completely from under foreign control, the "pale"
the district centring round Dublin and varying from
reign to reign in its limits—always remained subject
to English law.
—
But the pale, however far it might stretch west
and northward, stopped at the base of the Dublin hills.
There the Irish clans of the O'Tooles and O' Byrnes
held sway in strong fastnesses; and even in the
nineteenth century, after the last great rising of 1798
had been put down in blood and fire, Michael Dwyer
could still hold out on these hills so securely that
Emmet, escaping from his ill-starred attempt in 1803,
found sanctuary within two hours' march of those
castle gates which he had failed to storm.