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Ireland and the Making
of Britain
Moville, Comgall who founded Bangor, Brendan 1
who
founded Clonfert, Finnian who founded Clonard, Bren-
dan of Birr and Cainnech of Ossory who figure so prominently
in Adamnan as the personal friends of Columcille
they are but leading figures in a company every individual
member of which stood forth as a burning beacon
to subsequent ages. Nor was Ireland deficient in great
kings during this era. Diarmid II who occupied the
throne of Tara for a score of years and Aedh who was
sovereign
for more than another score both made their
reigns memorable in Irish history.
It was in the course of the sixth century that Ireland's
most celebrated schools started on their full career. It
was in that century that her ancient heroic literature,
maturing towards perfection during the preceding ages,
was cast in its fulness into the literary form in which we
now know it, and that the literature of the new era, trans-
formed and awakened by the new ideas of Christianity,
blossomed into its first springtide. 2
It was towards the
close of the century that the spiritual and material forces
of the nation came together at Drumceat and set on foot
a new epoch, reforming the bardic institution, reor-
ganizing the entire educational system of the kingdom,
and establishing a free Scotland in union with the mother-
land. It was during this century that the overflowing
energy of Ireland began to deluge Europe with a missionary
activity that read the Irish ferocity of enthusiasm
and self-abnegation and the eloquence and daring of the
1 The copies of Brendan's Legend, which are preserved in Ireland and on
the Continent, are numerous. It is still disputed whether in his famous Navigatio
he reached part of the American continent.
2Tho valuable fragments have been preserved from the sixth century,
the more striking specimens of the new literature left to us, in Latin rather
than in Irish, belong to the seventh. Thus Cummian wrote his paschal epistle
in 634; the Irish Augustin or JEngus wrote his striking work on miracles,
apparently in Carthage, in 659; while Adamnan brought out his extant works
in the last decade of the seventh century.
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