Standish O'Grady; selected essays and passages

IRISH BARDIC HISTORY I45
the times in which he appeared contributed much to
this result, but we may be sure that his uninterrupted
reign of twenty-seven years of prosperity and military
success \yas not reached without the exhibition on his
part of great personal superiority. He was the youngest
of the sons of his father, and therefore his election,
by itself alone, would prove the possession on his part
of conspicuous royal qualities. In one of that class of
homely stories which also illustrate the characters of
the Saxon Kings of England, we perceive an estimate
formed by his contemporaries as to his physical strength
and personal daring. When a boy, the forge of his
father's chief smith being in flames, he and his brothers
rushed through the smoke and fire to rescue the con-
tents of the forge. The other boys brought out
respectively the bellows, the forge instruments, and a
a chariot, but Niall, the youngest, raised up and bore
away the great ponderous anvil.
Of Niall's foreign wars the bardic literature so overlays
fact with romantic embellishments that we can accept
little with reliance, save the great fact testified to by
Bede, Nennius, St. Patrick, the Roman writers, that under
him, or during his floruit, Ireland was the dominant power
in these islands, and that its power was seriously felt
even in Gaul. As I have said, scholars are generally
agreed that it was in Brittany that St. Patrick was taken
captive, which, having been in the reign of Niall, must
have been undertaken by himself in person or by his
generals. That this invasion, plundering expedition,
or what not, was carried on upon % large scale, St. Patrick's
I,