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LIFE OF CHARLES HALIDAT.
Connaught. He passed the winter of that year in
Connaught with Miarkartan, and agreed upon a marriage
between his son Sigurd and Biadmyna, Miarkartan's
daughter, Sigurd being then nine years of age and she five.
The following summer he and Miarkartan reduced a
great part
of Ulster. Miarkartan had returned to Con-
naught, and King Magnus's fleet stood at anchor off the
northern coast to carry him to Norway when a force of
Irish barred the way. Eyvind, one of his commanders,
advised him to break through, but Magnus saw no reason
for not retiring to safer ground. And then (says the Saga)
Magnus burst forth in the following
verses :
" Why ihould we hurry home ? I am happy that a young woman
Does not forbid my addresses,
For my heart is at Dublin ;
And this autumn I will not visit For there is an Irish girl
The matrons of Drontheim. 1 That I love better than myself."
We are left to conjecture, as far at least as the Sagas are
concerned, about their building a bridge at their city of
"
Dyfflin," or Ath-Cliagh, as the Irish called it, and Mr.
Haliday had heavy labour to seek for the proofs. Yet,
there would seem to be no great difficulty in believing that
the Scandinavians were the founders, if, as was no doubt
the fact, it was made of timber. "We know from the
Gragas "
(says Sir G. Webb Dasent) " that the bridges in
Iceland were commonly of timber." 2
In like manner we Danish Caatlee
are left to discover from other sources than the
in Ireland.
bagas
whether " the fortress of the foreigners at Ath-Cliath," so
constantly referred to in the Irish annals, was a castle of
stone and lime or a structure of earth or wood. But, we
know from Giraldus Cambrensis, that the English advanced
with banners displayed against " the walls " of Waterford,
and that M'Murrough led his allies to "the walls" of
1 " Matronas N idarosienses," condita est . . . ad ostium amnia
"'
ibid. : Xidarosia' hodiernum em- Nidse (Nidar 5s) sita. Regesta
porium Norvegiae Throndhjem Geograpbica." Ibid, vol. xiL
dictum . ab Olavo rege
a " Burnt Nial or Life in Iceland,"
Norvegiae Tryggvii filio, principle &c., preface, p. cxxix.
e