Two years later, four hundred and fifty of the followers of De Courcy, another great Norman warrior, were defeated at Maghera Conall in Louth, some being drowned in the river, while others were slain on the battlefield.  In the same year De Courcy was again defeated with great slaughter in Down, and escaped severely wounded to Dublin.  For At-Cliat, from being a fortress of the Danes and Norsemen, was gradually becoming a Norman town.  The doorway of Christ Church Cathedral, which dates from about this time, is of pure Norman style.

In 1186 we find a son of the great Ruaidri Ua Concobar paying a band of these same Foreigners three thousand cows as “wages,” for joining him in some plundering expedition against his neighbors.  The genius of strife reigned supreme, and the newcomers were as completely under its sway as the old clansmen.  Just as we saw the Dark Norsemen of the ninth century coming in their long ships to plunder the Fair Norsemen of At-Cliat, and the Fair Norsemen not less vigorously retaliating, so now we find wars breaking out among the Normans who followed in the steps of the Norsemen.  In 1205 the Norman chieftain who held a part of Meath under his armed sway, and who had already built a strong castle at Kells, was at war with the De Bermingham family, who at that time held the old Danish stronghold of Limerick.  Two years later another contest broke out between the De Berminghams and William Marescal, and yet another struggle between Hugo de Lacy and De Bermingham, very disastrous to the retainers of the latter, for the Chronicler tells us that “nearly all his people were ruined.”

Thus the old life of tribal struggle went on.  The country was wealthy, full of cattle and herds, silver and gold, stored corn and fruit, rich dyed stuffs and ornaments.  The chieftains and provincial kings lived in state within their forts, with their loyal warriors around them, feasting and making merry, and the bards and heralds recited for their delight the great deeds of the men of old, their forefathers; the harpers charmed or saddened them with the world-old melodies that Deirdre had played for Naisi, that Meave had listened to, that Crede sang for her poet lover.

The life of the church was not less vigorous and vital.  There are many churches and cathedrals of that period of transition, as of the epoch before the first Norman came, which show the same fervor and devotion, the same faith made manifest by works of beauty.  In truth no country in the world has so full and rich a record in lasting stone, beginning with the dwellings of the early saints who had seen the first Messenger face to face, and passing down through age after age, showing the life and growth of the faith from generation to generation.

The schools, as we saw, carried on the old classical tradition, bringing forth monuments like the Annals of Tigearnac; and there was the same vigor and vital force in every part of the nation’s life.  The coming of the Normans changed this in no essential regard.  There was something added in architecture, the Norman modifying the old native style; the castle and keep gradually taking the place of the earthwork and stone fort.  And in the tenure of land certain new principles were introduced.  But the sum of national life went on unbroken, less modified, probably, than it had been by the old Norse raids.