Page 43 - Demo

Chapter One 43
Bay to Dundalk. To complete this line, full advantage was taken of such natural defences as lakes, woods, and bogs, but where these did not exist, the Ulstermen constructed a high “ditch” of sods, with broad dykes on each side. In later times when the original purpose of the ditch was almost lost to memory, the parts of it still remaining became known as Claidhe na Muice Duibhe, the Black Pig’s Dyke. Now while this line of defence protected and preserved Ulster for more than half a century, there still came a time when neither ditch nor dyke was suicient to ward of the attacks of the mighty Connachtaigh .
About 330 A.D. Fiachaidh Sraibhtine, Fiacha of the Lightning, was elected King of Con- naught and Meath with his royal residence at Tara. While his son Muireadhach Tíreach, Muireadach of the Lands, was away on an expedition, the king was attacked and killed by his own brothers, three rebellious and troublesome Connacht princes known as “the Three Collas” (or “Connlas).
When Muireadach returned he defeated and banished the Collas, but later pardoned them, and in order to avoid future quarrels he recommended that they should set out and conquer a kingdom for themselves, namely Ulster. They accordingly made war on Ulster and conquered part of it, including the old capital Eamhain Mhacha, Navan Fort, near Ar- magh, which they destroyed. In the aftermath the brothers organized the part of the north- ern province they had conquered and gave it the name of Oirghialla, or Oriel, which means “the hostage givers” or alternatively ‘the eastern captives’. This new kingdom occupied the centre of ancient Ulster and would have included large portions of the present-day counties of Monaghan, Armagh, and parts of Fermanagh, Louth and Tyrone.
The power of the Connacht dynasty was further extended by Muireadhach’s grandson, the infamous Niall Naoi-Ghiallach, or more commonly, Niall of the Nine Hostages, who ruled as King of Connacht and Meath from 377-404 A.D. The epithet “Of the Nine Hostages” was applied to him on account of the number of hostages he exacted from the monarchs conquered by him. Remembered for his predatory warfare against modern day Britain and France, ancient British accounts declare that the groans of the Britons testiied to this, but also for his association with the capture of St Patrick, Niall dispatched his three sons, Eoghan, Conall and Eanna on an expedition against the north-western part of the Fifth of Ulster, where they set up in a kingdom they named Aileach. This new kingdom was at irst quite small, but in time it grew and later parts of Aileach were named after the princes themselves, Inish Eoghan, Eoghan’s Island, in the north,; Tír Chonaill, Conall’s Land, in the south, and Tír Eanna, Eanna’s Land, all sited in the centre of what is today county Donegal.