LITMIR.BIZ

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troops commanded by Denis O'Keefe, Prince of Fermoy, and O'Sullivan, Prince of Beara. They also organized a large naval force, consisting of one hundred and twenty ships commanded by an O'Falvey and an O'Connell.

      "The army marched northwest through Connaught, and thence through Ulster to Armagh, which city was then in possession of the Danes, and whither the latter had brought Ceallachan to transport him captive to Denmark. The Irish attacked Armagh, applied scaling ladders to the walls, and the Danes under Sitric and his brothers, Tor and Magnus, were defeated with great slaughter. The Danes fled in the night to the protection of their ships at Dundalk, and carrying Ceallachan, they embarked on board their vessels in that bay. Warrior O'Keefe followed, and from its shores sent a flag of truce demanding of Sitric that he deliver to him the person of King Ceallachan. But Sitric refused the demand unless an eric, a sum of money, was first paid for every Dane who fell in the fifteen different battles with King Ceallachan and his forces. Sitric then ordered Ceallachan to be tied to one of the masts of his ship, and he was thus exposed in full view of the whole Munster army. The Irish were terribly enraged at this outrage on their chief, but had not then any means of attacking the enemy. Shortly after, however, O'Falvey, the Irish admiral, hove in sight and drew up his ships in line for attack on the Danish fleet. A desperate engagement ensued; the Irish commanders gave orders to grapple with the enemy's vessels. O'Falvey succeeded in releasing Ceallachan, and, giving him a sword, asked him to assume command. The Irish, at seeing their king at liberty, fought with renewed valor; but the valiant O'Falvey fell pierced with many wounds. O'Connell, who was second in command, seized Sitric, the Danish chieftain, in sudden grasp and plunged overboard with him. Both were drowned. It is also related that Fingal, and many other Irish chiefs, grasped other Danish chiefs in similar fashion in their arms, and leaped with them in like manner into the sea. At length, the Danish forces were defeated, and their fleet totally destroyed. Almost all the Irish chiefs and a great many of the men engaged in that hard contest were slain. The consternation of General O'Keefe and his army, being unable to render any assistance to their countrymen on the water, may be imagined. After the naval combat Ceallachan landed in Dundalk, where he was most joyfully received by the people, and soon after resumed in peaceful sway, the government of the Munster province."

      "This great sea fight took place," said the narrator, "in the Bay of Dundalk, in the year 944. The account is given in an ancient Irish MS. with the title of 'Toruigheachd Cheallachain chaisil,' – signifying the pursuit for the rescue of Ceallachan Cashel."

      "Well what are your deductions, Mr. Mc.," queried the writer.

      "The coincidence to my mind is this," said Mr. McGillicuddy, as his face brightened; "and it is a singular one I think, that here in this glorious and enlightened Republic, one thousand years later, the kinsman of this Munster prince, Rev. Denis O'Callaghan, when erecting his church, now all paid for, had in his employ the kinsmen of the four chiefs highest in command on that memorable occasion – viz: O'Keefe, O'Sullivan, O'Falvey and O'Connell, all professing the identical Christian creed their forefathers professed and practised. There are no barbarians here now, thank God, to hinder Christians from kneeling at their own shrine, and all as they chose, no matter how else they may differ on material and worldly questions. Here the kinsmen of these brave soldiers of the tenth century build temples to the Lord of Hosts, and are not called upon to defend them with their life's blood from the fire and sword of barbaric legions. Thus let us pray that with pure Christian foundations, the beloved union of States, – the Republic – may be in the quotation of Henry Grattan, 'esto perpetua.'

      "

      The Ursuline Convent of Tenos

      Twenty-three years ago there started from France four Ursuline nuns with the intention of founding a convent of their order in the island of Tenos, in the Greek Archipelago. The first idea had been to found this establishment in Syra, the chief commercial town of the Cyclades; but insuperable difficulties turned their hopes to Tenos, known to the ancient Greeks as the island of Serpents. Nothing could be more picturesque and lovely than the island, nothing less civilized. These four ladies, of high courage and energy, left the shores of the most civilized country in the world with the small sum of six hundred francs, upon which they resolved to start a school of Catholic education and charity in an island which had ceased to be universally Catholic from the time of Venetian rule. Having gone over the ground and realized (only dimly) their enormous difficulties, the complete sacrifice they were compelled to make of all bodily comforts, and the unendurable conditions of existence they bravely faced, I can only compare their courage with that which formed the annals of the earliest stages of Christianity. Becalmed upon a whimsical sea, they arrived at Tenos a little before eight in the evening. Tenos was the spot selected, or rather its village, Lutra, because the bishop had consented to the erection of a convent in his diocese. To readers accustomed to the resources of civilized travelling the hour of arrival is an inconsequent detail. Not so even to-day in Tenos. Judge, then, what it must have been twenty-three years ago! Four delicately nurtured women had to face a dark, rocky road, more of the nature of a sheer precipice than a road, late at night upon mules. I made the same journey at mid-day and felt more dead than alive after it. There is positively not a vestige of roadway up the whole steep mountain pass, nothing but large rocks and broken marbles, though the traveller in search of the picturesque is amply repaid the discomfort of the ride. But compared with the village of Lutra, which was the destination of the nuns, this wild and dangerous-looking path is a kind of preliminary paradise. No word-painting of the most realistic school could do justice to the horror of Lutra to-day – and what must it have been there before the refining influence of those nuns touched it? This dirty stone-built and tumble-down village the four nuns entered at eight o'clock, when darkness covered its ugliness, but greatly increased its dangers. The first entrance winds under an intricate line of narrow stone arches, the pavement uneven, the mingling of odors unimaginable. Through this unearthly awfulness they bravely struggled and reached their destination at last. A Father from the neighboring community had heard of their expected arrival, and was already superintending the rough and hurried details of their reception. I saw the house which stands just as it was when the Ursuline nuns first made it their residence. A mud cabin containing two rooms: kitchen and dining-room, bedroom and chapel. The roof is made of stones thrown loosely over wooden beams placed far apart, the two rooms separated by a whitewashed arch instead of a door. There are no windows; but spaces are cut in the walls which served to let in the light and air, and at night were covered by shutters. Hail, rain, or snow, it was necessary to keep these spaces open by day in order to see, and it is not surprising that one of the nuns was soon prostrated by a dangerous fever. The beds were mattresses stuffed with something remarkably like potatoes, and laid on the mud floor at night, upon which the nuns slept a short, ascetic sleep.

      Here they remained for some time, going among the villagers and soliciting that the poor would send their children to be taught. This the poor did, and gradually the children began to fill the kitchen of the mud cabin. If it rained during class umbrellas had to be put up as a protection under a nominal roof, just as the nuns had to sleep under umbrellas in wet weather. Indeed, sometimes it rained so hard that they were obliged to take up their mattresses at night, and seek a more sheltered spot elsewhere. At last the number of their charity pupils increased; and the bishop, as poor as they were almost, offered them the only asylum in his power, his own paternal home, also a mud cabin; but instead of two miserable rooms it contained four. This was an immense improvement, and the nuns felt like exchanging a cottage for a palace. But here the protection of umbrellas was still necessary, as the roof was also made of loosely set stones and beams. In time other nuns joined them from France, until they formed a community of eleven, with eighty village school children and one boarder. It grew daily more and more necessary that something should be done to raise money to build a convent. Their couches had been slowly raised from a mud floor to tables, upon which they slept the sleep of Trappists; but a proper establishment was now indispensable to the work they had laid themselves out to do. With this object, two nuns set out on a supplicating mission round the Levant. They were less successful than they had perhaps anticipated, for they returned after their arduous task only enriched by eight thousand francs. With this sum they were enabled to build a small portion of the present establishment; but building in a Greek island is slow and costly work. Each stone has to be carried up the long mountain pass from the quarries; the way is difficult, the men unaccustomed to prompt work.

      However,

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