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the south coast and made a descent on Glamorganshire
(Gwentian Chronicle), where the peninsula of
Gower was often afterwards the scene of their landings,
and then sailed across St. George’s Channel to
the Irish coast, which they followed until they came
to another island monastery, Lambey, then known as
Rechru (genitive Rechrainn, the name used by Moore
in the hog-drowning story quoted p. 48). Here they
"burnt, spoiled and impoverished the shrines" of the
abbey founded by St. Columba. Some identify this
place with Rachaire or Rathlin island, co. Antrim.
A letter of Alcuin, written in 797, speaks of the
ravages as continuing; and in 798 a second invasion
of the Irish Sea was made. Following, no doubt, the
same route, they again made for a rich island monastery,
the Celtic shrine of St. Dochonna on St. Patrick’s
Island (Holm Peel), on the west coast of Man. Skye
is named as attacked about this time, but the small
Columban monastery in the south of that island is
hardly likely to have been attacked, either from the
north or the south, without any attempt being made
to gather in the riches of Iona—so near at hand and
so much more tempting. Skye and Iona must have
suffered about the same time, namely in 802.
Meanwhile, in 799 and 800, France and Frisia had
occupied the attention of the pirates. If at first, as
we suspect, the Vikings had received help and encouragement
from France or Frisia, it did not prevent
their turning to those districts in the years when they
left Ireland and England to lie fallow. The sequence
of their descents proves that all these attacks came
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