Attila and His Conquerors: A Story of the Days of St. Patrick and St. Leo the Great

They sat together on a crag close to their home, the young brother and sister, Baithene and Ethne, only son and daughter of a chieftain of the great clan O’Neill. Prince and princess they might have been called in legendary story, and their father and mother king and queen. For there were many kings in Ireland in those early centuries, as afterwards many saints. And yet neither of these great titles, though counted by the score, were unmeaning. The saints were men and women vowed and consecrated to a holy life of devotion and service:—a true aristocracy in the Church. Homage was rendered them because nobleness was expected of them. And the kings were distinguished as really, in the minds of their people and clan, from all beneath them, as men of another stamp and metal from the rest, with a royal superscription. To serve them was honour; to obey them was imperative necessity and sacred duty; to live for them was life worth living; to die for them was death worth dying. Conan, king or chief of one branch of the O’Neills, father of Baithene and Ethne, and his wife, however poor their palace and small their kingdom, were served and honoured with a free, unquestioning loyalty altogether unknown in the servile, mercenary courts of their contemporary sovereigns in the palaces of Constantinople or Ravenna.

Therefore these children—for they were scarcely more, the boy seventeen, the maiden sixteen—had been surrounded from infancy with an atmosphere of loving homage. Their home, outside which they sat, overlooking the sea, was not much better than a settler’s lodge, built of mud and timber, with rough unhewn stones; yet it was essentially a palace, for those who dwelt in it were acknowledged to be royal. Outside, on the hill below, some of the clansmen guarded it night and day, and no stranger could enter unchallenged; it was the hall of feasting, the gathering-place for battle, the seat of judgment for the people. Except the brother and sister, and the guard watching on the hillside, out of sight at that moment, every one was asleep. For it was late; the sun had set an hour or two, the moon was making her long path of silvery light on the waves below, and the youth and maiden sat together in the soft evening air clad in the sacred white robes, Ethne still with the white veil on her head. For this had been a great day for them. There had been a Christian baptism on the hill of Tara, a few miles away, and in the well on the hillside the brother and sister, with their mother, had been baptized by the great missionary Patrick into the Christian name; and also, at the same time, numbers of their people, among them many of the Druids and bards, the priests and poets of their race. Their father had been present, but could not himself yet enter that solemn gate. He had too many wars on hand; too many clan wrongs that could not forego vengeance; too many enemies whom he was not quite clear he could include in the great peace which the Christ was said to bring. He was too sure of the rough work that might have to be done outside that gate of baptism, too doubtful of the kind of world he might find within, to venture yet to enter. But the message the Gallo-Roman bishop brought seemed so great, and from Powers so great, the story of compassion and sacrifice so beautiful, and his wife had adopted it with such joy, that he could not refuse that she and the children should enter a world that seemed so fair.

The mother had remained at Tara, with her husband and the chieftains, for the night; and the children were alone in the house, under the charge of the old nurse, with the rest of the household.

“I felt the bishop’s hands rest on my head,” said Baithene, in a low tone, “and his deep voice went through me. The words were Latin, but I think I understood most of them. We belong to the Father; He is the God of all men, of heavenand earth, of the sea and of the rivers, of the high mountains and the lowly valleys; above heaven, and in heaven, and under heaven. We are His children. And we belong to the Son. He is the King of all men. He died for us all. And we are His soldiers, and His clansmen, of His flesh and blood. And we belong to the Spirit. He is within our hearts, and will teach us and give us strength to be good children of the Father, and good soldiers of the Son, the Heavenly King. And this whole land of ours is only a little bit of His great kingdom. And this whole world of ours is only one of the halls of His great world. But it is worth while to be the son and daughter of an earthly king, for we may lead our whole people to the Heavenly King. Wonderful things have to be done, Ethne. Ireland has to be won for Him. The world has to be won for Him.”