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12 THE VIKING PERIOD
with the Viking armies in England. According to the account
of the siege of Chester (c. 912) preserved in the Three
Fragments of Annals, many Irishmen, foster-children of
the Norsemen, formed part of the besieging army under the
chieftain Hingamund,
1
who had been expelled from Dublin
some time previously. To these Irishmen Aethelflaed, the
lady of the Mercians, sent ambassadors appealing to them
as
"
true and faithful friends
"
to abandon the
"
hostile
race of Pagans
"
and to assist the Saxons in defending the
city. The Irish then deserted their former allies and joined
the Saxons,
"
and the reason they acted so towards the
Danes," adds the chronicler,
"
was because they were less
friendly with them than with the Norsemen."*
The Vikings who formed settlements in Ireland during
the reign of Turgeis (839-845) seem to have mingled freely
with the Irish, for we find them not long after their arrival
stirring up the clans to rebellion against the drd-ri3
and
joining the native princes on plundering expeditions. The
annals mention several such alliances. Cinaedh, Prince of
Cranachta-Breagh, who had revolted against Maelsechnaill
with a party of plunderers, laid waste the country from the
Shannon eastward to the sea.* Another Irish prince, I^orcan,
King of Meath, accompanied Olaf and Ivarr when they
broke into the famous burial-mounds 8
at New Grange,
Knowth and Dowth, on the Boyne, and carried off the
1
Ann. Cambriae, A.D. 902; (Steenstrup : Normannerne, III., pp.
3?-4i)-
*Three Fragments of Annals, p. 230 ff.
8
Annals of the Four Masters, A.D. 845, 852; Annals of Ulster,
A.D. 846. Three Fragments of Annals, A.D. 862.
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