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and slaves. From Edar, which they called Höfði,
Howth, they carried off "a great prey of women,"
and in 823 plundered Inis-dowill (Inch, co. Wexford)
and Cork ; then, sailing along the coast, climbed
the almost inaccessible crags of Skellig Mhichel on
the Kerry coast (where wonderful structures of this
period still remain in the island cashel and beehive
cells), and kidnapped the hermit Eitgall, "et cito
mortuus est fame et siti,"—perhaps set ashore as
a useless captive, for on board the ships he need
not have starved to death. Next year the famous
monastery of Bangor (co. Down) was sacked ; "the
oratory was broken, and the relics of Comhgall were
shaken from the shrine, as Comhgall himself had
foretold."
A year later they made the third attack on lona,
where the monastery, which in 818 had been rebuilt
in stone on a new site, was once more plundered.
The occasion is marked by the death of Blathmac
mac Flainn, and by the account of it written by
Walafrid Strabo, abbot of Augiadives (Reichenau on
the Lake of Constance), who himself died only twenty-one
years afterwards. Blathmac seems to have expected
the chance of his death sooner or later at the hands
of Vikings ; though the rebuilding of the monastery
suggests that the Columban brotherhood thought the
storm was over, after five years had passed without
sign of piracy from the south, and obviously without
sign of Norse attacks from the north. When at last
the sails of the approaching fleet were seen from the
look-out on Dunii, the jewelled golden shrine that
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