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though not much earlier, than that of the Cumberland
colony. The Gallgael are first found in 854 or 855
in co. Tyrone, and next year as settled in northern
Ireland (Leathchuinn). The Four Masters mention
Gofraith mac Feargus as invited by Kenneth mac
Alpin to strengthen Dalriada (south-west Scotland)
in 835, and he died as king of Insigall (the Hebrides)
in 852, the year in which Olaf the White came to
Ireland. The name of Gofraith suggests that he was
himself an early example of the mixed race, and by
835 the Norse were certainly attacking the Islands,
while in 839 the Ulster Annals and the Chronicle of
Huntingdon record invasion of Pictish territory. Then
we find Olaf the White fighting Caittil Finn, or Ketil
Flatnef, with his Gallgael in Munster, 857, and subsequently
in alliance with him, having married Ketil’s
daughter Aud, after already marrying the daughter of
Kenneth. It may have been a case of polygamy,
to which ninth-century Vikings were accustomed ;
but from what we know of Aud this is doubtful.
Now Heimskringla represents Ketil as Harald Fairhair’s
viceroy; Laxdæla makes him his enemy.
Possibly Ketil at first left Norway to escape Harald,
and later was used as a stick to beat Olaf the White :
failing which, at a subsequent date, Harald Fairhair
came in person. In any case Ketil and his party
were by no means subdued, and though the Irish
annals represent the Gallgael as renegades worse than
heathen, Aud, Helgi Magri and other connexions of
Ketil appear as Christians, or semi-Christianised. It
is of Helgi, the Christian son-in-law of Ketil, that it is
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