The _War of the Gaedhil with the Gaill_ records still more victories for the Munster fleet during the reign of Brian Borumha. In 984 he assembled “a great marine fleet” on Lough Derg and took three hundred boats up the Shannon to Lough Ree[158] and again in 1001 sailed with his fleet to Athlone.[159] But the greatest triumph of all was in 1005, when Brian, then at the height of his power, “sent forth a naval expedition composed of the foreigners of Dublin and Waterford and the Ui Ceinnselaigh (_i.e._, the men of Wexford) and almost all the men of Erin, such of them as were fit to go to sea; and they levied royal tribute from the Saxons and the Britons and from the men of Lennox in Scotland and the inhabitants of Argyle.”[160]
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records the names of a number of Frisian sailors who fought with the English in a naval battle against the Vikings (A. an. 897). In the same way the Irish ships must have been manned to a large extent by Norse mercenaries or by the Gaill-Gaedhil, for practically all the shipping terms introduced into Irish in the tenth and eleventh centuries are of Norse origin.[161] This is evident from the following list:--
Mid. Ir. _abor_, _abur_: O.N. _hábora_, ‘an oar hole.’
_Accarsoid_: O.N. _akkerissaeti_, ‘a harbour for ships.’
_athbha_: phonetic form (af, av) of O.N. _höfuth_, ‘head’ of a ship.
_Allsad_: O.N. _halsa_, ‘to slacken a sail.’
_As_: O.N. _ass_, ‘the pole to which the lower end of a sail was fastened during a fair wind.’
_birling_: O.N. _byrthingr_, ‘a transport vessel,’ ‘a merchant ship.’[162]
_cnairr_: O.N. _knörr_, ‘a merchant ship.’
_laideng_: O.N. _leithangr_, ‘naval forces.’
_lunnta_, _lunn_ (in reania): O.N. _hlunnr_, ‘the handle of an oar.’
_scib_: O.N. _skip_, ‘a ship,’ whence also are derived _sciobaire_, ‘a sailor’ and _scipad_ and _sgiobadh_, ‘to make ready for sailing.’
_tile_: O.N. _thili_, ‘a plank,’ ‘the bottom board in a boat.’
_Tlusdais_ (? teldass): O.N. _tjaldáss_, ‘the horizontal topmast of a ship.’
_uicing_, a word used for O.N. _Víkingr_, ‘one who haunts ‘a fleet’: a bay or creek.’ _uiginnecht_, piracy:
(_a_) Loan-words from Old Norse in Irish.
The large number of loan-words from Old Norse which occur in Old and Middle Irish indicate clearly the extent and character of Scandinavian influence in Ireland. They are therefore interesting from an historical point of view, for they confirm, and sometimes supplement, the evidence of Irish and Icelandic sources, that the relations existing between the two peoples were largely of a friendly character.