It was thirty-three years before Christ, according to the "Four Masters," that Conairé the Great, High-king of all Ireland, was slain, and he is the central figure of the famous and very ancient saga of the Bruidhean Da Derga.[8]
And now we come to the birth of Christ, which is thus recorded by the "Four Masters": "The first year of the age of Christ and the eighth of the reign of Crimhthan Niadhnair."[9] Crimhthan was no doubt one of the marauding Scots who plundered Britain, for it is recorded of him that "it was this Crimhthan who went on the famous expedition beyond the sea from which he brought home several extraordinary and costly treasures, among which were a gilt chariot and a golden chess-board, inlaid with three hundred transparent gems, a tunic of various colours and embroidered with gold, a shield embossed with pure silver," and many other valuables. Curiously enough O'Clery's Book of Invasions contains a poem of seventy-two lines ascribed to this king himself, in which he describes these articles. He was fabled to have been accompanied on this expedition by his "bain-leannán" or fairy sweetheart, one of an interesting race of beings of whom frequent mention is made in Irish legend and saga.
The next event of consequence after the birth of Christ is the celebrated revolt led by Cairbré Cinn-cait, of the Athach-Tuatha,[10] or unfree clans of Ireland, in other words the serfs or plebeians, against the free clans or nobility, whom they all but exterminated, three unborn children of noble line alone escaping.[11]
The people of Ireland were plagued--as though by heaven--with bad seasons and lack of fruit during the usurper Cairbré's reign. As the "Four Masters" graphically put it, "evil was the state of Ireland during his reign, fruitless her corn, for there used to be but one grain on the stalk; fishless her rivers; milkless her cattle; unplenty her fruit, for there used to be but one acorn on the oak." The belief that bad seasons were sent as a punishment of bad rulers was a very ancient and universal one in Ireland, and continued until very lately. The ode which the ollav or head-bard is said to have chanted in the ears of each newly-inaugurated prince, took care to recall it to his mind, and may be thus translated:--
