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Tiernan was abbot of Clonmacnoise, and Marian is thought to have been a monk of that monastery, as he speaks of a superior called Tigernach, under whom he had lived in Ireland.
Dead to the world, as the world to him, the opening of a new grave in the royal corner at Clonmacnoise was the last incident connected with his name, which reminded Connaught that it had lost its once prosperous Prince, and Ireland, that she had seen her last Ard-Righ, according to the ancient Milesian Constitution.
But the most lamentable scene of spoliation, and that which excited the profoundest emotions of pity and anger in the public mind, was the violation of the churches of St. Kieran the renowned Clonmacnoise. This city of schools had cast its cross-crowned shade upon the gentle current of the Upper Shannon for a thousand years.
It is instructive to read under this same year, 832, that "a great number of the family of Clonmacnoise were slain by Feidlimid king of Cashel, all their land being burned by him up to the door of the church." Thus the progress of tribal struggle was uninterrupted by the Gentile raids. Four years later, a fleet of sixty Norse fighting galleys sailed up the Boyne.
He had reached the age of seventy-three, and he prepared to meet his last hour with the zeal and humility of a true Christian. To Dunnasciath repaired Amalgaid, Archbishop of Armagh, the Abbots of Clonmacnoise and of Durrow, with a numerous train of the clergy.
Clonmacnoise, Kildare, and Lismore, were more than once rifled of their wealth by impious hands, and given over to desolation and burning by so-called Christian nobles and soldiers!
Conor was treacherously slain, the year after the battle of Ova, in a parley with his own nephew, though the parley was held under the protection of the Bachall-Isa, or Staff, of Christ, the most revered relic of the Irish Church. After his death, his body was buried in the great Church of Clonmacnoise, in his own patrimony.
It was settled that we were to go to Loughrea, and to see certain ruins by going a few miles out of our way; and this we accomplished, and actually did see, by an uncommonly fine sunset, the beautiful ruins of Clonmacnoise; and we slept this night at Loughrea, where we had been assured there was a capital inn, and may be it was, but the rats or the mice ran about my room so, and made such a noise in the holes of the floor, that I could not sleep, but was thankful they did not get on or into my bed.
"They left not," say the Four Masters, "a book or a gem," nor anything to show what Clonmacnoise had been, save the bare walls of the temples, the mighty shaft of the round tower, and the monuments in the cemeteries, with their inscriptions in Irish, in Hebrew, and in Latin.
Malachy II. of the events of whose second reign some mention will be made hereafter held the sovereignty after Brian's death, until the year 1023, when he died an edifying death in one of the islands of Lough Ennel, near the present Mullingar. He is called, in the annals of Clonmacnoise, "the last king of Ireland, of Irish blood, that had the crown."
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