After ten years, a bard thus sings the dirge of Aed: 

“Long is the wintry night, with rough gusts of wind;
Under pressing grief we meet it, since the red-speared king
of the noble house lives not. 
It is fearful to watch how the waves heave from the bottom;
To them may be compared all those who with us lament him. 
A generous, wise, staid man, of whose renown the populous
Tara was full. 
A shielded oak that sheltered the palace of Milid’s sons. 
Master of the games of the fair hilled Taillten,
King of Tara of a hundred conflicts;
Chief of Fodla the noble, Aed of Oileac who died too soon. 
Popular, not forgotten, he departed from this world,
A yew without any blemish upon him was he of the long-flowing
hair.”

Nor must it be thought that these repeated raids which we have recorded in any way checked the full spiritual life of the nation.  It is true that there was not that quiet serenity from which came the perfect beauty and art of the old Book of Kells, but a keenness and fire kindled the breasts of those who learned the New Way and the Ancient Learning.  The schools sent forth a host of eminent men who over all western Europe laid the intellectual basis of the modern world.  This view of Ireland’s history might well be expanded almost without limit or possibility of exaggeration.  Receiving, as we saw, the learning and traditions of Rome while Rome was yet mighty and a name of old imperial renown, Ireland kept and cherished the classical wisdom and learning, not less than the lore of Palestine.  Then the northern garrisons of Rome were beaten back, and Britain and Gaul alike were devastated by hordes from beyond the Rhine.  The first wild deluge of these fierce invaders was now over, and during the lull of the storm teachers went forth from Ireland to Scotland, as we have seen; they went also to Britain; to Belgium; to northern, central and southern Gaul; and to countries beyond the Rhine and in the south; to Switzerland and Austria, where one Irishman gave his name to the Canton of St. Gall, while another founded the famous see of Salzburg, a rallying-point through all the Middle Ages.  It was not only for pure spiritual zeal and high inspiration that these teachers were famed.  They had not less renown for all refined learning and culture.  The famous universities of Oxford, Paris and Pavia count among the great spirits at their inception men who were worthy pupils of the schools of Devenish and Durrow, of Bangor and Moville.

We have recorded the tribute paid by Alfred the Saxon king to the Ireland of his day.  Let us add to it the testimony of a great divine of France.  Elias, Bishop of Angouleme, who died in 875, wrote thus:  “What need to speak of Ireland; setting at nought, as it does, the difficulties of the sea, and coming almost in a body to our shores, with its crowd of philosophers, the most intelligent of whom are subjecting themselves to a voluntary exile.”