The Charm of Ireland

by Burton Egbert Stevenson

"Ah," said Mahon, sadly. "Is it so? You see how little we can do against these foreigners."

"Little as it is," said Brian, "it is better than peace."

"But it is folly to keep on fighting," said Mahon. "We can not conquer these shining warriors, clad in their polished corselets. The part of wisdom is to make terms with them, and leave no more of our men dead upon the field."

"It is natural for men to die," answered Brian calmly; "but it is neither the nature nor the inheritance of the Dalcassians to submit to injury and outrage. And yet I have no wish to lead any unwilling man to battle. Let the question of war or peace be left to the whole clan."

So it was done, and "the voice of hundreds as of one man answered for war."

Mahon abode loyally by this decision, and there was a great muster, and a fierce battle near the spot where Limerick Junction now stands, and the Danes were routed, "and fled to the ditches, and to the valleys, and to the solitudes of that great sweet-flowery plain," and the Irish pursued them all through the night, and with the morning, came to Limerick, and stormed and took the island fortress; plundered it, and reduced it "to a cloud of smoke and red fire afterwards."

Then Mahon was murdered by some such treachery as stains so many pages of Irish history, and Brian became king of all Munster. His first work was to punish his brother's murderers, which he did with grim celerity, so that, as the chronicler puts it, they soon found that he "was not a stone in place of an egg, nor a wisp in place of a club, but a hero in place of a hero, and valour in place of valour." After that, with new energy, he turned against the Danes, and harried them and was himself harried, defeated them and was himself defeated, but fought on undaunted year after year, until the final great victory at Clontarf, where he himself was slain. And during all the years that he was king of Munster, he ruled it, not from Cashel, but from Kincora, his well-beloved castle here at the ford of the Shannon.

The ford is no longer there, for an elaborate system of sluice-gates and weirs has been constructed to hold the water back and regulate the supply to the lower reaches of the river, and one crosses to the town upon a beautiful stone bridge of thirteen arches, between which the water swirls and eddies, forming deep pools, where great salmon love to lurk. At its other end is the town, with its houses mounting the steep slope from the river, and dominated by the square tower of its old cathedral.

It was to the cathedral we went first, and a venerable pile we found it, dating from the twelfth century, and attributed to that same Donall O'Brien, King of Munster, who built the one at Limerick. But, alas, it is venerable only from without; as one steps through the doorway, all illusion of age vanishes, for the interior has been "improved" to suit the needs of a small Church of Ireland congregation.

The Protestants in this parish are so few that the choir of the cathedral is more than ample for them; so it has been closed off from the rest of the church by a glass screen with hideous wooden "tracery"—there is a rose window (think of it!) sawed out of boards; and beyond this screen an ugly pavement of black and yellow tiles has been laid over the beautiful grey flags of the old pavement, and pews have been installed. One of the transepts is used as a robing-room; in the other an elaborate combination of steam-engine, dynamo and storage-batteries has been placed to furnish heat and light—and this, mind you, in the church which was once the royal burying-place of the Kings of Munster!