One Irish Summer

by William Eleroy Curtis

Brian devoted himself to the development of the industries, the encouragement of agriculture, and the education of the people. He made wise laws and enforced them with justice. He founded schools and colleges. He encouraged art and science, he built roads in every direction, and he gave the distracted country the blessings of peace and prosperity. Instead of fighting among themselves, the people gave their attention to farming, cattle-breeding, trade and manufacturing, literature and the polite arts, and the historians say that another twenty years of Brian’s reign would have changed the entire history of the country. Rare Tom Moore has given us a picture of Ireland in those days, when, according to his verses, a beautiful young lady, “Rich and rare were the gems she wore,” traversed the entire country, from north to south and from east to west, without being molested.

When Brian became an old man, Mailmora, king of Leinster, conspired with the Danes, the Manxmen, the chiefs of the Orkneys, and the Scots to overthrow him. Sigtryg of the Silken Beard arranged with them to consolidate their forces to overcome the Irish. Sigurd, Earl of Orkney, brought an army ten thousand strong. Broder, the great Viking of the Isle of Man, brought a fleet of two hundred ships and ten thousand men, covered with mail from head to foot, to meet the Irish, who always fought in tunics. Broder had once been a Christian, but had fallen from grace. He was the tallest and the strongest man of his time. His hair was so long that he had to tuck it under his belt. He wore a coat of mail “on which no steele could bite,” and he had “no reverence for God or for man, for church or sanctuary.”

The venerable Brian Boru, then seventy-three years of age, was camped in what is now Phœnix Park, surrounded by twenty thousand warriors representing the different Irish clans. His sons prevailed upon him not to engage in the battle, and he gave the command to his son Morrough. But he led the column to the Hill of Clontarf on the morning of Good Friday, and when the invaders were in plain sight Brian Boru, holding aloft a crucifix, rode from rank to rank reminding his men that on that day their Lord had died for them, and exhorting them to smite the heathen hip and thigh for their religion and their homes. Then, giving the signal for the onset, he withdrew to his tent at the top of the hill, where he could observe the conflict.

Battles in those days were a series of hand-to-hand encounters. The commanders selected each other for single combat. The fighting extended for two miles along the shores of the Bay of Dublin, and human beings were cut down like stalks of corn. The aged king remained in his tent engaged in earnest prayer for victory while the air was filled with the clash of steel, and the Danes and his own soldiers were dying by thousands around him. Toward nightfall the heathen gave way and began to retreat. Their commanders were all slain or desperately wounded. Brian’s grandson, Thorlough, smote the Earl of Orkney with his battle-axe and cleft his head down as far as his neck. Broder, the great Viking, desperately wounded, was flying from the field when he recognized Brian of the Long Beard at the door of his tent. He rushed upon the old man with a double-edged battle-axe. Brian seized his trusty sword and they struck together. Brian’s head was amputated and Broder’s legs, one at the knee and the other from the ankle. At sunset when they returned from the battle, Brian’s servants found their king dead and Broder stretched by his side.

The body of Brian and that of his son Morrough were conveyed with great solemnity to Armagh and laid at rest in the cathedral, but their tombs have disappeared. The funeral ceremonies lasted for a fortnight, and all Ireland was filled with lamentation. Every petty chief and prince in the island tried to grasp the power. As the old song runs—

“Each man ruled his own tribe,

But no man ruled Erin.”

And that condition continued for a century and a half, all Ireland being distracted by the rivalries of the several chiefs, the O’Briens, the O’Neills, the O’Connors, and the O’Loughlins.

That part of the battleground lying on the shore of the bay has been built over, and behind it the land has been divided into small country places where the rich men of Dublin spend their idle hours. Their homes are encircled with high fences, and are divided by a maze of roads and lanes concealed by canopies of green foliage that overhangs the walls.