1014: Brian Boru & the Battle for Ireland (3 page)

The Norse and Swedes, whom the Gael
identified
as ‘the fair foreigners’ in the beginning, and the Danes, whom they described as ‘the dark foreigners’, often fought among themselves – not unlike the Irish. The Viking concept of warfare was somewhat different,
however. They considered battle an end in itself, a
transforming
experience which could open the gates to
Valhalla
, their idea of heaven. The Gael usually respected their dead enemies. The Vikings practised a variety of mutilations on theirs. Two of the most frequently cited examples are revealing. In one, a man was propped against a tree while still alive, eviscerated, then bound to the tree with his own intestines. The second
example
is the notorious and not infrequent ‘blood eagle’. A man’s lungs were torn from his living body and placed on his back, like wings. It is little wonder that the word ‘viking’ could instil terror.

Yet within a couple of generations many of the Vikings in Ireland had become settlers in the literal meaning of the word. They settled. And as emigrants tend to do, they clung to their own kind. They formed communities which grew into towns – a foreign
concept
in such a pastoral culture. Wicklow and Arklow in the southeast were two of their earliest successes.

As Norse and Dane adjusted to the more moderate climate of their new land they grew comfortable, even prosperous. Trading centres proliferated and eventually became the focal point of towns. Bunratty Castle in County Clare stands on what was the site of a Viking trading post in 970. In Ireland the growing season was
longer and the soil was warmer, so farms were laid out in the hinterland of the towns. Families expanded in response to the change in circumstances. Immigrants married Irish women, or, rarely, brought women from their homeland, built houses and raised children.
Memories
of the cold north faded into tales told to the little ones around the fire. The newcomers ceased to be, if they ever had been, the rampaging Vikings of song and saga.

Ultimately the Norse became the predominant
Scandinavian
element in Ireland. After changing hands
several
times between Norse and Dane, Dublin became the nucleus of the smaller Danish population. However, the phrase ‘The Danes of Dublin’ entered into common usage to such an extent that eventually all Northmen were called Danes. This created a confusion which
continues
to influence historians today – although some go the other way, and call all the Danes ‘Norsemen’.

Around the coasts of the island various Gaelic tribes developed trading relationships with the newcomers. One result was valuable cultural and linguistic
cross-pollination
, which engendered a growing if grudging respect. But tribes elsewhere in Ireland went to war against the foreigners, striving to expel or at least
dominate
them. War was too old a habit to relinquish in
favour of trade. In a society where the greatest honours were achieved in battle, commerce was considered less than noble.
The Annals of the Four Masters
, which
document
early and medieval Irish history in great detail and was compiled in the seventeenth century, contain hundreds of accounts of great battles and heroic
undertakings
, but none of commercial success.

Many of the written records of the period were lost when Vikings – or raiding parties of Irish outlaws, who were just as bad – burned or stole countless books and manuscripts. There is no excuse for the Irish, but until they were Christianised the Vikings could not read, and so did not value what they had taken. They knew enough to sell them, though, or at least to steal the jewels with which many books and sacred objects were embellished. In this way a number of priceless
artefacts
found their way to the European continent. A few eventually came home again.

The surviving ancient Irish texts, fragmentary though they are, stand as documents of the era in which they were written. Thanks to the efforts of scholars and archaeologists many can now be dated with reasonable certainty. The identities of individuals as well as
historical
details have been verified. We know to a degree what happened at Clontarf on Good Friday, 1014. We
can recognise the event for what it was: a Greek tragedy of classical proportions. Its central figure was a giant by any standards. He was known as Brian Boru.

CHAPTER TWO

I
RELAND IN THE
T
ENTH
C
ENTURY

I
n AD 941 a son was born into a large clan in the kingdom of Thomond, a territory in the province of Munster. His parents had him christened Brian. Their clan, or group of closely related families, belonged to the tribe of the Dál gCais: the Dalcassians. The child’s father was Kennedy (Ceinnéidigh in Irish), son of Lorcan.
Kennedy
was a
bó-aire
, or cattle lord, possessing a wealth of fine black cattle. Kennedy’s wife, who was called Bebinn, was the daughter of a king of West Connacht, another
bó-aire
.

Elected as a king of Thomond, Lorcan was the first of his tribe to lead an army outside his own territory. He
once claimed the right to be king of all Munster but his claim was hotly contested by the more powerful Munster tribe, the Owenachts, and eventually he and his followers were defeated. They never forgot.

By the time Brian was born, Kennedy and Bebinn already had eleven sons. Such large families were common: it was important to have many children in order to be certain of raising at least a few. When Brian was born most if not all of his brothers were still alive, as were an impressive number of aunts and uncles and cousins.

Kennedy’s home was an Iron Age ringfort known as Béal Boru, on the west bank of the Shannon River in what is now County Clare. Thomond at that time was heavily forested; some referred to it as a wilderness. Majestic red deer as large as horses stalked the heights, like kings surveying their realms. Dense woodlands were home to shy but beautiful pine martens, with fur of glossy chocolate brown, a bushy tail and dazzlingly white throat. A dawn chorus of songbirds greeted the sunrise; a sleepy nocturne announced the fall of night.

From Béal Boru one could see the southern bay of Lough Derg in one direction and the purple and brown mountains of Craglea and Thountinna in the other. The southern slope of Craglea was home to Ayvinn (Aoibhinn), the traditional banshee of the Dalcassians. On the
flank of the mountain, a well sacred to Ayvinn gushed from a cleft in the crag. According to legend, the
banshee
’s appearance always signalled the death of a chief of the tribe.

The Dalcassians had once been important in Munster, but tribal warfare had taken its toll. By the time Brian was born they had subsided into near-obscurity, yearning for lost glories. They could have disappeared from history without leaving a trace, except for a curious quirk in the nature of Kennedy’s youngest son: Brian mac Kennedy was unwilling to accept limitations.

Brian was the sort of boy who throws a stone into the water just to see how far the ripples will go. While still a small child he had listened with fascination to the tales that visiting storytellers told beside the fire. Such
storytellers
were an important part of Gaelic life, the entertainment that made dark winter nights bearable. Their
repertoire
invariably included the great heroic tales: Nuada of the Silver Arm; Cúchulainn, the invincible warrior; Fionn Mac Cumhaill, the outlaw leader of the Fianna.

Inspired by these legends, when he was little more than a toddler Brian taught himself to use the dagger and the casting spear. Because he was the youngest of his family, there was a shortage of boys his own age to take part in his games. He had to invent his enemies. As he
grew older he lost interest in pretend battles against
shadowy
opponents and began to dream of adulthood, with its own set of fantasies and ambitions. But the early tales and first heroes of a child become permanent fixtures in the mind.

Brehon law decreed an education to be the birthright of the noble class. Brian’s parents might have intended him for the priesthood as every Christian family sought to give at least one son to God. But his brother Marcan, seventh in the line of Kennedy’s sons, already was
showing
a strong preference for the Church. When Marcan entered a monastery young Brian was sent too to study at the great monastic centres of Clonmacnois and Inisfallen. These were staffed by highly educated monks who had studied throughout Europe. Under their strict tutelage Brian learned to read Greek and Latin. He memorised the careers of Caesar and Charlemagne, studied the
tactics
of Xenophon’s cavalry and the deployment of the naval fleet of Xerxes. His mind was like a sponge, thirstily soaking up information.

When Brian was ten years old his father was killed in battle by Callahan of the Owenacht tribe. Several of Brian’s brothers suffered a similar fate. Four years after Kennedy’s death, Brian’s oldest surviving brother, Mahon, acceded to their father’s title as king of Thomond.
It was a kingship lacking much in the way of power or royal prerogatives, but this probably suited Mahon, who was not a warrior by nature but a kindly, gentle man. He preferred negotiation to confrontation as a way of
protecting
his tribe.

Unfortunately, confrontation was the way things were achieved in Ireland. In 959 the Owenacht king of
Munster
died and another prince of his tribe, a man called Molloy, declared himself king and set up court at Cashel.

During the years when Brian was occupied with his studies, Mahon followed the path of expediency. He began trading with the Norse settlers along the Shannon, who bought the furs of seal, otter, badger and fox from the Dalcassians. Mahon made a number of concessions to those same settlers in order to keep peace.
Inevitably
, he quarrelled with his youngest brother, who had now completed his education. Brian saw everything in black and white; as far as he was concerned Mahon was a traitor. While still in his late teens Brian broke with his brother completely. Gathering a company of young,
like-minded
followers, he struck out into the mountains of east Clare to fight the foreigners on his own terms.

His little band was clothed in coarse homespun wool or in deer hide and often went barefoot. Their weapons included the iron-bladed Irish axe – a basic, multi-
purpose
implement equally suited to domestic use – and the javelin. Belted around their waists was a thrusting sword. When their weapons were damaged they learned to repair them themselves. They fashioned circular shields out of wood. They used both their spears and the bow and arrow in order to live off the land, hunting wild boar in the forest and brown hare on the meadows, spearing fish in the rivers, trapping badgers and weasels as they emerged from their dens. They even collected bats from their caves if all else failed. Of necessity, the young rebels learned to eat almost anything.

Around their necks they wore leather bags containing a day’s provisions of dried meat and hazelnuts. If they were lucky, they might be given a bit of hard cheese by some sympathetic herder. They became very tough and very resilient. They were warriors.

Lightly armed and lightly equipped, Brian’s band was a highly mobile force. They were well able to swoop down from the hills and fall on their enemies. Their traditional method of warfare, inherited from their Celtic
ancestors
, was to rush forward in no particular order and try to overcome the enemy by sheer force. The side with numerical superiority usually won.

At first the Irish were almost exterminated by
powerfully
built Norse husbands and fathers who had better
weapons. After the initial shock, Brian responded by introducing his band to a code of discipline which he had gleaned from his classical studies. His ideas must have seemed incomprehensible to the young rebels. He realised they could not count on numerical superiority because they did not have it. There had to be another way to win. There was: he discovered within himself a gift for tactical ingenuity. A careful study of the annals reveals that Brian Boru mastered the art of guerrilla
warfare
long before the term was invented.

He learned to use the land itself as a weapon.
Opponents
could be tricked into floundering into a bog and drowning. Or lured into a steep defile where they could not find a way out. Brian soon knew every treacherous piece of ground in Thomond and how best to exploit it. He relied on the element of surprise, striking without mercy and then vanishing back into the trackless
mountains
he knew so well. Most battles were fought in the daytime, but he was not afraid to attack at night. When he stood no chance of winning, he retreated rather than make a heroic but futile last stand, which would cost the lives of his men.

Brian put a stop to the mindless, headlong charge practised by the Gael by insisting on drilling his troops. Perhaps he even tied the legs of pairs of men together
as they marched, as was reported by early chroniclers. His followers may not have liked his methods at first, but they learned to respect him. They also learned to follow orders without question, knowing there was a plan behind them.

The Norse, whose traditional way of battle was similar to the reckless charge of the Gael, were confused by these tactics.

Sometime during this period Brian captured a Viking battle-axe. Short-hafted, broad-socketed, intended to be clasped with both hands to give more power to the swing, the so-called Lochlann axe was deadly in hand-
to-hand
fighting. Brian took his into a stand of young ash saplings and taught himself to use it. Swinging with all his weight behind it, until he thought the muscles of his shoulders and upper arms would tear free from his bones.

The Viking axe was a singularly savage weapon. While a sword might kill a man outright if very skilfully wielded, it was more likely to cause a wound that would
gradually
prove fatal, either through loss of blood or a
subsequent
infection. But one powerful blow from a Viking axe could extinguish life within a heartbeat.

Exceptional energy and his genius for strategy were enough to sustain Brian for almost two years. Poets were beginning to sing of him in royal halls, which was the
ultimate tribute to a warrior, but he was losing his
followers
to attrition. Men he cared about poured out their life’s blood onto stony soil. Meanwhile Mahon’s policies were rewarding members of his tribe with food in the bowl and fat on the knife. No new young Dalcassians arrived to join the outlaws in the hills.

Their second winter in the wilds was bitterly cold. Ice formed on the Shannon. A savage wind from the Atlantic blew incessantly across Thomond, until no birds would fly. There was no game to be speared and eaten, even the vermin had disappeared underground. Brian’s
companions
were reduced to gnawing roots dug out of the frozen soil, but these did not provide enough
nourishment
to sustain a fighting man. For shelter they
constructed
rude huts made of branches. The wind tore through this meagre protection and chilled sleeping men to the bone, so they awakened shivering and feverish.

It was hard to admit defeat. The foreigners did not beat Brian, he told himself. The weather did.

A headstrong and rebellious youth had stormed off into the wilderness. Eighteen months later a haggard, exhausted, but wiser man returned, accompanied by the surviving handful of his warrior band. They were gaunt and hollow-eyed and staggered as they walked, but their heads were held high. When Brian led them into Mahon’s
hall they brought with them the scent of the wilderness.

Their fellow Dalcassians stared. Even dressed in rags, Brian of Béal Boru must have been memorable. His
contemporaries
described him as being exceptionally tall. Julius Caesar had written of the Gaulish Celts, ‘They are taller by the length of a man’s forearm than the tallest of my legions.’ According to anthropologists, the Irish Celts produced large, well built men and women. It would take famine to shrink them to small stature; generations of improved nutrition are reversing the process. Brian also may have been red-haired. The gene for red hair which was almost ubiquitous with the Celts, was common among the Irish, and greatly admired; now it is slowly disappearing throughout the world.