1014: Brian Boru & the Battle for Ireland (16 page)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

S
UNSET

H
is deeply lined face was gaunt with fatigue. The alchemy of time had turned the Celtic copper of his hair to silver. He might have been any old man at his prayers, except for the sudden fire in Brian’s eyes when Brodir burst into his tent, and the speed with which he reached for his sword.

The dark and desperate Dane could not make sense of the world around him. As far as he could see in the dusk the earth was littered with dismembered bodies and broken weapons; already the ravens were dropping out of the sky to feed. The battle should have been won long ago. Long ago … in the morning … he could
remember
the morning clearly enough, when the great fleet unloaded enough men to overrun Ireland. Or so it had
seemed then. The battle began with a clash and a curse and victory had seemed certain. Then.

The Irish had fought back but that was to be expected. What Brodir and the other leaders had not expected was the sheer stubborn determination of the Gael. It seemed as if every one of them fought like ten. Blood must be shed for every foot of ground gained. Hundreds of
warriors
on both sides fell in the initial charge, and then more. And more. Died screaming. The battle had swirled over the land like a storm at sea, unpredictable and
uncontrollable
. Brodir had killed his share several times over but still they came at him. His axe sang its grisly song again and again and still they came at him.

Eventually the Irish were driven as far as an oak forest, Brodir recalled that clearly enough. Too clearly. Among the ancient trees he had seen deeds done that even he would rather forget. He had been a Christian once …

No victory could be assured in so dense a forest, and in time the survivors had battled their way out into the light again. That was when things became very confused in Brodir’s mind. Was it possible his Vikings had retreated? He could not be certain. The fighting continued on and on and then there was the water …

Blood-red water.

Brodir had made his living on the water but he did
not intend to die on it. He gave up any idea of fighting and fled, clutching his gory axe to his breast as a mother might clutch her child. He wanted to make it into the sanctuary of the trees again, wherever they were …

Two of his men followed him through the haunted night. They would have followed anyone at that stage; their own senses had left them. As they stumbled over the dead and dying they heard the first shouts of victory. Not the voices of the Valkyries coming to claim their heroes, but the triumphant cries of the Irish.

Up ahead Brodir could see a small glow of light. He ran towards it like a moth to a flame with his
companions
right behind him.

According to the chronicles, Laiten told Brian, ‘There are some people coming towards us.’

The high king asked, ‘What manner of people?’

‘Blue stark-naked people!’ cried the boy when he got a good look at them.

In that moment Brian must have known. Vikings in chainmail. There was no time to think any further, no time to assess and plan. Only to act.

As Brodir burst into his tent Brian reached for his sword.

There are several versions of what happened next. Even among the Irish historians there is dispute as to the
events of that evening, while the Norse sagas tell a
different
story altogether.

Some writers depict Brian Boru as a frail old man waiting meekly on his prayer stool while Brodir struck him down. This seems unlikely to those who have made a study of his character based on his known actions. Throughout his long life Brian was a vigorous, robust individual, a battle-hardened warrior who had fought in combat only the year before and had remained strong enough to ride a horse halfway across Ireland. His sons had not asked him to step aside because he could not fight, only because they feared he might be killed in battle. Ireland truly could not spare him, as later events would show.

Brian had his mighty sword with him. It was a
powerful
symbol of his warrior status and he never went
anywhere
without it, certainly not onto a battlefield. The weapon was as much a part of him as his right arm. Nor did he cease to be Brian Boru because he had ceased to lead the army. He may have been old and weary, but the imperative of survival was an automatic reflex with him. It is reasonable to assume that Brian fought for his life.

According to
Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh:
‘Brodir … was carrying his trusty battle axe, with the handle set in the middle of it. When Brian saw him he gazed at him,
and gave him a stroke with his sword and cut off his left leg at the knee and his right leg at the foot. The
foreigner
dealt Brian a stroke which cleft his head utterly; and Brian killed the second man that was with Brodir, and they fell mutually by each other.’

P W Joyce in his
History of Gaelic Ireland
tells much the same story, without the reference to the second Viking. He adds, ‘Brian’s guards, as if struck by a sudden sense of danger, returned in haste; but too late.’

In
Cashel of the Kings
, John Gleeson maintains that with a swing of his sword Brian cut off Brodir’s left leg below the knee and the right above the ankle. If this is so, the power remaining in the old warrior’s shoulders must have been mighty indeed. Brodir was as good as dead even before his axe smashed into Brian’s skull.

Brian Boru, King of Ireland
, disagrees. Roger Chatterton Newman writes, ‘It is unlikely that a man of
seventy-three
, weary and mourning the loss of one or more sons, would have found the strength to protect himself against sudden assault.’ Newman believes the Viking axe fell on an undefended head.

The story as told by the Scandinavians reflects their point of view and is very revealing.
Njal’s Saga
relates that Brodir ‘rushed from the woods, broke through the entire shield-castle and levelled a blow at the king. The
lad Tadk [Laiten] raised his arm to ward off the blow, but the stroke cut off his arm and the king’s head. The king’s blood ran upon the arm stump and the wound healed immediately.’

The saga goes on to state that the Irish surrounded Brodir and his men and took them alive. They then ‘slit open his belly, led him round and round an oak tree, and in this way unwound all of the intestines out of his body, and Brodir did not die before they were all pulled out of him.’

This gruesome detail describes a form of mutilation which was common amongst the Vikings, but never
practised
by the Irish. The fact that the saga describes Brian’s blood as healing an amputated arm shows what high regard the Scandinavians had for Brian Boru himself.

Whatever happened in his tent, the Árd Rí of Ireland was dead. One of the last, and surely the most tragic, fatalities of that fatal day.

The setting sun shed a baleful light over a scene of carnage. The battlefield was hideous to contemplate,
littered
with the dead and the dying, the dismembered and the maimed.

The terrible rollcall of Irish casualties begins with Brian Boru, his sons Murrough, Flann and Conor, and his grandson Turlough. The swords and axes had done
such dreadful work on Good Friday that many other bodies would never be identified. The Irish princes who were recognisable included Mulroney Ua Heyne (Hynes) of Galway and Tadhg Mor Ua Ceallaigh (Kelly), two of the foremost chieftains of Connacht. Also dead was the
tanist
of the Iceadh (Hickey) tribe, who were Dalcassians and the hereditary physicians to the kings of Thomond; Scannlan Ua Cearbhaill (Carroll) lord of Offaly; Dubhagan (Duggan), descended from the druid Mogh Roth; Mac Beatha, lord of Ciarraigh (Kerry); Ua Domhnall (Donnell) lord of Corca Bhaiscinn; at least one king of Brefni; Mothla Ua Faelan (Phelan), lord of the Deisi; Maguidhir (Maguire), prince of Fermanagh; and Brian’s nephew Conaing. It has been estimated that as many as sixteen hundred members of the Gaelic nobility died that day. Among the thousands without a title were Niall Ua Cuinn (Quinn), Brian’s personal bodyguard, plus all three of the Árd Rí’s aides-de-camp, and the son of Ospak of Orkney.

Some of the slain Irish princes eventually would be returned to their tribes. The bodies were carried home if possible, but if those were too hideously damaged, at least the heads went home for burial. In keeping with Gaelic tradition the heroes’ heads would be tenderly cleaned and presented to their people with appropriate
ceremony. That much of ancient Ireland was still alive in 1014.

A number – though probably not all, for there were too many – of the unclaimed corpses were buried by the survivors. Trying to reunite the numerous body parts with their original owners must have been an impossible task. Irish and foreigners went together into unmarked graves. As recently as the late nineteenth century there were still low mounds of earth in the area, described by the locals as burial mounds from the great battle. It was left to the ravens to dispose of whatever remained. The raven goddess called the Morrigan was the ancient
goddess
of war.

The annalists relate that the Irish wounded were carried back to Kilmainham. Many of them died and were buried there. The site of the encampment, which later came to be known as ‘Bully’s Acre’, is near the Museum of Modern Art. It was the oldest burial ground in Dublin, and still contains a tenth-century granite shaft that once was topped with a cross. On the front of the shaft is the crudely carved image of a short sword.

On Easter Sunday, Brian’s son, Donough, arrived from the south, driving a herd of cattle intended to feed the army. Cian, one of the very few survivors of noble rank, told him what had happened to his father and brothers
and a large percentage of his fellow Dalcassians. It was too much for a fifteen-year-old to take in. The shock may have had a lasting influence on him. A boy who had been raised as a young Gaelic prince, no doubt praised and petted by all around him, discovered in one horrific day the cruelty of the world in which he lived. Within a very short time Donough became a bitter man out to get whatever he could.

Donough was now the senior member of his clan at the site of the battle. He could no longer simply play at being a warrior. Overnight, a brash boy had to become a man. Perhaps he went to see the battleground for
himself
, or made an effort to confer with the other survivors. Perhaps he just wandered off by himself and stared out at the sea for a time. At the end of the day a heavy cloak of responsibility had descended on the unprepared
shoulders
of Brian’s youngest son. Whether he was able for it or not, only time would tell.

The foreign leaders who fought in the Battle of
Clontarf
were slain as surely as the Irish. Some simply
disappeared
from history, never to surface again. There are few details as to what happened to the survivors of the
invasion
force. Presumably a small number made it onto the ships and limped home. In
Njal’s Saga
, a nobleman in the Hebrides claimed that a warrior had appeared to him in
a dream. The bloodspattered stranger said he had come from Ireland. He further related, ‘I died where brave men battled; brands did sing in Erin. Many a mace did shatter mail coats, helms were splintered. Sword fight keen I saw there; Sigurd fell in combat. Blood billowed from death wounds. Brian fell, yet he conquered.’

A week later an exhausted Hrafn the Red arrived in the court of Sigurd the Stout. He brought the actual news from Ireland, beginning with the earl’s death. After digesting this dismaying information, Sigurd’s trusted retainer Flosi asked, ‘What else can you tell me of our men?’

Hrafn’s reply was typically succinct. ‘They were all slain there.’

With admirable restraint compared to the flamboyant hyperbole of other chroniclers,
The Annals of Inisfallen
relates, ‘There were also slain in that battle Maelmora, son of Murchad the king of Laigin, together with the princes of the Laigin round him, and the foreigners of the western world were slaughtered in the same battle.’ Maelmora himself was killed by Conaing of Desmond, one of the princes who had followed the banner of Brian’s son-in-law.