The Myths, Legends, and Lore of Ireland

by Blackwell, Amy Hackney

  The Vikings displaced some of the Irish chiefs who had held sway throughout the island. This allowed other Irish families to try to take their places. The most important of these families were the rulers of Dál Cais in the lower Shannon region, who took over the lands of the displaced Eóghanacht.

  In the first half of the eighth century, the Irish lord Cennétig, son of Lorcán, became king of north Munster, a region called Thomond; he died in 951. Cennétig had two sons, Mathgamain and Brian. Mathgamain added east Munster to his kingdom, along with the Viking-controlled areas of Limerick and Waterford. He became known as king of Cashel.

  Mathgamain died in 976. His brother Brian succeeded him and became known as Brian Boru, the greatest of Ireland’s high kings.

  41 { What Would Brian Boru Do?

  Brian was born around 941. His nickname, Boru, came from the old Irish word bóruma, which might have meant “of the cattle tribute.” Or it might have come from the name of a fort in County Clare called Beal Boru.

  Brian Boru was an excellent soldier. In 978 he led his warriors to victory in the Battle of Belach Lechta, in which the Dál Cais took the kingship of all of Munster from the Eóghanacht.

  The rulers of other provinces took note of this; if Brian had all of Munster, he might want more territory. The high king of the Uí Néills, Máel Sechnaill, brought an army down to Munster and cut down the tree of Magh Adhair, a sacred tree on the Dál Cais family’s royal inauguration site. This was a way of saying that the Uí Néills didn’t recognize Brian’s claim to the throne.

  However, Brian refused to back down and quickly took over most of the southern half of Ireland. In 997, Brian met with Máel Sechnaill and the two kings agreed formally to divide Ireland between themselves. Brian got the south and the Uí Néills got the north.

  But Brian wasn’t content to stop there. In 1001, he defeated Máel Sechnaill and went about northern Ireland reinforcing his claim to it. In 1005, he went to Armagh and stayed at Emain Macha, the ancient capital of Ulster.

  The problem with building an empire is that you can’t watch your old territories while you’re off conquering new ones. As Brian marched around, adding Ulster and other lands to his kingdom, Dublin and Leinster rebelled. He pushed them back in late 1013 and then fought a huge battle at Clontarf on April 23, 1014.

  Soldiers came from the Isle of Man and other islands in the channel to help the rebel forces. Brian’s army from Munster finally won, but Brian himself was killed. His followers took his body to Armagh, where they held a wake that lasted twelve days, and then buried him.

  42 { An Ireland Unified

  Many legends sprang up about the Battle of Clontarf. Later observers claimed that it was a battle between Irish and Viking invaders, with the king of the Irish winning a great victory for his nation and sacrificing his life in the process.

  According to a popular version of the story written long after the event, Brian was too old to go to battle. While his soldiers fought, he knelt in his tent, praying with his Psalter. The Viking warrior Brodir ran into Brian’s tent and hacked at the old king. An Irish boy named Tadhg raised up his arm to protect Brian, but the Viking sliced through his arm and cut off Brian’s head in the same stroke. The boy’s wound healed instantly when Brian’s blood touched it. This episode portrays the Vikings as monsters and glorifies Brian’s heroic, patriotic sacrifice as leader of the Irish resistance.

  Modern scholars think it more likely that the battle was an internal conflict; Vikings no doubt were involved, but simply as soldiers for one side or the other. Brian himself was married to a Viking woman and might have given his daughter to a Viking in marriage. The men of Leinster were allied with the Vikings of Dublin. Certainly, the Vikings didn’t leave Ireland after the conflict; they were too thoroughly integrated into Irish society by that point. Most historians now say that the Battle of Clontarf, though it made for some lovely literary interpretations, actually wasn’t very important and held no real political significance.

  Brian’s own family was severely disadvantaged after the battle, mainly because most of them had died in it. His descendants, the O’Briens, managed to hang on to some power in Munster, but they were definitely not in a position to claim the high kingship.

  Brian turned into a national hero. Later, Irish Nationalists would hold him up as an example of an Irish leader defeating foreign forces. They saw the period between Brian’s death and the Norman invasion under Strongbow in 1170 as an age when there were no foreigners in Ireland.

  Brian’s victory did have some real repercussions for Ireland. The Uí Néills had lost their stranglehold on the high kingship, and though they recovered it occasionally over the next 150 years, the title itself had lost most of its meaning. Without the Uí Néills in power, the leadership of Ireland was an open question, and many men were ready to take the job for themselves.

  Economic changes in this period actually made warfare more dangerous. People were growing more food and producing more resources than they had in earlier centuries, and consequently the population was increasing. Lords required their growing populations to pay dues of livestock and money, a situation similar to the feudal system in effect in England and Scotland. With the added resources and manpower, chiefs had the wherewithal to march farther afield and sustain longer campaigns, with accompanying higher fatalities.

  To defend themselves, Irish lords built larger castles and fortifications. The kings of the provinces struggled against one another, but no one came out on top. Every time it looked as if one man would prevail, one of his so-called allies would do something treacherous and it would all come tumbling down.

  By 1170, however, the question of an Irish high king was irrelevant; the Anglo-Normans had arrived, and from that point on Ireland’s destiny was inextricably linked with that of the larger island to the east — England.

  43 { The Normans Are Here!

  Just as the Irish were beginning to see the emergence of truly powerful high kings, something happened that altered the course of their history forever — the Normans arrived. The Norman English, who had recently consolidated their rule over Britain, began a conquest that eventually led to English domination of Ireland.

  The ironic thing about the Norman arrival is that an Irishman invited them in. Dermot MacMurrough, king of Leinster, was unseated from power in 1166 by Rory O’Connor, king of Connacht. MacMurrough had heard that the Norman (derived from the term “North man,” descendants of earlier Vikings) knights over in England were particularly tough, so he asked his English neighbor King Henry II if he could borrow some of them to get his throne back. Henry, alert to the possibilities of the situation, sent over Richard FitzGilbert de Clare — known to the world as Strongbow.

  MacMurrough had guessed right about one thing — the Norman knights were tough. In 1170 Strongbow and his team of heavily armored knights plowed through the relatively lightly armed forces of Irish lords. The Irish probably could have put up a good fight if they’d joined together. But Ireland at that time was divided up among 100 or more kings, who tended to wait in their home territories for the Normans to arrive. When they did, the result was invariably Norman victory.

  What MacMurrough didn’t expect, though, was that the Normans might like Ireland and want to stick around. MacMurrough allowed Strongbow to marry his daughter Aoife, and when MacMurrough died in 1171, Strongbow had himself declared lord of Leinster. No one in Ireland could afford to object.

  But someone back in England wasn’t so happy about all this — the English king. Henry II watched Strongbow’s string of successes and began to worry that his knight was getting too many ideas about his own power. So Henry sailed to Ireland to oversee the campaign and assert his own rights.

  To consolidate the Norman victories, Henry declared Strongbow the king of Leinster but granted the province of Meath to Hugh de Lacy, a loyal knight. In 1175 Henry signed the Treaty of Windsor with Rory O’Connor, MacMurrough’s old rival. The treaty declared O’Connor high king of Ireland, but
it also said that he was a vassal of the king of England. Through these maneuvers, Henry established a system of competing lords in Ireland, who all ultimately owed their allegiance to the English Crown.

  Over the next seventy years, Anglo-Norman knights extended English Over the next seventy years, Anglo-Norman knights extended English control over about three-fourths of Ireland. It wasn’t so much an organized campaign as a series of advances by Norman adventurers who wanted their own fiefdoms. They only took property that they judged worth fighting for, so substantial portions of northwest Ulster and southwest Munster remained Irish.

  The Irish probably thought they’d be able to take back their lands as soon as the Normans let down their guard, but the Normans did something the locals didn’t expect — they built castles. Irish nobles generally moved around with their cattle, so they rarely built substantial structures. But Normans immediately set their serfs to building motte castles — earthen mounds defended by ditches and wooden towers. The mounds from these motte castles still dot the Irish countryside. Once these were in place, they built more substantial castles out of stone.

  44 { The Irish Strike Back

  Norman power in Ireland reached its peak around 1250 to 1275. After this, Irish lords began to reclaim their rights to the land. There were a number of reasons for this.

  First, the definitions of Norman and Irish became vague. As Norman families spent a few generations in Ireland, they had less and less in common with their cousins in England. Distinctions of loyalty and family allegiance became blurred as the descendants of Norman settlers began to think of themselves as Irish.

  Another reason was the impact of foreign politics. England was constantly fighting with Scotland and mainland Europe, and the king demanded that the Norman-Irish lords contribute men and money. This weakened the power of the Norman-Irish lords.

  In one instance, the English war with Scotland led to a direct attack by Scots on Normans in Ireland, when the Scot Edward Bruce invaded Ireland between 1315 and 1317. While he didn’t achieve any lasting conquests, his army inflicted such damage that many Norman towns did not recover for decades. His invasion also revealed to the Gaelic lords that the Normans were not unified.

  The Irish kings took advantage of this Norman weakness. Starting from their strongholds in Connacht and Munster, they pushed Norman lords off their estates one by one. To improve the strength and discipline of their armies, the Irish lords hired tough mercenaries from Scotland called “gallowglasses.” By the late fourteenth century, the Irish had regained much of their land.

  The English king Richard II wasn’t too happy about this. He personally led two reconquest expeditions in 1394 to 1395 and 1399, and he took back much of his lost territory. But the rebellion of Henry Bolingbroke (recounted in Shakespeare’s Richard II) forced Richard to return home to England, where he eventually lost his throne and his life. With the English leadership gone, the Irish grabbed their property right back again.

  For the next few decades, the English monarchs were too tied up in the War of the Roses to worry about Ireland, so the Irish lords continued to extend their power. By the early 1500s the area under English control had shrunk down to the city of Dublin and a small area surrounding it. This area of English influence was known as “the Pale.”

  45 { I’m Henry VIII, I Am: Tudor Colonization

  When Henry VIII became king of England in 1509, he also inherited the title “Lord of Ireland.” English kings had carried this title for years without it meaning much. But, as people throughout Europe were to learn, Henry VIII was the kind of guy who liked to get his way.

  The Norman-Irish lords had essentially been ruling themselves as independent monarchs for years. The most significant of these lords were the earl of Kildare and the earl of Desmond, both from the FitzGerald family (called the “Geraldine earls”), and the earl of Ormond from the Butler family. Garrett Og FitzGerald, earl of Kildare, served as lord deputy of Ireland for many years and was effectively the most powerful man on the island.

  Henry VIII had three problems with Garrett Og: he was too powerful; his father had supported the York family’s claim to the English throne over the Tudors; and he wasn’t taking Henry’s side in his fight with the Pope on whether he could divorce Anne Boleyn. So Henry had Garrett Og thrown into the Tower of London.

  “Silken” Thomas Lord Offaly, Garrett Og FitzGerald’s son, started a largely symbolic rebellion in 1534 to show that Henry needed the support of the FitzGeralds to govern Ireland. Henry took the symbolism literally and sent over an army to set them in line. Thomas’s supporters backed off, and soon the FitzGeralds surrendered on the condition that they receive mercy. Henry agreed, and then promptly had most of them killed. The loss of Ireland’s most powerful family left a power gap that Henry promptly filled with his own supporters.

  46 { The Protestant Reformation

  Religion added a new twist to the conflict in 1536, when the English Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy. This made Henry the head of the Church of England and introduced the Protestant Reformation to the British Isles. England had been a Catholic country, but now it became officially Protestant. The Church of England was not especially different theologically from the Catholic Church, but it was different enough to provoke fights. Most important, Henry now refused to acknowledge the pope in Rome as the supreme leader on Earth; instead, Henry was now the head of his own church.

  The Irish were still Catholic and wanted to stay that way. Although an Irish Parliament officially recognized Henry as the head of their church in 1537, most Irish maintained allegiance to the pope — and considered this ample reason to take up arms. This was the start of religious violence that has plagued Ireland for nearly 500 years.

  47 { Elizabeth I’s Reign

  This religious dispute became much more serious during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Elizabeth was an avowed Protestant. She spent much of her reign fighting with Catholic leaders in Rome and in Spain, who were constantly trying to topple her from the English throne. Under these conditions, she couldn’t allow Catholics to attack her from her own back yard, so she gave tacit approval for Protestant adventurers to go claim land in Ireland from Catholic landowners.

  The Irish were still resisting Protestant rule. In 1579, James Fitz Maurice Fitzgerald, cousin to the earl of Desmond, went to the Continent and brought back a small army to oppose Protestant rule in Ireland. Elizabeth responded by sending over a bigger army of English soldiers, who broke up the Irish rebellion. She confiscated the earl of Desmond’s lands, had most of his family put to death, and resettled his old estates with loyal English subjects.

  Elizabeth’s greatest Irish challenge came with the revolt of Hugh O’Neill, earl of Tyrone. The O’Neills were an old Irish family originally from Ulster that once had claims to the high kingship of Ireland. O’Neill appealed for help in his rebellion to the king of Spain, who sent more than 4,000 soldiers to help fight England. Spain was Elizabeth’s greatest enemy, so she raised a massive army of 20,000 soldiers to crush the rebellion. In 1601 her army defeated the Hiberno-Spanish force at Kinsale.

  O’Neill and his fellow Catholic earls tried to mount another attack, but they couldn’t gather sufficient forces to have any chance of victory. In 1607 they fled Ireland in the “Flight of the Earls.”

  James I became king of England, Scotland, and Ireland in 1603. He knew that O’Neill’s strongest supporters had come from the north; Ulster at this time was the most Catholic and least Anglicized area of the island.

  James I, therefore, decided to fix Ulster by settling it with loyal Protestants from England and Scotland, a plan that came to be known as the Ulster Plantation. The Protestant population that he settled there developed on very different lines from the Catholic Irish in the south. This led to considerable difficulties during the Irish struggle for independence, and more recently, during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

  48 { The 1641 Rebellion and Oliver Cromwell

  The Rebellion of 1641 beg
an as a political rebellion led by the prominent O’Neill family of Ulster, who wanted to recover its property from Protestants and overthrow the Puritan government then holding Ireland. The O’Neills had ordered their followers not to hurt anyone, but there was no stopping the crowd once it was unleashed. What started out as a political protest turned into an all-out attack on Protestant farmers as the Catholic commoners let their resentment bubble over. That November, Irish Catholics killed thousands of Protestants. No one knows how many died; estimates range from 2,000 (as suggested by some historians) to 150,000 (as claimed by Protestant pamphleteers). Many more lost their homes and property.

  The attacks on Protestants by Catholics were bad, but they were nothing compared to the way they were described by English propagandists in London. They called it a “massacre.” Pamphleteers inflated the Protestant death toll to nearly 150,000, and used extreme creativity in describing the horrors that the Catholics had inflicted upon them. The English public had always suspected that the Irish were barbaric, and this confirmed their suspicions. Now they were out for blood.

  The 1641 rebellion coincided with a crisis in the English Parliament that eventually turned to civil war. King Charles I was beheaded, and the leader who emerged from the crisis was one of the most puritanical Protestants in England — Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell had no problem believing that the Irish Catholics had committed any number of atrocities, so he put together one of the most lethal armies in Europe to punish them.