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mintdonna2-blog · 5 years

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Battle of Clontarf (1014)

Battle of Clontarf

Date 23 April 1014 Location Clontarf, Dublin Result Munster Irish victory; Viking power in Ireland broken

Belligerents Irish of Munster Irish of Leinster and Vikings of Dublin Commanders and leaders Brian Bóruma † Murchad mac Briain † Máel Mórda † Sigtrygg Silkbeard Strength ~7,000 men ~6,600 men Casualties and losses >4,000 dead ~6,000 dead

The Battle of Clontarf (Irish: Cath Chluain Tarbh) took place on 23 April 1014 between the forces of Brian Boru and the forces led by the King of Leinster, Máel Mórda mac Murchada: composed mainly of his own men, Viking mercenaries from Dublin and the Orkney Islands led by his cousin Sigtrygg, as well as the one rebellious king from the province of Ulster. It ended in a rout of the Máel Mórda's forces, along with the death of Brian, who was killed by a few Norsemen who were fleeing the battle and stumbled upon his tent. After the battle, Ireland returned to a fractious status quo between the many small, separate kingdoms that had existed for some time.

Background

Brian Boru (Brian mac Cennétig (Kennedy)) had ruled most of Ireland since 1002, but the island was still highly fractious and the title of "High King" had been largely ceremonial. Brian looked to change this, and unite the island, which he set about doing over a period of years.

In 997, Brian Boru and Máel Sechnaill mac Domnaill had met in Clonfert and reached an agreement where they recognized each other's reign over their respective halves of the country. Brian attacked Máel Sechnaill's territory constantly, which forced Máel Sechnaill to resign his land to Brian.

In 1012, the king of Leinster, Máel Mórda mac Murchada, rose in revolt. His attempts were quickly thwarted when Brian arranged a series of cross-marriages, giving his daughter to Sigtrygg Silkbeard, leader of the Dublin Vikings, and himself marrying Sigtrygg's mother and Máel Mórda's sister, Gormflaith. However this alliance was destined not to last, and in 1013 Máel Mórda again went to Sigtrygg for help after being admonished by Gormflaith for accepting Brian's rule. This time Sigtrygg was ready to fight, and various Irish clans who were envious of Brian quickly joined him.

Brian immediately imprisoned Gormflaith, and went on a series of raids around Dublin in order to tie down any Irish who would attempt to join the Viking forces. Meanwhile Gormflaith contacted Sigurd Lodvesson, the Viking earl of the Orkney Isles, to come to her aid. He not only agreed, but in turn contacted Brodir of the Isle of Man to join the fight. Sigurd and Brodir both planned on killing the other after the battle to take the seat of High King for themselves, while Sigtrygg was busy trying to form alliances with everyone involved in an attempt to at least retain his own seat in Dublin.

In 1014, Brian's army had mustered and set off towards Dublin. As they approached, the Irishmen of Meath, commanded by ex-high king Máel Sechnaill mac Domnaill, refused to take part in the battle. This left him with 4,500 men, outnumbering the 1,000 or so under Sigtrygg, but considerably worse equipped in comparison. They arrived outside the walls of Dublin and set up camp.

That night Brian received news that the Viking forces had boarded their longships and headed out to sea, deserting Sigtrygg. This was in fact a ruse. After nightfall they turned around and landed on the beaches of Clontarf, just over a mile to the north of Dublin, in order to surprise Brian's army the next day. At the time Dublin was only on the south shore of the River Liffey, connected to the north bank, and Clontarf, only by a single bridge. This allowed the Vikings time to disembark and prepare in relative safety.

Battle

Battle of Clontarf, oil on canvas painting by Hugh Frazer, 1826, Isaacs Art Center

The Viking army formed up into five divisions on the field, while Sigtrygg and 1,000 of his men remained in town. Sigtrygg's son commanded the extreme left of the line with 1,000 of the men from Dublin who decided to fight in the open. Máel Mórda added another 3,000 men from Leinster in two divisions. Although numerous, they too were poorly armed in comparison to the Vikings on either side. Sigurd's Orkney Vikings manned the center with 1,000 men, and Brodir's Vikings added another 1,000 or more on the right, on the beaches.

Brian's forces were arranged in a similar fashion. On the right (the Viking left) were 1,000 foreign mercenaries and Manx Vikings. Next to them, 1,500 clansmen of Connacht were gathered under their kings, while more than 2,000 Munster warriors under Brian's son Murchad continued the front, flanked by 1,400 Dal Caissans on the extreme left led by Murchad's 15-year-old son, Tordhelbach, and Brian's brother, Cuduiligh. Off to the right and several hundred yards to the rear stood Máel Sechnaill's 1,000 men who simply watched.

The battle opened with several personal taunts between men in either line, often ending with the two men marching out into the middle of the field to enter personal battle, while the forces on either side cheered. While this went on the two groups slowly edged towards each other. They engaged early in the morning.

At first the battle went the Vikings' way, with their heavier weapons prevailing over their opponents as everyone had expected. This advantage also served Brian, whose Viking mercenaries on his right slowly pushed back the forces facing them. On the left, Brodir himself led the charge and gained ground, until he met the warrior Wolf the Quarrelsome, brother of King Brian. Although Wolf was unable to break Brodir's armor, he knocked him to the ground and Brodir fled to hide. This left the now leaderless Viking force facing Murchad's forces, who considered themselves the "king's own" (containing many of Brian's more distant relatives) and by the afternoon Brodir's forces were fleeing to their ships.

In the centre things were going more the Vikings' way. Both Sigurd's and Máel Mórda's forces were hammering into the Munster forces. However Sigurd, according to legend, carried a "magical" standard into battle which drew the Irish warriors to it, eventually forcing their way in and killing the bearer. Although the standard was supposed to guarantee a victory for the bearer's forces, it also guaranteed the bearer's death. No one would pick it up due to its reputation, so Sigurd did and was quickly killed.

By the end of the day, after several mutual pauses for rest, the Vikings found themselves with both flanks failing, Sigurd dead, and everyone exhausted. The beaches in front of the ships were already lost, and many men took to trying to swim to the ships further offshore, drowning in the process. The battle was now clearly going Brian's way, and the Dublin Vikings decided to flee to the town. At this point Máel Sechnaill decided to re-enter the battle, and cut them off from the bridge. The result was a rout, with every "invading" Viking leader being killed in the battle.

Meanwhile Brodir, hiding in the woods near Dublin, noticed Brian praying in his tent. Gathering several followers they ran into the tent and killed him and his retainers. Then they retreated, with Brodir yelling, Now let man tell man that Brodir felled Brian. According to Viking accounts, he was eventually tracked, captured and gruesomely killed by Wolf the Quarrelsome with whom he had clashed earlier on the battlefield.

Of the 6,500 to 7,000 Vikings and allied forces, an estimated 6,000,[citation needed] including almost all the leaders, were killed. Irish losses were at least 4,000,[citation needed] including their king and most of his sons. There were in fact some sons of Brian Boru left after the battle of Clontarf. Two of his sons, Donnogh and Teige both were heirs of Brian and after their father's death in 1014, were at debate against each other which started with mild quarrelsome and ended with both brothers coming together in 1018 and killing Donell McDuff Davereann.[1] The two sons of Brian did not inherit the throne right after their father was slain. It was Moyleseachlin (Irish: Máel Sechnaill mac Domnaill) - from whom Brian once took power in the heated moment before the Battle of Clontarf - who regained power once again in Ireland.[2]

Aftermath

With the Irish now leaderless, and the power of the Dublin Vikings as a political force broken, Ireland soon returned to a series of bloody factional fighting. However things had changed as a result of the battle, with Viking and Gaelic culture no longer contesting power. After a number of years this led to a lasting peace.

There were also domestic battles before the 1014 battle, and after the Vikings were supposedly expelled from Ireland, no more written sources state that there were any other fighting between just the Vikings or Norsemen and the Irish. From the Annals of Clonmacnoise, “Moyleseachlin, after King Brian was thus slaine, succeeded again King of Ireland and reigned 8 years, during which time he fought 25 battles both great and small against his enemies.”[1] His enemies were not the Norsemen, but his fellow Irishmen from other kingdoms. If the Vikings were expelled from Ireland in 1014, or at least the looting and raiding stopped after that, then whoever the Irish were fighting had to be either another race of people coming into Ireland, just as the Vikings did, or the Irish were having yet another domestic or civil battle. The Battle of Clontarf could have been a domestic battle between kingdoms, and the Vikings were living in and helping out Dublin. The battle could have had other major incentives, but expelling the Vikings might have just given the Irish Munster king (Boru) extra motivation to beat the Leinster king. In the source of Clonmacnoise, McMoylenamo is not only the king of Ireland, Wales, and protector of the honor Leah Coynn, but also the “[king of the] Danes of Dublin.”[3] After the battle in 1014, Irish high kings actually ruled over the Danes of Ireland's five separate kingdoms.[4]

Sigtrygg, who had watched the battle with Gormflaith from Dublin, on the south bank of the River Liffey, and with the Irish army melting away the next day, ended up as the only "winner" of the contest, continuing his rule in Dublin until his death in 1042. The Kingdom of Meath also benefitted from the fact that its warriors suffered few casualties, and managed to come from the battlefield in a much stronger position, with most of its neighbours, including the Dublin Vikings, all incapable of launching further advances. However the series of wars had resulted in a fragmented political landscape, which could not unite under the old High King.

See also

References

^ a b Conell Mageoghagan, trans. The Annals of Clonmacnoise; Being Annals of Ireland, from the Earliest Period to A. D. 1408. (Dublin: University Press for the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 1896), 168.

^ Conell Mageoghagan, trans. The Annals of Clonmacnoise; Being Annals of Ireland, from the Earliest Period to A. D. 1408. (Dublin: University Press for the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 1896), 167-169.

^ Ulster, Connacht, Meath, Munster, and Leinster (Dublin)

Source: https://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Battle+of+Clontarf

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cybelemcmoon · 4 years

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and Ireland too

https://cybeleshineblog.files.wordpress.com/2020/02/ossian-rory-dalls-sisters-lament.mp3

Ossian – the lament of Rory Dal’s sister

During this inclement west coats weather, I recently found a few tidbits in the time traveler’s rucksack so I hope you will enjoy Scotland revisited!

Many people do not know that the Hebrides, along with The Orkneys in Scotland belonged to Norway for 400 years. Sovereignty was transferred to Scotland in 1266.

In truth, Scotland has a very diverse dna profile and it is said perhaps it’s location has played a part. Scotland at the North end of Britain was the end of the line for travelers. Celts and Picts originally inhabited the hills of Western Scotland and the Isles but there has even been a “saracen” and Berber marker found in many of the dna studies.

Around the 9th Century AD Norse seafarers found their way to Scotland and settled before continuing further south to what is presently Dublin, Ireland. On the Isle of Skye, names such as Skeabost and Carbost refer to the Viking farms that were once there. The Skeabost Hotel has great meals and accomodation for travelers. There is a also a distillery in Carbost with the wonderful name of Talisker.

Interestingly, in Iceland, there has been a Gaelic component along with Norwegian ancestry as Vikings brought slaves and perhaps wives from Scotland and Ireland to that almost mythological and remote island of fire and ice. This is the island where Floki Vilgerðarson from the series Vikings sailed in the series.

My mother’s family was the clan MacLeod and supposedly they were descendants of a Norseman named Leot or Leod. It seems possible as I have been involved with a couple of dna projects saying I have some Norwegian roots and apparently even have a connection to Gaelic Iceland. Still, Dunvegan Castle, the seat of the MacLeod Clan is definitely Gaelic flavoured with Celtic tales of fairies and clansmen. Read the story in a former post here

Dunvegan Castle and fine Scottish weather

the fairy flag and drinking cup and horn

The Sign at St. Mary’s Church ruins at Duirinish Parish

Note the old Pictish stone on the hillside

It’s not difficult to imagine long ships sailing into these natural harbours and lochs, At Rubha an Dunain in the south, a viking canal and shipyard was recently discovered .

Looking out on Loch Snizort

Loch Pooltiel

Loch Snizort and Pooltiel both open into the Minch, the body of water separating Skye on the Inner Hebrides to the outer islands.

https://cybeleshineblog.files.wordpress.com/2020/02/scottish-music-crossing-the-minch-ossian.mp3

Ossian- Crossing the Minch

Further north on the Orkneys, a magnificent Viking Cathedral still stands with it’s elaborate wooden carvings. St. Magnus was built in 1137 in honour of a Christian convert and martyr, Magnus of Orkney.

The legend of the Selkie – that part human,shape shifting seal is both part of Celtic and Icelandic myth.

In Ireland, the Vikings settled Dublin (Dubh Linn )around 841 AD and it became a great trading and expansion hub for them. Irish hero Brian Boru drove out the vikings at the battle of Clontarf in 1014. With his sons he fought against Sigtrygg Silkbeard, king of Dublin, and both were slain.

I took these in Dublin a few years back, the Viking area lies just beyond the Medieval gate at Christ Church and this depiction of Brian Boru was displayed in Trinity College.

Medieval Gate in Dublin

Brian Boru ( Trinity College)

an Icelandic maiden and my own depiction of one of the realms:

Alfheim

the fisherman’s daughter

The Eddic and Skaldic poetry are rich in the mythology of the Norse people. Read about the nine realms here

Scandinavian Scotland….. and Ireland too Ossian - the lament of Rory Dal's sister During this inclement west coats weather, I recently found a few tidbits in the time traveler's rucksack so I hope you will enjoy Scotland revisited!

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hallsp · 7 years

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Myths

Nations are forged in the fires of history but they remain molten, recast with each generation in the imperfect furnace of memory and imagination.

The controversial French philologist Ernest Renan was right when he once remarked that: “In order for a nation to exist, it had to remember certain things, and also forget certain things.”

The remembering of history often involves simplification, whereas I’d rather reflect its true complexity, with the result that the “agreed-upon facts,” to borrow a phrase from Gore Vidal, regularly need re-examination.

The most critical event in Irish history, without doubt, was the Norman conquest of Ireland in 1169. This was the beginning of English rule in Ireland, which would continue, in one form or another, down to the present day.

The 12th century “Anglo-Norman” conquest of Ireland was, in point of fact, largely Franco-Hibernian in nature. It consisted in an alliance of the Angevin King Henry II (Court Manteau) and the exiled King of Leinster, Dermot MacMurrough.

Henry II was born in France, spoke Norman French, married Eleanor of Acquitane, and spent fully two-thirds of his reign on the continent. The French Normans, in the person of William the Conquerer, had invaded Britain just a century earlier, defeating Harold at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

Dermot MacMurrough allied himself with Henry II because he wanted to regain the Kingdom of Leinster, which had been taken from him by Rory O’Connor, the last High King of Ireland.

Jonathan Swift jokingly said that Henry had arrived in Ireland “half by force, half by consent.” The Irish History Reader, published by the Christian Brothers in 1905, puts it succinctly: “Ireland was once an independent nation. She lost her independence not so much through the power of her enemies, as by the folly of her sons.”

Interestingly, one of the first references to Ireland in the historical record, courtesy of Tacitus, the Roman historian, mentions a very similar scenario, in which an unnamed Irish chief, possibly Túathal Techtmar, exiled in the first century, sought refuge with General Agricola, who also thought of invading the Land of Winter.

The Normans were not the only invading power in the British Isles. Scots (Scoti in Latin) was the term used by Roman Britons in referring to the marauding Irish Gaels. In the 6th century, Dál Riata, a Gaelic kingdom in Northern Ireland and Scotland, became so powerful that Gaelic became the language of Northern Britain, hence the provenance of Scottish Gaelic and the etymology of Scotland itself. So, the Normans might have brought English (which is half Norman French anyway) to Ireland, but the Irish brought Gaelic to Scotland. And while we may not speak much Gaelic anymore, at least it’s survived. The Scots (in Scotland) can’t say the same about poor old Pictish. One other example: in 1111, Domnall Ua Briain, the great-grandson of Brian Boru, famous High King of Ireland, became King of the Isles (Hebrides, isles of the Firth of Clyde, and the Isle of Man) by sheer force of arms.

Indeed, the Normans weren’t the only ones boldly interfering in the affairs of a neighbouring kingdom. In 1051, prior to the Norman conquest of England itself, Harold Godwinson sought refuge in Ireland, with Diarmait mac Maíl-na-mBó in Leinster. Harold’s sons, Godwine and Edmund, fled here in 1066, and attempted to retake Britain from their base in Ireland, with fleets supplied by Diarmait, in 1068 and 1069. The colonial history of these islands might have been reversed in the event of their success.

The Vikings were not the only raiders and plunderers on the island of Ireland. According to the Annals, for example, Clonmacnoise was much more often attacked by the native Irish than by the Vikings. Indeed, even the monasteries themselves went to war with one another. Clonmacnoise went to war with Birr in 760, and with Durrow in 764. In 817, during a battle between the monasteries of Taghmon and Ferns, four hundred were slain.

The Battle of Clontarf, in 1014, is often imagined as the last stand of the Gaelic High King of Ireland, Brian Boru, against the marauding foreigner, the Norse King of Dublin, Sigtrygg Silkbeard. In actual fact, Sigtrygg was born in Ireland; he was also married to Brian Boru’s daughter. Brian himself was supported by Vikings from Limerick; and Sigtrygg was supported by Máel Mórda, King of Leinster, and Sigtrygg’s uncle!

The island of Ireland was not politically united until after the arrival of the Anglo-Normans, notwithstanding the exceptional High Kingships of Brian Boru and Rory O’Connor. There never existed a unified political entity called Ireland until about the 16th century, with the Tudor Conquest, the establishment of the Kingdom of Ireland, and the legal process of Surrender and Regrant; even then it took centuries of consolidation. Clearly there was a common heritage amongst the inhabitants of our little island prior to this, in terms of language and customs, but the country was made up of rival kingdoms, each vying for power and glory, just like everywhere else on God’s green Earth.

The omnipresent Catholic Church actually gave its imprematur to the Norman invasion of Ireland, as Henry II was granted the Lordship of Ireland by Pope Adrian IV, the first (and last) English Bishop of Rome. Laudabiliter, the papal bull granting this privilege, is extremely controversial, with many claiming it as a forgery. It matters not. The “Donation of Adrian” was subsequently recognised in many official writings. For example, in 1318, Domhnall O’Neill, along with other Irish kings, appealed to Pope John XXII in an attempt to overthrow Laudabiliter, a copy of which they enclosed. The Pope simply wrote to King Edward II of England urging him to redress some of the grievances of the Irish.

The Irish Rebellion of 1641, a result of anger at plantation and subjugation, gave rise to the Irish Catholic Confederation, which pledged its allegiance to the Royalists in the English Civil War. This is what brought Cromwell to Ireland, and though he was brutal (vicious, really) in his campaign, he was not the first military leader to massacre innocents, and exacerbate famine in Ireland. Robert the Bruce, and his brother Edward, who was proclaimed High King of Ireland in 1315, invaded the North and engaged in total war with the Anglo-Irish, slaughtering all of the inhabitants of Dundalk, for example.

Maurice Fitzgerald, who led one of the Cambro-Norman families which accompanied Strongbow in his invasion of Ireland, founded a famous dynasty in Kildare. The Fitzgeralds, like many of the Old English, eventually became “more Irish than the Irish themselves,” Hiberniores Hibernis ipsis. In fact, two descendants, separated by more than two-hundred years, would lead the Irish in rebellion against the crown: “Silken” Thomas Fitzgerald, in 1534, and Lord Edward Fitzgerald, in 1798. Such are the vagaries of history.

I like to remind Nationalists and Unionists alike that, during the 1680s, Pope Alexander VIII supported William of Orange, the Protestant usurper, in his battle for the English Crown, against the legitimate (though Catholic) King James II. The Orange Order, which refuses Catholic members, should make an honourary exception for the Pope. The Catholic Church, not for the first time in history, placed its own interests to the fore, as a member of the Grand Alliance, the League of Augsburg. The Battle of the Boyne in 1690 more or less decided the outcome of this conflict in favour of William.

This “Glorious Revolution,” so-called, is often celebrated as a victory for the liberal co-regency of William and Mary, over the authoritarian regime of James II. Edmund Burke thought of it as a final settlement and as freedom in full fruition. James was indeed an advocate for absolutist monarchy and a believer in the Divine Right of Kings.

However, it was James who made the declaration of indulgence, otherwise known as liberty of conscience, in 1687, a first step towards the freedom of religion. Indeed, the Patriot Parliament, which met in Dublin for the first and only time in 1689, granted full freedom of worship and civic and political equality for Roman Catholics and Dissenters. And yet, the indulgence also reaffirmed the king as absolute, so these pronouncements depended on the will of the monarch. (They were also made with a view to reinforcing support for his reign amongst Catholics and Dissenters.)

The founding members of the United Irishmen, the fons et origo of Irish republicanism, were all Protestant. This was an astonishing development. In the wake of the American and French revolutions, the Protestant planters, who had been brought to Ireland to pacify the country and bring it under English control, were now making common cause with the Gaelic and Old English Catholics to throw off the yoke of external domination. Wolfe Tone would state his aims boldly:

To subvert the tyranny of our execrable government, to break the connection with England, the never failing source of all our political evils, and to assert the independence of my country – these were my objects. To unite the whole people of Ireland, to abolish the memory of all past dissentions, and to substitute the common name of Irishman, in the place of the denominations of Protestant, Catholic, and Dissenter – these were my means.

In the aftermath of the 1798 rebellion, Catholics supported the Act of Union, because they believed that Catholic emancipation would be more easily achieved through Westminster than through College Green.

Daniel O’Connell, a native speaker of Irish, was utilitarian enough to “witness without a sigh the gradual disuse” of the language. Rather surprisingly, it was not the Duke of Wellington who said that being born in a stable — Ireland — does not make one a horse, it was the Liberator, speaking about the Duke, at trial in 1843.

O’Connell desired Catholic emancipation, of course, and the re-establishment of the Irish Parliament, but he wasn’t a separatist. In fact, he actually coined, or at the very least popularised, the term “West Brit,” then understood in a wholly positive sense. Here he is speaking in the House of Commons in 1832:

The people of Ireland are ready to become a portion of the Empire, provided they be made so in reality and not in name alone; they are ready to become a kind of West Britons if made so in benefits and in justice; but if not, we are Irishmen again.

O’Connell, who witnessed the beginning of la terreur in France, believed in peaceful agitation for change, “moral force” nationalism, and wholeheartedly rejected violence. “Let our agitation be peaceful,” he said, “legal, and constitutional.”

The principle of my political life…is that all ameliorations and improvements in political institutions can be obtained by persevering in a perfectly peaceable and legal course, and cannot be obtained by forcible means, or if they could be got by forcible means, such means create more evils than they cure, and leave the country worse than they found it.

In his non-violence he would be an example to Gandhi and to Martin Luther King, but not to the rebels of 1916. Strangely, though, you can find Robert Emmet’s blunderbuss in O’Connell’s home in Derrynane.

Two UK prime ministers were born and raised on the island of Ireland, part of the Protestant ascendancy: William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelbourne (1782-1783) and Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (1828-1830). These men also share the distinction of being the only two prime ministers who were also army generals. Wellington is not well-remembered in Ireland, because he was a staunch unionist and opposed to parliamentary reform (the reason Lord Byron called him Villainton), but he was Prime Minister during the passage of the 1829 Catholic Relief Act, and it would not have passed without his forthright support. The Wellington Testimonial in the Phoenix Park celebrates, somewhat amusingly, his encouragement of religious and civil liberty.

Irish soldiers fought with the British Army in almost every battle in the Empire’s history, including a large contingent in the Napoleonic wars alongside Wellington and, of course, in the Great War. At least 200,000 Irish soldiers fought in the First World War, all of them volunteers. Conscription for Ireland was eventually passed in 1918, but never enforced. The history of the British Empire is also our history, whether we like it or not. In fact, many of the troops who battled with the rebels in 1916 were fellow Irishmen, particularly from the Royal Dublin Fusiliers.

Ireland being an integral part of the Empire meant, for example, that the bugle used to sound the Charge of the Light Brigade at the famous Battle of Balaclava in 1854 was made in Dublin, at McNeill’s on Capel Street, and sounded by a Dubliner, Billy Brittain. It meant too that Winston Churchill’s “first coherent memory” is of cavalry on parade in the Phoenix Park in Dublin, when his grandfather, the Duke of Marlborough, was Viceroy. (Speaking of historical myths: it’s actually Lord Kitchener, as Secretary of War, and not Churchill, who bears most responsibility for the disaster which was the campaign in Gallipoli. He was the chief advocate for a naval attack in the first place and for a subsequent landing of ground troops.)

The Ulster unionists, latter-day proponents of democracy, law, and order, would do well to remember that it was their forebears who first introduced the gun into Irish politics in the 20th century, with the Larne gun-running in 1914. These were German guns for the Ulster Volunteer Force, who were determined to oppose Home Rule, the democratic will of the majority, by any means necessary.

The Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), the majority nationalist party at Westminster, was opposed to partition, but acquiesced in the creation of Northern Ireland as a stop-gap in securing Home Rule for Ireland, which was delayed until after the First World War. John Morley, previously Chief Secretary for Ireland, wrote to Asquith in 1914 very wisely telling him that his special plan for Ulster “would not work,” because “there is a strong Catholic minority, and the effect would be to reproduce in Ulster, with a reversal of the political conditions, the very antagonisms that you now hope to relieve.” The creation of “a Protestant Government for a Protestant people” in Northern Ireland would lead directly to the so-called Troubles, in which Catholics were thwarted in their pursuit of basic civil rights.

The 1916 Rising was organised while Home Rule was on the statute books. The best defense of this action was probably given by Roger Casement, the campaigning British consul who had exposed the human rights abuses in the Congo and Peru, at his trial in 1916 before he was hanged for treason:

If small nationalities were to be the pawns in this game of embattled giants [the Great War], I saw no reason why Ireland should shed her blood in any cause but her own, and if that be treason beyond the seas I am not ashamed to avow it or to answer for it here with my life.

Tom Clarke, the mastermind of the Rising, had been arrested in London in 1883, found in possession of large quantities of nitroglycerin, intent on bombing London Bridge, the busiest part of the city.

Arthur Griffith, the founder of Sinn Féin, had suggested the formation of a dual monarchy, in emulation of Hungary’s settlement with Austria, essentially a return to the constitution of 1782, prior to the union of the Kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland, and he had opposed all physical force nationalism in favour of passive resistance and abstentionism.

Patrick Pearse talked in the language of race theory, and welcomed the spilling of blood in the world war: “the old heart of the earth needed to be warmed with the red wine of the battlefields.” One might dismiss this as representative of the militarism of the age, but there were many who completely disagreed. James Connolly condemned this sentiment as belonging to that of a “blithering idiot.” Indeed, Pearse was “half-cracked,” according to Yeats, and a man “made dangerous by the Vertigo of Self Sacrifice.”

It must also be remembered, though, that John Redmond also called for a blood sacrifice, in encouraging the Irish Volunteers to join the war effort on the continent: “No people can be said to have rightly proved their nationhood and their power to maintain it until they have demonstrated their military prowess.”

Independence finally came in 1922, with the Anglo-Irish Treaty and the formation of the Free State. The Dáil ratified the Treaty, and the 1922 general election was a de facto referendum resulting in a clear majority in favour of the Treaty. The anti-Treaty republicans rejected this result, and brought the country to civil war. This anti-democratic element of republicanism is discussed not nearly enough.

Was the Treaty a worthy intermediate, a legitimate stepping stone to full independence? or was it a simple betrayal of the Republic? If you believe it was for the Irish people to decide, the Treaty was their choice. If, however, you believe that the Republic itself takes precedence over the voice of the people, then the fight would go on. Margaret Pearse rubbished the Treaty because she was haunted by the “ghosts of her sons.” In the end, the Republic was declared in 1949, not through force of arms, but through legislation.

In retrospect, the old unionist concern that Home Rule meant Rome Rule wasn’t entirely unfounded. Our constitution, Bunreacht na hÉireann, which was written in 1937, defined the state as explicitly secular, and, remarkably, provided recognition to the “Jewish congregations,” then under increasing attack in Europe. Nevertheless, the Catholic Church had inordinate influence on social policy. This would drive a wedge into the midst of the nation, to paraphrase W. B. Yeats. A 1925 prohibition on divorce prompted Yeats, then a senator in Seanad Éireann, to give an impressive speech.

I think it is tragic that within three years of this country gaining its independence we should be discussing a measure which a minority of this nation considers to be grossly oppressive.

Ironically, in the office of the ultra-Catholic Patrick Pearse at St. Enda’s in Rathfarnham sits a bust of the poet John Milton. It was Milton who had written so powerfully in favour of divorce in the 17th century, and Yeats invokes his name in support of the rights of the Protestant people.

The prohibition went ahead anyway, having a predictable effect on progressive society: in 1951, for example, the state rejected the donation of a painting from Louis le Brocquy, Ireland’s foremost artist. A Family was a pessimistic depiction which he painted while going through a public divorce in the UK.

Yeats predicted that the ban would eventually be removed. “There is no use quarreling with icebergs in warm water,” he said. “I have no doubt whatever that, when the iceberg melts [Ireland] will become an exceedingly tolerant country.” The iceberg finally melted in 1995, when divorce was legalised, by the smallest of margins, through popular referendum.

In the 1950s, in the wake of the failure of the “controversial” Mother and Child Scheme, which witnessed overt interference from the Catholic Church in the affairs of a supposedly secular state, and following the resignation of the courageous Dr. Noel Browne, then Minister of Health, Taoiseach John A. Costello was bold enough to state:

I am an Irishman second, I am Catholic first, and I accept without qualification in all respects the teaching of the hierarchy and the church to which I belong.

Is it really any wonder that Catholics were viewed with suspicion by protestants in the UK and elsewhere? Indeed, Martin Luther King Sr., a Baptist pastor and the father of the great civil rights leader, could not bring himself to support John F. Kennedy in the presidential race of 1960 solely because he was a Catholic. Kennedy eventually settled this matter once and for all in a brilliant speech to an antagonistic audience, all members of the Protestant Greater Houston Ministerial Association. He said, in essence, the complete opposite to John A. Costello.

In the 1960s, the provisional IRA gained a foothold providing protection to the Catholic community in the North who were agitating for basic civil rights. They abandoned their moral high-ground, though, by exploding bombs and killing civilians. In 1885, the Fenians had simultaneously bombed the Tower of London and the House of Commons; in 1974, the provisional IRA did the exact same thing. Again echoing history, their goal of a united republic was never achieved. The old IRA had fought for a Republic but settled for a Free State, the provisional IRA fought for a Republic but settled for a Power Sharing Executive.

The Irish History Reader, reflecting on the divisions of the past, encourages its students to “avoid dissension, and shun all that might tend to create disunion.” I would suggest the opposite, we are a diverse nation of contradictions. There’s room for all points of view. We should give oxygen to all traces of disagreement, welcome any tentative hints of polarisation. After all, friction creates heat and heat produces light.

#myths

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hallsp · 7 years

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Dublin

Dublin can be quite expensive. And I’m not just talking about two fingers of whiskey in St. John Gogarty’s on a Saturday night. An adult ticket for the Guinness Storehouse, for example, is €14. The full cost of a trip to Ireland, including flights and accommodation, must cost an arm, if not the better part of a leg. So, the more free stuff the better:

1. Trinity College, Dublin

The cream of Ireland: rich and thick.

Trinity College, Dublin was established in 1592, officially incorporated as the “Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin,” on the site of an old Augustinian monastery, All Hallows.

The walled campus, a calm oasis in the centre of a chaotic city, is an architectural marvel: filled with beautiful cobble-stoned squares, buildings of Portland stone, ancient libraries, and a hidden garden.

It’s the alma mater of Jonathan Swift, Oliver Goldsmith, Edmund Burke, Thomas Moore, William Rowan Hamilton, Bram Stoker, Oscar Wilde, and Samuel Beckett. It’s also a legal deposit library for Ireland and the United Kingdom, and home to the incredible Book of Kells, a ninth-century illuminated manuscript copy of the gospels.

My favourite thing about the Book of Kells, aside from its astounding decoration, is the scribe’s take on Matthew 10:34. The manuscript reads gaudium (joy) where it should read gladium(sword), so the line is rendered I came not to bring peace, but joy. The canonical Bible, along with modern scholarship, believes that this should instead read I came not to bring peace, but the sword.

Tip: It costs nothing to roam around the grounds of the college. An adult ticket to see the Book of Kells costs €11 at the door (and €14 for a fast-track ticket online), but you can get in free by sourcing yourself a student. Current students, and graduates, are allowed up to three guests at no cost, so ask around — someone will bring you in.

2. Oscar Wilde Statue

“My first meeting with Oscar Wilde was an astonishment,” revealed W. B. Yeats, “I never before heard a man talking with perfect sentences, as if he had written them all overnight with labour and yet all spontaneous.”

If you don’t believe the testimony of Yeats, and you want a good laugh, I suggest you have a read of the transcripts of Wilde v. Queensbury in 1895. Wilde was privately prosecuting the Marquess of Queensbury, his lover’s father, for publicly declaring him a “posing sodomite.”

Edward Carson, once a student at Trinity alongside Wilde, now became lead defense barrister for Queensbury, as well as lead character assassin. Their court room exchange will give you a sense of what happens when two minds — one drearily literal, one beautifully ironic — collide.

Wilde is still remembered for his intelligence and humour. Indeed, some of his “perfect sentences” are etched permanently in stone next to his statue across from his old home, No. 1 Merrion Square. These Wildean one-liners are so incisive and scintillating, they’ll make your day.

We’re all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

3. The Chester Beatty Library

I’ve been trying to avoid use of the phrase “hidden gem” but it’s impossible when you’re talking about Dublin’s little-known Chester Beatty Library, tucked away inside Dublin Castle.

It contains some of the most treasured manuscripts in the whole world, really priceless objects. The collection includes the earliest copies of the gospels, the letters of St. Paul, the Book of Revelation, alongside fragments of the Old Testament, as well as early copies of the Qur’an, the Life of the Prophet, the Gospel of Mani, and countless manuscripts from other religious traditions. If you like history, you might never leave.

4. St. Patrick’s Cathedral

St. Patrick’s Cathedral, which dates from 1191, is one of the most beautiful buildings in all Ireland. The cathedral was rededicated in 1254 after renovations. Rebuilds were carried out after a fire destroyed the tower and part of the west nave in 1362, and after the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660. The spire was added in 1749. By the 19th century, the cathedral was once again in disrepair. Between 1860 and 1865, Benjamin Lee Guinness (yes, that Guinness) spent £160,000 on rebuilding the cathedral, so much of what we see dates from this time.

The cathedral was the scene of a scuffle between two of Ireland’s leading Anglo-Norman families, the Butlers and the FitzGeralds, in 1492. The Butlers, seeking refuge in the cathedral, were surrounded. Gerard FitzGerald ordered that a hole be cut in the door through which he offered his hand in a gesture of peace, and the two families reconciled. This is the origin of the phrase “to chance your arm.” This very door is on display towards the rear of the Cathedral.

Jonathan Swift, the author of Gulliver’s Travels, became Dean of St. Patrick’s in 1713. He actually tried to prevent the “songsters” from his cathedral choir from taking part in further performances of Handel’s Messiah after its hugely successful world premiere in Dublin in 1742. He condemned their “disobedience, rebellion, perfidy and ingratitude,” in having offered their services on the opening night.

Tip: It costs €6 to gain entry to the Cathedral, but if you attend one of the services you can go in for free. Evensong typically starts at 17:30.

5. National Museum of Ireland

The National Museum houses all of the archaeological treasures of Ireland, among them the spectacular Tara Brooch, the Ardagh Chalice, and the Cross of Cong.

There are also Viking swords, and cannons from the Spanish Armada, among much else.

6. Glasnevin Cemetery

Opened in 1832, Glasnevin Cemetary is the de facto national cemetery, containing the graves of many of the biggest figures in Irish history from the last two centuries: Daniel O’Connell, Charles Stewart Parnell, Michael Collins, alongside others, like the writer Brendan Behan, the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, or the singer Luke Kelly.

It was the first non-denominational cemetery in Ireland, founded by Daniel O’Connell, who led the movement for Catholic emancipation in the United Kingdom, of which Ireland was then a maligned constituent.

Tip: The tours are brilliant but they ain’t cheap. It’s free to look around, though, and you can eavesdrop on the famous speech by Patrick Pearse. Make sure to go for a pint in Kavanagh’s, known locally as the Gravediggers, in Prospect Square, just next to the back gates.

7. Áras an Uachtaráin

The home of the President of Ireland, it was once the residence of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the vice-regent of the King or Queen of the United Kingdom.

There’s a little round room with small portraits of all the Irish writers who have won the Nobel Prize for Literature: W. B. Yeats (1923), George Bernard Shaw (1925), Samuel Beckett (1969), Seamus Heaney (1995), and James Joyce, who never won the award, but bloody well should have.

Tip: It’s entirely free, but it’s first come first served, so get there early.

8. Natural History Museum

The Natural History Museum, known locally as the Dead Zoo, was built in 1856, three years prior to the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.* It’s very much a Victorian museum, filled with stuffed animals, skeletons, and ridiculous life-size models. It hasn’t changed a whole heap in a hundred and fifty years.

*Interestingly, the first person to respond to Darwin’s theory was Samuel Haughton, a naturalist in Trinity College, Dublin. He wasn’t very supportive.

9. Christ Church Cathedral

Dublin is unique in having two cathedrals, St. Patrick’s and Christ Church. It’s even worse when you consider that these belong to the Protestant Church of Ireland, so that the Catholic Church maintains its own separate pro-Cathedral, St. Mary’s on Marlborough Street, which is the “temporary” seat of the Archbishop of Dublin until such time as their ownership of Christ Church is restored. This has been the situation since 1825, and remains so.

The Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, known widely as Christ Church, originally dates to around about 1030, when Hiberno-Norse convert King Sigtrygg Silkbeard built a church on the site, prior to his pilgrimage to Rome. This pre-dates the Anglo-Norman conquest.

The Normans organised a complete rebuild in the 1180s. There were further rebuilds in 1358, 1562, 1829, and 1871. Much of the current building is Victorian, dating from the last big restoration between 1871 and 1878 by architect George Edmund Street, at a cost of £230,000, paid for by Henry Roe, the whiskey distiller. St. Patrick’s, then, was rebuilt with profits from beer, while Christ Church was rebuilt with profits from whiskey.

Henry II attended Christmas Mass here in 1171, the first time he took communion after the murder of Thomas Beckett. The cathedral was also the location of the coronation, in 1487, of Lambert Simnel, Yorkist pretender to the throne of England. Christ Church was restored to the Roman Catholic rite in 1689, when James II arrived in Ireland. This was reversed in 1690, when William defeated James at the Battle of the Boyne. William presented the cathedral with a gold communion plate, which can still be seen in the crypt.

Tip: Like St. Patrick’s, if you attend one of the services you can go in for free.

10. National Gallery

The National Gallery contains the finest collection of art to be found on these shores. There’s the best of Irish painting, from Jack B. Yeats, to William Orpen, and Louis le Brocquy, along with more famous international works by Vermeer, Van Gogh, Monet, or Picasso.

The best of the bunch is The Taking of Christ (1602), by Caravaggio, which was unexpectedly rediscovered and recognised in 1990 in the residence of the Society of Jesus on Leeson Street.

This is my favourite painting, and not simply because of its proximity, but because of the tale of its discovery, the centrality of this event to Christianity, the perfection of the colouring, and the cameo appearance by the artist himself. He’s the figure farthest to the right, holding the lantern.

Caravaggio was a genius, and this is one of his most exquisite pieces. He was a master of light and dark, and his paintings are stunning in their realism. Although the practice of chiaroscuro, “light-dark,” had been widespread, Caravaggio deepened the shadows and focused the light. He made the form definitive. He was avant-garde Baroque.

Plus, Caravaggio was a delinquent, a miscreant, and an opportunist. He carried a sword for fighting. He drank excessively. Indeed, his first self-portrait was merged with a portrayal of Bacchus, the hedonistic Roman god of wine, and ritual madness. Caravaggio used his concubines, all prostitutes, as models for such luminary religious figures as the Virgin Mary.

The satirist H. L. Mencken once said that the “great artists of the world are never puritans, seldom even ordinarily respectable.” In fact, he was adamant that no virtuous man “has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony worth hearing, or a book worth reading.” Ain’t that the truth.

#dublin

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