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ADVENTURE OF THE MONTH — JUNE, 2004 — PAGE 1

THE FACTS:
        It was 1,000 years ago, and Irish history was boiling like laundry. There were four Celtic kingdoms dividing Ireland into roughly four quadrants: Ulster (north), Connacht (west), Munster (south), and Leinster (east). But the Irish Celts were tribal folk, and the kingdoms were subject to shifting borders as intertribal marriages led to shifting allegiances. More importantly, there was constant pressure from the outside, from Viking invaders who for 200 years had been penetrating coastal rivers looking to colonize the lush agricultural lands of Ireland.
        By the turn of the first millennium the Northmen had become well established in parts of eastern and southeastern Ireland—largely in the Kingdom of Leinster, and, especially in and around Dublin. They also controlled Limerick in Munster, south Central Ireland, where the Shannon River emerges from the Shannon Estuary in the midst of productive, low farmlands. These Viking/Irish were powerful and aggressive. They had no intention of giving up their new homelands, so much more fertile and mild than the rocky, coastal Scandinavian inlets they came from. And they found the clannish Gaels disunited, easily suppressed, and often willing participants to battle against their rival Irish neighbors. Then Brian Boru rose up in Munster to become greatest of the Irish kings.
        When Brian’s brother, Mahon, King of Munster, decided to battle Limerick’s Viking King Imar in opposition against his heavy taxation of Munster, Imar’s men killed him. Brian replaced his brother as Munster’s king and tracked down Imar and his army, slaughtering them on an island in the Shannon Estuary. Brian Boru now controlled much of the south of Ireland, and, in the process, became the enemy of the Irish King of Leinster and his ally, Viking Sitric Silkenbeard, King of Dublin, ally of the Limerick Vikings.
        In 999, the Leinstermen and Dublin Vikings were defeated in battle by Brian’s Munstermen. Three years later, Brian bested Sitric Silkenbeard himself, and became High King of Ireland. For another decade, Brian’s army skirmished with Vikings who were seeing themselves being pushed out of Ireland. Finally, at Clontarf near Dublin, Brian Boru decisively defeated the Vikings in 1014, although he was murdered in his tent by fleeing Norsemen after the battle was over.

THE LEGEND:
        Sometime during the years when Brian was King of Munster, a royal wedding was to be held near Limerick. The King of Leinster, allied with the Limerick Vikings, was invited to attend, and, with a small contingent of his army set out to cross northern County Tipperary about 30 miles of Munster—enemy territory—to reach Limerick and the wedding. The route selected would avoid towns as much as possible, to avoid detection and confrontation with Brian’s Munstermen. It was to cross the highest of the Arra Mountains, Tountinna, 1,500 feet high, where there were some old slate mines and a few farms, but no villages until reaching the River Shannon at Ballina, not far from the Limerick border.
        Brian Boru’s castle was atop the hilly town of Killaloe just across the Shannon from Ballina. The view from the castle looked across the river toward Ballina and the Arra Mountains. Gormlaith, bride of Brian, was at home in Killaloe when she received word of the wedding guests underway from Leinster. It so happened that Gormlaith was none other than mother of Sitric Silkenbeard, Viking King of Dublin, mortal enemy of Brian Boru and the Irish of Munster. Although Brian was at that moment away from Killaloe, Gormlaith knew an opportunity when she saw one, and proved to be no shrinking violet. Calling on her loyal friends in Dublin, Gormlaith ferreted the travel plans of the King of Leinster and his militia and planned a surprise welcome for them when they neared the end of their journey.
        As the tired wedding guests traversed the heights of Tountinna and came into sight of Lough Derg, the great lake of the Shannon, and the Slieve Bernagh mountains to the west, they were set upon by the murderous attack of a superior force led by a fierce woman. No mercy was shown. The entire wedding party—including the King of Leinster—was slain on the slopes of Tountinna. They were buried on the spot, and the graves marked with several medium sized blocks of native stone.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 2—

HOW TO TRAVEL TO CENTRAL IRELAND (AND FIND THE GRAVES OF THE LEINSTERMEN)