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130 Stephen Dunford: The Journey of The IrIsh
The poet William Kenealy wrote an epic poem titled Brian’s Address To His Army At Clontarf from which the following verse is taken;
Stand ye now for Erin’s glory!
Stand ye now for Erin’s cause!
Long ye’ve groaned beneath the rigour Of the Northmen’s savage laws;
What though brothers league against us? What though myriads be the foe? Victory will be more honoured
In the myriads overthrow.
As Brian was not taking an active part in the battle, he retired with his page to Tomar’s Wood, (modern suburb of Phibsborough) to watch the combat from his royal pavilion.
But, it is told, before the two opposing armies closed together in battle proper that Good Friday morning, 23rd April 1014, a Norse champion from the Isle of Mann named Plat, challenged a champion of the Irish: and Domhnal, the Great Steward of Mar, who was commanding a host of the Scotch Gael went out to meet him. The story goes that the two champions fought bravely in full view of both armies for some considerable time and that both fell mortally wounded. Then, at six o clock, just after sunrise, the armies, each num- bering 20,000 strong, met in a battle that raged ferociously until sunset. To the citizens of Dublin who watched from the walls, including Sláine and her husband, the crafty Sitric, who it is said ‘wisely kept within the walls and lived to tell the tale’, the battle must have seemed like the ruinous reaping of a giant field of bloody corn, with the advantage sometimes swaying in favour of the Irish, sometimes in favour of the Norse, as leader after leader fell. Sigurd and Maelmora on one side and Murrough, Brian’s son and commanding general, and Turlough, Brian’s fifteen year old grandson on the other.
By late afternoon the tide of battle had turned in favour of Brian’s forces and the remain- der of the engagement was but a prolonged epilogue- sunset found the Irish triumphant.
As evening fell and a full moon rose in the sky the Norsemen finally gave way and were driven into the sea. Thousands, we are told managed to escape to their ships which rode in Dublin Bay, but thousands more were caught in the Tulcha or flood of the high-tide and drowned and other thousands of them lay dead on the strand of Clontarf and everywhere over the battlefield.
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