Logo
Prev
Bookmark
Rotate
Print
Next
Contents
All Pages
Related Articles
Browse Issues
Help
Search
Home
'
National Geographic : 1981 Apr
Contents
background with a standard symmetry of emotion: the wearin' o' the green on St. Patrick's Day, living shamrocks and cardboard leprechauns, "Oh, the days of the Kerry dancing," the priest with immaculate hands reading the Mass for the Dead while old women in black keened and rains from the wrong side of the Atlantic swept streets of Boston, Baltimore, or New York. The past was drowned in sentiment and strange longing as the old men sat staring at a glass of whiskey as if it were a crystal ball, but fixed on the past that never was. Maud lin. Angry. Pious. Outrageous. Poetic. Thick. Hilarious. Irish. The Christian world of Patrick's isle was shattered by the Vikings in A.D. 795. For 200 years Ireland lay prone before the raiding ships, and to this day the ground of Scandi navia is filled with Irish treasure. Many of the Vikings had come to stay, however, and created what had not existed before, the town: Dublin, Wicklow, Arklow, Wexford, Cork, and Limerick, all Viking towns. (See this issue's supplement map of Ireland.) Their power was effectively broken in 1014 when the Irish High King, Brian Boru, defeated a host of Scandinavian allies, and lost his life, at Clontarf. Brian Boru of Cashel. Magic names still. Today the music of a stirring march, the drums steadily beating, the pipes skirling, rings over tape recorders, and the great Rock of Cashel still veers up suddenly from the emerald plains of Tipperary, crowned with its ancient churches and castle. To stand beneath the ribs of stone and feel the presence of Cashel is to sense the tenacity, the brutality, the wholeness, and the con tinuous energy of Irish history. THE CLASPING of English and Irish destinies, which culminated in so many disasters, began when Tiernan O'Rourke, an Irish chieftain, lost his kingdom and his wife (some think with her consent) to Dermot MacMurrough. Though the lady was returned, O'Rourke sought revenge and finally conquered his rival. Dermot fled to Henry II, the French-speak ing King of England, who permitted him to enlist the aid of the Norman leaders of Wales. The most powerful of them, Richard FitzGilbert de Clare, known as Strongbow, agreed to help Dermot regain his Irish throne in exchange for his daughter's hand and control of the kingdom. So they came, names now famous in Irish history: Fitz Gerald, FitzHenry, Carew, Barry. The Norse of the towns and the Irish of the countryside resisted at Wexford, at Bagin bun ("At the creek of Baginbun, Ireland was lost and won"), but the Normans had come to stay. So had the "Irish question." Ancient history? In 1969 a tablet erected at Baginbun to commemorate the Norman landing was broken within a week. Henry II himself came in 1171, seeking and obtaining the submission of all to the crown of England. Norman castles rose at Maynooth, Trim, Carrickfergus, Dublin, and a dozen other places. The new lords nurtured the civilization of village and church, of tilled farm and abbey, especially those of the great medieval or ders, Cistercian, Dominican, Franciscan. New towns like Galway sprang up. The Gaelic Irish, however, were never quiet, as MacCarthys and O'Donnells won victories, but what defeated the Normans in the end was the culture itself, for the would-be con querors in time became "more Irish than the Irish themselves." Finally, England's Richard II, at the head of a mighty host, came to suppress the Gaelic chieftains, and while he was in the process, Henry of Lancaster landed in England and seized the throne. Not for centuries would an English king again come to Ireland, and then only to lose another crown. Under Gaelic pressure, English rule shrank to a small region around Dublin "Who dreamt that we might dwell among ourselves In rain and scoured light and wind-dried stones?" Archaeologists echo poet Seamus Heaney's query, pondering early Christian statues uncovered in a later church on White Island in Lower Lough Erne. CARYWOLINSKY,STOCK,BOSTON 436
Links
Archive
1981 May
1981 Mar
Navigation
Previous Page
Next Page