Open [7.9 MB]

MUNSTER 15
to the invaders: it was Brian who had fought them
in desperate guerrilla warfare through the hills of
Clare, and along the banks of the Shannon,
was brought down to fifteen men, and Mahon asked
till he
him in the council chamber, "Where hast thou left
thy followers?" And Brian answered, as the Irish
poem tells:
"I have left them with the foreigners
After being cut down, O Mahon!
In hardship they followed me on every field,
Not like as thy people."
It was Brian who in that council caused appeal to
be made to the Clan Dalcais whether they would
have peace or war, and "War", they answered,
"and this was the voice of hundreds as the voice
of one man ".
The work that was begun
at Kincora was finished
sixty years later outside Dublin when the Danish
menace was finally broken and dispelled on the shore
by Clontarf: and in that fight the old lord of Kincora,
Brian of the Tribute, High King by then of all Ire-
land, fell gloriously in the hour of a victory almost
too dearly won.
You can see in Killaloe the little old church, built
somewhere in the eighth or ninth century, with its
high-pitched roof of stone slabs, under which Brian
worshipped more than ten centuries ago. Beside it