That Field of Glory Transcript

The following is a transcript of 'That Field of Glory: Historical and Antiquarian Perspectives on The Battle of Clontarf', by Dr Colm Lennon, on Tuesday 1 April 2014 at 1pm, in Dublin City Hall.

Audio.

Welcome to the Dublin City Public Libraries and Archive Podcast. In this episode Dr Colm Lennon, Emeritus Professor, Department of History, NUI Maynooth explores how the legend of Brian Boru and the battle of Clontarf have been adopted as a means of advancing different ideologies throughout Irish history, and how modern scholarly research is helping separate fact from myth. Recorded in front of a live audience on 1 April 2014 as part of the Dublin City Hall lecture series.

Lord Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen, thank-you very much for that very kind introduction. It’s a great pleasure to give this lecture, the first in the series on the commemoration of the battle of Clontarf in 1014; and I am very grateful to the Dublin City Council and especially to Mary Clarke for the invitation to participate. Unfortunately my slides aren’t working but I think we should value the next half hour as PowerPoint free (laughter) and just enjoy the good old-fashioned human voice. But one of the things I was going to show you at the outset was an image of Brian Boru before the battle of Clontarf, which actually is part of historical series of murals in the Rotunda of this building, so you would have passed it on the way up to the lecture and have a look at it when you get down again. This mural of Brian Boru in 1014 is the work of James Ward and his team of artists showing a series of historical vistas of Dublin in the Medieval and Early Modern period.  This particular panel shows Brian on horseback, flanked by a cleric, and brandishing a crucifix, while addressing his troops just before the battle began. And his troops are garbed in medieval uniforms as imagined, I think, by the contemporary Arts and Crafts movement - they are not the usual kind of uniforms that would be shown in these kinds of historical paintings. The scene captures the eve of a great victory of a Christian king over a force of pagan Vikings (whose invasion of Ireland is actually shown in another panel in the series), and it reflects the potent symbolism of Brian and the battle of Clontarf in the era of the struggle for Irish independence in the 1910s. The murals here in City Hall are the subject of a later lecture by Dr Joseph McBrinn, so I just point to this particular mural as an example of how the iconic status of Brian and the events of 1014 have been moulded by different generations to suit the political and cultural needs of their times.

Most of the early accounts of the battle, including the annals, the propagandist Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh, and the Scandinavian sagas, involved the construction of the legend of Brian Boru. The process began with the projection of the image of Brian as a great king during his own lifetime, and his glorification as victor over the Vikings continued through his great-grandson’s time down to the compiling of the Scandinavian sagas. Late medieval Gaelic poets promoted the image of Brian as the scourge of invaders for their political patrons. After the Reformation, Irish Catholic writers perceived Brian Boru as a model of Counter-Reformation sainthood and an ideal of kingship. Through the medium of antiquarian and romantic tales in the eighteenth century, the version of Brian Boru in popular consciousness fitted well into the nationalism of Daniel O’Connell in the 1840s. Through his apotheosis in the Irish literary renaissance, King Brian was presented, as I’ve mentioned, as symbol for an independent Ireland. More recent revisions by historians of the battle have taken into account textual, antiquarian and scientific studies to provide a more nuanced picture.

The actual details of the conflict at Clontarf in contemporary sources are scant enough. The core facts are given in the 'Annals of Innisfallen': Brian, supported by his son, Murchad, grandson, Tairdelbach, and nephew, Conaing, as well as by the rulers of Corcu Baiscinn and Ciarraige Luachra in Munster and Uí Maine in Connacht, battled against the Vikings of Dublin, supported by Máel Mórda mac Murchada, king of Leinster, and as it says, ‘the Vikings of the western world’. After a fierce contest, which witnessed many casualties on both sides, including Brian, Murchad and Tairdelbach (three generations), the balance of advantage appeared to lie with Brian’s army. Both the location of the battle-site at Clontarf and the day of the fighting, Good Friday (which in 1014 was 23 April), were not mentioned in the earliest sources but came to be affirmed by chroniclers in subsequent decades.  One of my images was a recent reconstruction of the site of the battle in Seán Duffy’s article in the current History Ireland, so I’ll just circulate that for you to have a look at.  And also on the back there’s a very fine painting of the battle of Clontarf which I’ll talk about later, 1826 by Hugh Frazier. Thanks Mary.

Apart from these few details, everything else about the history of the battle of Clontarf seems to have been subject to magnification and myth-making. This is mainly due to the extraordinary profusion of the sources, which became more and more elaborate in their treatment of the battle in the centuries after 1014. The Annals of Innisfallen, which were compiled in Munster during and shortly after the lifetime of Brian Boru, reflect very favourably his achievements. By contrast, the annals associated with Clonmacnoise in the Irish midlands show a preference for Maol Sechnaill mac Domhnaill, Brian’s rival for the high-kingship. The Annals of Ulster and the Annals of Loch Cé from Connacht are generally positive in their account of Brian’s rise to power and climactic battle. Chroniclers writing abroad in Wales, France and Germany also noticed the battle in the century or so after 1014. The revising by the annalists of the narrative of events reflected their perception that Clontarf was a confrontation that was out of the ordinary. As the significance of the battle of Clontarf was magnified by succeeding generations, the numbers of participants expanded. No less than patriots after the 1916 Rising, it became important for clan rulers to be able to answer positively the question, ‘Where were your ancestors on Good Friday, 1014?’ Thus, for example, the names of dozens of Irish and Scandinavian warriors, are added, some of whom are well known and others whose identity is either very shadowy or people who had died before 1014. Numbers cited also became inflated, the strength of Brian’s opponents varying from 3,000 in the Annals of Clonmacnoise, to 6,000, in the Annals of Ulster. Modern military historians have estimated that no more than 5,000 fought on both sides combined.

All of these annalistic excrescences were infused into the greatest of the literary accounts of Brian and the battle, which is called 'Cogadh Gáedhel re Gaillaibh' or ‘the war of the Irish with the foreigners’. Composed in or around 1114 (possibly to mark the centenary of Clontarf) during the reign of Brian's great-grandson, Muirchertach Uí Briain, this highly inflated biography of Brian firmly established his legendary standing as a Christian hero. The era of Brian’s reign is presented as a golden age, and the victory in 1014 as the climax of a prodigiously successful career. Quite apart from his exceptional martial prowess, the ruler of the Dál Cais is shown to have fostered the arts of peace, imposed the rule of law and patronised the church. For the author of the 'Cogadh', it was equally necessary for the Scandinavians to be portrayed as evil oppressors and of course for the Irish to be presented as righteous victors, personified most notably in the heroic figure of Brian Boru. From the very first sentence, in which the Danes are presented, there is a serious of pejorative adjectives such as ‘fierce’, ‘hard-hearted’,  ‘cruel’, ‘barbarous’, ‘murderous’, ‘fearful’, ‘villainous’ and ‘ferocious’ making clear the antipathy between the good Irish and then the evil Vikings. No mention is made of the Scandinavians’ conversion to Christianity or their cultivation of a more peaceful lifestyle.

The author of 'Cogadh' adduces elements of a family feud to explain the causes of battle. Included among the protagonists were the king of Leinster, Máel Mórda mac Murchada, /the Viking ruler of Dublin, called Sitric Silken-beard, / and the Tara king, Máel Sechnaill mac Domhnaill, who was Brian’s erstwhile partner in ruling Ireland and nominal ally. All of these personalities were intertwined through close familial ties. A dramatic episode at Kincora, Brian’s palace, on the Shannon, is said to have galvanised Máel Morda into the rebellion that preceded the Clontarf encounter. When he came to present Brian with timber for ships’ masts, his sister, Gormlaith, who was Brian’s second wife, and who happened to be in the palace even though they had been divorced or separated for years beforehand, taunted her brother with the evidence of his submissiveness to Brian Boru, saying that their father and grandfather would never have submitted. Máel Morda was further incited by the insulting behaviour during a chess match of Murchad, Brian’s favoured son (by a previous marriage), which prompted the Leinster king to leave in high dudgeon and to beat a messenger sent after him by Brian. Before she married Brian, Gormflaith is said to have wedded Máel Sechnaill mac Domhnaill, and also Amlaíb Cuarán, the Viking king of Dublin. By the latter she was mother to Sitric Silken-beard, also in his turn king of Dublin and Máel Morda’s ally, who nevertheless remained aloof from the battle of Clontarf, according to Cogadh. Sitric’s wife, Sláine, was the daughter of Brian Boru, and thus she was married to the son of her stepmother.

It is the very density of the account of the battle in 'Cogadh Gáedhel re Gallaibh' that has captured the imagination over the centuries. The number of participants, particularly on the side opposing Brian, is inflated with dozens of names, some of which at least are fictitious. Notable by their absence from the opposing sides in the fray, according to the Cogadh, were Sitric Silken-beard, who stayed behind the ramparts of Dublin, and Máel Sechnaill, who remained aloof on the periphery of the field of battle. Perhaps the most notable absentee from the actual fighting, although not from the extended battlefield, was Brian Boru himself. In the 'Cogadh', the 73-year-old king is shown as kneeling in prayer throughout the battle’s duration, within sight of the conflict. When, towards evening, he heard of the fall of Murchad’s standard, Brian refused to flee, addressing himself instead to the details of his own impending demise and funeral arrangements.  As the battle ended, Brodar, a leading Viking, came upon the kneeling Brian and thought at first that he was a priest. On learning in fact that he was the king, Brodar prepared to deal the fatal blow of an axe to the head of Brian, but not before the latter had mortally wounded Brodar by cutting off his legs with his sword. The author stresses the credentials of king Brian as a martyr for Christianity, and as a divinely approved imperial figure, through comparisons made with Old Testament patriarchs—‘Solomon of the Gaedhil’, ‘gallant David of Eirinn’ and ‘the magnificent, brilliant Moses’. The battle is dramatised in 'Cogadh' through the evocation of supernatural phenomena, including Brian’s vision of the otherworldly Aibell (or Óebhinn) on the eve of battle, and the ominous atmosphere conjured up by the spectre of birds of prey and demoniacal phantoms hovering over the massed warriors.

The incantatory power of Brian’s battle, as conveyed in the 'Cogadh', was strong enough to be represented in the Scandinavian sagas, most notably 'Njal’s saga', in the late thirteenth century. The link between the Irish conflict and the wider Viking world was the figure of Sitric (‘Silkenbeard’) mac Amlaíb, the Norse king of Dublin, who was shown to have resorted to the court of Sigurd, earl of Orkney, to gain aid for his war against Brian Boru. There, with the prior approval of his mother, Gormlaith, Sitric offered her hand, as well as his kingdom, to Sigurd in return for assistance. In this development of the family feud as background to the fighting, Gormlaith, the former wife of Brian, is presented as motivated by malice. Sitric succeeded in recruiting Brodar, the eventual slayer of Brian, by duplicitously offering him the favours already promised to Sigurd - his mother as bride and the kingdom of Dublin. Omens abound, not just the depiction of events as taking place within Holy Week 1014, with the battle itself being fought on Good Friday. Before setting out for Ireland, Brodar’s fleet had to contend with showers of boiling blood, flying swords and sharp-clawed ravens as auspices of a bloody clash and general perdition.

The author then captures the mayhem, murder and magic of the fateful day, and the most calamitous blow to the Viking side being the loss of Earl Sigurd, and of course to that of the Irish, the beheading of Brian in his tent by Brodar. Perhaps the most atmospheric and mesmerising aspect of the Saga’s evocation of the day of battle are the instances of visions of doom in places far to the north of Ireland, most notably ‘Daurrad’s song’, a Valkyries’ incantation memorised by one Daurrud in Caithness on Good Friday 1014, after he saw twelve riders disappear into a bower.  Looking in, he witnessed women weaving men’s entrails on a loom weighted by human heads, with a shuttle made of swords and reels made of arrows. When a priest in Svínafell in Iceland was saying Mass that day a drop of blood fell on his stole, while a colleague in the same region saw a deep sea containing horrible sights opening up beside the altar.

By the late middle ages, thanks to the annals, 'Cogadh Gaedhael re Gallaibh' and the Scandinavian sagas, most of the elements that became part of the staple account of the battle of Clontarf down to the present were in place: the setting, the inter-related cast of characters, including heroes and villains, and the action and its outcome. In the later medieval period, the story of Brian Boru’s struggle with the Vikings was used in the ideological battle between the Irish and the new Gaill, who were the Normans.  In the bardic poetry of the O’Brien family, descendants of Brian, inspired by the annals and sagas, and the deeds of Brian Boru remained extremely relevant as a galvanising force against the Norman invaders of north Munster. By contrast, writers from a Norman or English background tended to downplay the significance of Brian’s achievements, and instead, influenced by the work of Giraldus Cambrenisis, the 12th century Welsh chronicler, to stress the benign influence of the Vikings (or ‘Ostmen’ as they were called) in civilising the Irish through the construction of towns and the fostering of trade. ‘The Book of Howth’, for example, compiled about 1570 by an Irish-born writer of English stock, presents the battle of Clontarf as a defeat of the Irish by the Scandinavians, who came across as superior in military tactics and equipment. This spoke to the agenda of the Old English as bringers of civility to the Gaelic inhabitants of Tudor Ireland through the diffusion of English mores and culture throughout the island.

A strong counterblast to such perceptions marked the work of Geoffrey Keating, the famous Gaelic scholar of Norman background in Munster in the seventeenth century, whose 'Foras feasa ar Éirinn' came to exert great influence on modern Irish literature and learning. Taking issue directly with the anglophile Elizabethan writers, Keating set out to show in his history of Ireland the vibrancy of Gaelic civilisation as the driving-force of a modern Irish Catholic nation. Using the career of Brian Boru, and leaning heavily on the account in 'Cogadh Gáedhel re Gallaibh', Keating provided a suggestive model of Brian as the ideal king, triumphing over foreigners, while establishing an era of Christian peace and justice.  The assertion of sovereignty by a worthy monarch fostered an era of legality and justice. Patronage of the church and learning was also was a central feature of Brian’s reign. The evidence of Catholic reform within a framework of legitimate monarchy in Ireland was deeply relevant for the era of the Counter-Reformation in which Keating wrote.  And many of the iconic images of Brian which have come down to us, I suppose can be sourced in the work of Geoffrey Keating and 'Foras feasa ar Éirinn' – this is just a modern version. But it’s of an imposing imperial figure crowned and full of power and majesty surrounded by symbols of that power and Christianity. So a great deal of our knowledge and perception really of Brian Boru would date back to Keating and 'Foras feasa ar Éirinn'.

For eighteenth-century historians and antiquarians who wrote in English and Irish, Keating’s Foras feasa (which itself appeared in print in 1723) proved to be extremely evocative. Writers such as Sylvester O’Halloran and Charles O’Conor were inspired by the example of Brian Boru’s triumph over the Vikings at Clontarf in their own aspirations to political and religious liberties in that era of the penal laws.  The most vivid symbolism to be found in O’Halloran’s 'History of Ireland' is the portrayal of Brian before the battle of Clontarf, this time riding up and down between the massed ranks, brandishing a crucifix in one hand and a sword in the other and exhorting his men to fight for ‘their religion and their country’. Contemporary literary and antiquarian works in Irish paralleled and intertwined this expressive pen portraiture of Brian. Gaelic scribes of a mostly Munster background produced a prose tale entitled, Cath Cluana Tarbh, the Battle of Clontarf, thus privileging the place-name in a title for the first time. That the tale was extremely popular is attested to by its survival in over eighty manuscript copies from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Cath Cluana Tarbh drew heavily upon Cogadh Gáedhel re Gallaibh and Foras feasa ar Éirinn.

While the battle was thus being romanticised in story, research in fields such as archaeology and topography was beginning to contribute to a more scientific analysis of the combat at Clontarf in 1014. Drawn by the beauty of the locale and its growing popularity as a seaside resort next to Dublin, a series of visitors commented on Clontarf as part of their travel writings, connecting it to the events of 1014 and adducing some antiquarian information.  In 1822, William Hamilton Drummond, the poet and librarian of the Royal Irish Academy, published his two-part poem, 'Clontarf', from which I draw my title, “that field of glory”. In his preface, he cites Vallencey's 'Collectanea', various annals and chronicles, and Edward Ledwich, who had speculated that the vortex of the battle was not in fact at Clontarf, but either in Finglas, or in the vicinity of Rutland (later Parnell) Square where 'vast human debris' of bones as well as weapons had been discovered.  Contemporary with Drummond's poetical description is the work by Hugh Frazer, (which is on the sheet which I distributed) 'The battle of Clontarf', 1826, and it’s the first real example of the genre of historical painting on a large scale in Ireland, and it conveys a sense of historical and topographical verisimilitude, based on the painter’s study of the annals and the chronicles.  You can see…and by the way I should say that this painting happily has been returned from Hawaii where it was for a number of years to be put on view in the Casino in Marino during the coming weeks, culminating the commemoration of the millennium of the battle so you’ll be able to see it.  It’s a very spectacular, very large canvas and it shows Brian Boru in his tent in the left foreground and the right foreground there is one of the most important struggles of the battlefield between Murchad and Earl Sigurd.  And in the background you can see familiar enough features such as the promontory of Howth peninsula and other features of Dublin Bay. So it’s a remarkable painting for its time. It has been speculated that the presence of clerical figures on the battleground may be reflective of the contemporary campaign for Catholic emancipation.

Romantic nationalism impelled the movement headed by Daniel O’Connell and Young Ireland, which overtly set the history of Brian Boru and the battle of Clontarf in the context of an Irish liberation struggle from foreign enslavement. The selection of Clontarf as the venue for the climactic 'monster meeting' of the Repeal campaign in 1843 localised the momentous events of 1014, in order that the resonances be harnessed in the nationalistic cause. Prior to the meeting, 'The Nation', the journal of Young Ireland, engaged in raising public awareness of the significance of the battle through a series of articles and poems. The focus of the planned event was the area known as Conquer Hill, a slight eminence in the extensive fields of the district, between the Clontarf Sheds and Dollymount. In all of the reports of the planned meeting and of its subsequent abandonment, Conquer Hill was accepted as the appropriate venue and the vortex, in many people’s eyes, of the fighting at the battle on Good Friday, 1014.  And there are a couple of delineations of the site which again I was to show you but it suffices to say that Conquer Hill was thought of as the most likely site of the battle at that particular time.

Despite the failure of the proposed meeting to go ahead, the place of the battle in the history of Irish nationalism was assured, and various works of the 1840s and ‘50s and ‘60s show these large scale depictions of the battle of Clontarf. The name, ‘Clontarf’, resonated with patriotic Irish people at home and abroad in the nineteenth century. At least two townships named Clontarf were established in both North America and Australia. And it was in the suburban village of Clontarf, near Sydney, that a fenian sympathizer chose to carry out an assassination attempt on Prince Alfred, Queen Victoria’s eldest son, in March 1868.

In the later nineteenth century, a more scientific treatment of the study of the battle gradually emerged, thanks to the work of scholarly societies, and the editing for publication by James Todd of Cogadh Gáedhel re Gallaibh in 1867. As well as drawing upon a wide range of annals, genealogies and secondary sources, Todd enlisted the scholarly assistance of Dr Samuel Haughton, professor of Geology at Trinity College, Dublin, who was asked to calculate the times of the high tides in Dublin bay on 23 April 1014, the putative date of the battle. Using formulae which he had adopted in a series of other studies on tidal patterns, Haughton was able to confirm that high water occurred on the northern shoreline of Dublin Bay at 5.30a.m and 5.55p.m. on Good Friday, 1014, without being prompted about the details in the medieval writer's account. The findings, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy (1861), confirmed Todd’s view of Cogadh Gáedhel re Gallaibh as a reliable source, asserting as it did that the battle began at sunrise (calculated also at 5.30a.m.) as the tide flowed, and ended with the rout of the defeated Danes at the return of high water that evening.

It was the episode of Sitric’s dramatic witnessing of the fighting from the battlements of Dublin in Cogadh Gáedhel re Gallaibh upon which Thomas O'Gorman premised his article published in 1879 on the site of the battle. Based on Todd's edition of Cogadh, and also Njal's Saga, O'Gorman rejected the tradition of the main fighting having occurred to the east of the Tolka - that is in the district known as Clontarf. Instead he argued, persuaded by the fact that Sitric was able to see what was happening from the ramparts of Dublin that it was much closer into the town of Dublin and that the battle probably took place somewhere in the area of present day Mountjoy Square and perhaps extending eventually to the Tolka valley, but not east of that. As supplemental evidence for such a scenario, the author refers to Ledwich's article of 1763 attesting to the discovery of bones at Rutland Square, and archaeological finds of weaponry, which were also described in contemporary antiquarian accounts.

Thus, just as the patriotic overtones of the name of Clontarf were being universally recognised, historical and antiquarian research seemed to break the connection between the battle and district. This came at a time when Clontarf was embracing its identity, first as a seaside suburb and then as a township. The construction of the Bull Wall, and the railway embankment and many roads and houses gave rise to archaeological finds, and these finds prompted much speculation about their Scandinavian provenance. There was for example a sword which was immediately dubbed ‘the Viking sword’, but which was discovered later to be a renaissance sword of the 16th century.  A drinking fountain on Castle Avenue, over which a decorative metal plaque was erected by public subscription in 1850, was designated Brian Boru’s Well. On the eve of the 900th anniversary in 1914, Clontarf’s claim to contain the battleground suffered another blow when the excavation of a mound in east Clontarf, thought of as a putative burial place of the fallen on Good Friday, 1014, was found to contain an accumulation of animal bones of relatively recent date, and the original Conquer Hill was subsequently undermined as a possible location of the battle when it was discovered not to have any kind of archaeological significance. A plan by the Clontarf Improvements Association for a monument in 1914 in the form of again a drinking fountain, possibly on Brian Boru’s well surmounted by a Celtic cross, and statues of Brian, Máel Sechnaill, and the leading Scandinavian foes, Sitric and Sigurd, with an inscription in Latin, Danish, English and Irish, came to nothing, despite the collection of funds of £700.

But 1914 did provide an opportunity for antiquarians and historians to take stock of the state of scholarship regarding the battle of Clontarf. Dr George Sigerson set the tone for the dispelling of ‘historical hallucination’ (as he put it) by questioning the accepted view of the ferocity and paganism of the Vikings, and the completeness of their defeat at the hands of Brian. More traditional was the presentation of Brian as 'The hero of Clontarf' by Thomas J. Westropp in a series of articles in The Irish Monthly, which would, however, have offended local sensitivities with its reference to the 'carman's tale' of Brian Boru's well, and the 'so-called' battle of Clontarf. Against the backdrop of revisionist discourse, divergent public commemorative impulses reflected political divisions of 1914. While elements of the newly founded Irish Volunteers sought to use the centenary of Clontarf as an opportunity to assert their separatist aspirations, a civic plan for national commemoration which envisaged the reconciling of nationalist and unionist communities in Ireland. Promoted by Dublin Corporation, a call went forth to bring together the two armies, the Ulster Volunteers and the Irish Volunteers, together in a great military display in a field at Clontarf. However, the invitation from the town clerk of Dublin to a meeting of representatives of Belfast City Council to consider a fitting celebration of 900th anniversary of the Battle of Clontarf was rejected by then, the word ‘laughter’ appeared in brackets after the suggestion. Also rejected was a request for a contribution to the Dublin Civic Exhibition, which was to include a pageant on the battle. The pageant did not go ahead, and the Civic Exhibition did but was truncated when war broke out in August 1914.

So bringing it up more or less to the present, in the decades since the establishment of the Irish Free State, Brian Boru has remained a powerful symbol of Irish independence, with Clontarf being seen as the climax of a successful, earlier struggle for the deliverance of the country from invaders. We have mentioned the painting down below in the cupola of the City Hall here. Schoolbook accounts in the decades after 1922 continued to present the legendary aspects of the story of Clontarf and its hero, and a mainly derogatory treatment of the Scandinavians, unaffected at least until recent decades, by revised accounts of the battle. And even with the jettisoning of some of the legendary aspects, there have coexisted romanticised versions of the battle and its hero in popular accounts, historical novels, postage stamps and medals, and websites (a Google search for ‘The battle of Clontarf’ yields over half a million results). Meanwhile a much-anticipated film, a new life of Brian, excites speculation in the blogs as to a possible casting for the lead role of hero… but unfortunately Gabriel Byrne is ruled out because he has already taken the role of a Viking (laughter).

Meanwhile, starting with Rev. John Ryan’s article entitled, 'The battle of Clontarf', published in 1938, the scholarly discourse has seen aspects of the medieval period being subjected to more rigorous analysis, including the literary and historical sources, the Scandinavian presence in Ireland, the role of Dublin as an economic and administrative hub, and the wider maritime context. We have seen how the battle of Clontarf has elicited interpretations that have spoken to the concerns of the different eras in which its chroniclers and narrators wrote. If we evaluate the current programme of commemoration of the battle in 2014, and this is the excellent programme which has been published for many of the events in the country, not just in Dublin, we find a rich variety, on the one hand there are the events such as our own series here in City Hall and others, other lectures, symposia, conferences in which many of the leading scholars on medieval Ireland and indeed Scandinavian history will participate, and on the other hand there are exhibitions, heritage trails, musical recitals, concerts, sporting occasions including golf outings and rugby matches, and the re-enactment of the battle, eagerly awaited at the Easter weekend in St Anne’s Park. But in all of this, I’d be reasonably confident of the realization of Seán Duffy recently-expressed hope that, ‘in the flurry of commemorations to take place this year, sight is not lost of the real Brian Boru and his real achievements’.  Thank-you very much for listening. (applause)
 

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