Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 06.djvu/320

 and A.D. 1008 : ' Creach la Flaithbertach ua Neill co firu Breagh co tuc boromamor' (A foray by Flaithbertach O'Neill on the men of Bregia, and he took a great boroma). Eric has part of the same meaning, and the statement of the most famous borama begins : Isi seo imorro innéraic, this is, moreover, the eric (Book of Leinster, facs. 295 b, line 20). This was an annual tribute which the Leinstermen had in early times been forced to pay to the kings of Tara. It consisted, according to the 'Book of Leinster,' of 15,000 cows, 15,000 pigs, 15,000 linen cloths, 15,000 silver chains, 15,000 wethers, 15,000 copper cauldrons, 1 huge copper cauldron capable of holding 12 pigs and 12 lambs, 30 white cows with red ears, with calves of the same colour and trappings, and its payment was often refused and led to endless wars. It has often been supposed that Brian received his cognomen because he put an end to this tribute by subduing the king of Tara ; but there is no passage in early historians justifying this statement. As Brian is called Boroma by Tigernach O'Braoin, a writer who lived in the middle of the eleventh century (the existing fragmentary manuscript of his history being of about the year 1150), it is clear that the title was a real one, given him during his life. But Brian was throughout life a taker and not a refuser of tributes. No one who has read the Irish chronicles could think it likely that a hero of the Dal Cais would care to be celebrated as a reliever of the burdens of the Leinstermen, first his enemies, and then his subjects. Brian was called Boroimhe or Brian of the Tribute, because of the tribute which he had levied throughout Ireland, and which brought plenty to the Dal Cais, but was taken from the Leinstermen, the Connaughtmen, the men of Meath, and of Ulster, with as firm a hand as ever the most famous borama was seized from the descendants of Eochu mac Echach by the kings of Tara.

In 1013 fighting began again between the Danes of Dublin, who found allies in Ossory and Leinster and Maelsechlainn. The king of Meath was worsted and sent to ask help from Brian, who ravaged Ossory and Leinster and joined Maelsechlainn at Kilmainham near Dublin, where some remains of an old earthwork at Garden Hill have been conjectured to mark their encampment. They besieged the Danes from 9 Sept. till Christmas, but then had to raise the siege. In the spring Brian again marched against the Danes, who, besides allies from Leinster, had obtained help from Scandinavia. He wasted Leinster and marched to the north side of Dublin. On Good Friday, 23 April 1014, at Cluantarbh, on the north side of Dublin Bay, a decisive battle was fought, in which the Danes were routed with great slaughter. Brian's sons, Murchadh and Donchadh, and his grandson led the Irish, and Brian himself, too old : for active fighting, knelt in his tent, repeating psalms and prayers. Here he was slain by Brodar, a Danish jarl.

The victory was the most important the Irish had ever won over the Danes, and the Danes were never after powerful in Ireland beyond the walls of their boroughs. The battle was celebrated in poetic accounts full of dramatic details, both by the Irish and the Northmen, sometimes natural as in the saga where a fugitive stops to fasten his shoe: 'Why,' says a pursuing Irishman, 'do you delay ?' 'I live,' answers the fugitive, 'away in Iceland, and it is too late to go home tonight.' Or sometimes supernatural, as in the Irish tale, where Aibhell of Craig Liath, the bensidh of the Dal Cais, warns Brian the night before the battle of his approaching death. The Irish chronicler (Cogadh G. re G.) describes the battle in alliterative prose, sometimes breaking into verse, as does the English chronicler in celebrating Brunanburh. In the case of Cluan Tarbh, as probably in that of Brunanburh, it was the nearness and actual living fame of the event that made the historian become a poet, and not distance of time that caused history to become inextricably blended with romance. Brian was carried to Armagh and there buried. His tomb is forgotten, and his power died with him. Two sons, Tadhg and Donnchadh, survived him, while his son Murchadh and his grandson Toirdelbhach were slain in the battle. His clansmen returned to Cenn Coradh, and Maelsechlainn mac Domhnaill again reigned as chief king of Ireland, and so continued till his death. Brian had raised the power of the Munstermen to a pitch it had never reached before, and his fifty years of war wore out the Danish strength ; but his efforts to obtain supremacy in Ireland diminished the force of hereditary right throughout the country, and suggested to willing chiefs that submission should only be yielded to him who could exact it. The last chief king of Ireland of the ancient line was the Maelsechlainn whom Brian had for a time dispossessed, and when he died in 1022 no king of Tara was ever after able to enforce even the slight general control exercised in former times, and the king James, who united the rule of England and Scotland, was the next real king of the whole of Ireland. The fame of Brian Boroimhe has been spread throughout Ireland by Dr. Geoffrey Keating, whose interesting 'Forus feasa air Eirinn' was the most