Brian Boru – High King of Ireland
Who was Brian Boru?
‘He was perhaps the greatest ‘realist’ Ireland has known’, wrote Mrs Stopford Green in History of the Irish Free State to 1014, published in 1925. ‘At all times keeping pace with a changing world. His sense of realities taught him how far he could go and when to draw hack. Warrior as he was by the hard training of his youth, where any peace was possible his one object was to avoid fighting. The true dignity of his character, and his single devotion to his country’s salvation, may be measured by the fact that in all the changing circumstances of his life we do not find a case in which personal humiliation or personal ambition was to him of any account…’
Yet it was some nine centuries after his death that the first attempt at a biography of the great man was attempted. As is the case with so many famous people in the early parts of our history, it is difficult to verify facts and to separate myth from truth. No exact date of his birth can be located, and there are slight variations with some of the important dates in his life.
‘The youngest son of the King of Thomond – a throne in all probability elevated by the most aristocratic family in the
island, the Ui Neill, to help maintain their own authority – he was certainly born to greatness. His leadership of a small band of guerrillas, holding out in the wilds of Clare against the Danes of Limerick, brought him into prominence with his own people, and the murder of his eldest surviving brother, Mathghamhain, gave him the thrones of Thomond and Munster. Having come thus far, he went on to displace the mighty Ui Neill on the high throne of Ireland, and in old age established a form of governance that was probably the nearest to a strong central monarchy the conglomeration of disunited Irish Kingdoms had ever experienced. He subdued the Scandinavian inhabitants of the island and, having done so, turned his skills in commerce to the benefits of native and Land Leaper alike.’