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Updated: June 16, 2025
When they crashed, involuntarily the five men started as if a bomb had struck. Beyond the wave-line, under a cover of foam, the jaded sea lay feebly palpitant like an old man asleep. Not far off, sucked close to a ragged reef, stretched the black bulk that had once been the Brian Boru.
But the ancient Irish were sadly careless on such points; and as Giraldus Cambrensis says, "followed the example of men of old in their vices more willingly than in their virtues." More than forty years had elapsed since that famous battle of Clontarf, and since Ragnvald, Reginald, or Ranald, son of Sigtryg the Norseman, had been slain therein by Brian Boru.
Freedom has not come to Ireland; it has been "warred down and kept out of sight"; but it has been kept in the Irish heart, from Brian Boru to Robert Emmet, by a long tale of blood shed always in the same cause. Freedom is kept alive in man's blood only by the shedding of that blood.
Boru eyed the interloper with open disapproval. There was a truce of sorts between the two animals; a truce not in any way to be confused with a peace. Boru's bared teeth and Sir Galahad's arched back were constant signs that a state of war existed between them. "What under the sun are you looking at?" Janet went on impatiently. "You give me the fidgets."
Dot was in his glory, and in his element on the Curragh, and he was never quite happy anywhere else. This, however, was not the case with his companion. For a couple of days the excitement attending Brien Boru was sufficient to fill Lord Ballindine's mind; but after that, he could not help recurring to other things.
The other, Brian Boroimhe, commonly known to English writers as Brian Boru, a chieftain of the royal Dalcassian race of O'Brien, and the most important figure by far in Irish native history, but one which, like all others, has got so fogged and dimmed by prejudice and misstatement, that to many people his name seems hardly to convey any sense of reality at all. Poor Brian Boru!
"And where will you sleep?" But Eileen now felt she must obey her own voice the voice of her outraged pride, perhaps even of Brian Boru himself. "Good-by. I'll take some things in a handbag and send for my box in the morning." Mrs. Maper's hand pointed to the ceiling. "And is that the way you treat a lady you're no lady, I tell you that. I demand a month's notice or I shall summons you."
No native ruler of the calibre of a Brian Boru could ever again hope to unite all Ireland under him, since long before he arrived at that point his enemies would have called in the aid of the new colonists, who would have fallen upon and annihilated him, though after doing so they would have been as little able to govern the country for themselves as before.
He was fond of his country, his name, and his countrymen: he was fully convinced of his folly in buying race-horses, and in allowing himself to be dragged on the turf: he would sell Brien Boru, and the other two Irish chieftains, for what they would fetch, and show Fanny and her guardian that he was in earnest in his intention of reforming.
Even four hundred years later the name of a really great prince and warrior like Brian Boru, or Boruma, awakens no particular sense of reality, nay as often as not is met by a smile of incredulity. The existence of St. Columba no one, however, has been found rash enough to dispute!
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