River of Ireland

By T. Mullen

River of Ireland tells of raucous and romantic episodes that shaped the character of these island people during the past five millennia. Fiction and fact are woven together in a series of interconnected stories set along the Shannon River that include Viking raids, the triumph of King Brian Boru, a Norman siege, a blind harper’s romance, and the pursuit of a Spanish Armada captain over a wild landcape. Each story points to a mysterious location and a pivotal event that transformed the future of this island.

• Language: English
• Publisher: T. Mullen
• Release date: Apr 4, 2013
• ISBN: 9780984956555

T. Mullen

T. Mullen was born in sunny St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and then moved to the suburbs north of Chicago, where he lived until he was seven. His family then moved to Ireland, which became home base for the next eighteen years. He studied architectural and civil engineering as well as business administration and spent fifteen years working outside the U.S. as a consultant regarding water resource and environmental projects in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. Spending half his life in the U.S. and half outside influenced the topics Mullen writes about - including travel, history, and cultural clashes. He has written several magazine articles related to environmental issues and has also written a few books, including Wine and Work - People Loving Life, as well as Rivers of Change - Trailing the Waterways of Lewis and Clark. For more about T.Mullen and his books, check out www.RoundwoodPress.com.

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River of Ireland

by

T. Mullen

Copyright 2012 by T. Mullen. All rights reserved. No part of this book, including cover photographs, logo and maps, may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means (electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author. No liability is assumed with respect to the use of the information contained within. Although every precaution has been taken, the author assumes no liability for errors or omissions. Neither is any liability assumed for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.

This book is a work of fiction, and except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

ISBN: 978-0-9849565-5-5

www.roundwoodpress.com

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Table of Contents

Prologue

Hunter

Summer

Saint

Monastery

Warrior

Armada

Castle

Harper

Famine

Callows

Union

Epilogue

Notes on Fact versus Fiction

Acknowledgements

Bibliography

Thanks for Reading

Prologue

Five Millennia Before Present

Source of the Shannon River

The elder crouched before thrashing flames. He closed both eyes and summoned his strongest thoughts. He was clad in ragged furs. Shivering, he recalled the difficulties during the bitter winter of feeding his family on meager supplies. He bared his teeth when he remembered how a tyrannical chief had sent men to raid his home and steal the few goats and chickens belonging to his family, depriving them of food.

Filled neither with enmity or hatred, he now prayed silently, summoning universal powers to aid his kin. He spoke aloud to forces that guided stars and sunlight, forces that hammered out the destiny of mortals on the moist isle where he lived. Wrinkled and cold, the elder made a pact.

"Let our family survive winter so that our children can grow and multiply. In return, they will act as emissaries to the future of this island, protectors of its strength, guardians of its security, brokers of justice for the people, providers of food when there is hunger, wisdom where there is intolerance, and justice to thieves. Aid my family in this moment of need and in return I swear our bloodline will help forge the leadership that brings lasting unity to this land, however far away that time may be.

The clear eyed elder opened both eyes and stood. He looked in his hand. It held moist nuts and half-crushed berries gathered from trees and bushes beside the water pool. He had a choice. He could use this food to help feed his starving children, or offer it up to greater powers. The elder cringed, and then tossed the provender into the pool, thanking the spirits of the land in advance for protecting his family. He dropped his shoulders and exhaled a rugged sigh.

Then, for a moment – just a moment – he thought he saw a flash of bright light sparkle within the pool before it vanished. Uncertain, yet somehow confident, he exhaled, and then paced toward his hut.

Present Day

The salmon darted in quick turns around the pool. Sunlight filtered from beyond the Cuilcagh Mountains, illuminating its view. In tea-brown water the salmon observed the flash and glint of objects below, each hidden from sight of those who paced near the water’s edge. The swaying leaves of low branches threw shadows across ripples of water. The salmon then turned and swam away from the comfortable confines of the pool, and entered the thin flowing water of where the Shannon River began.

Hunter

June 18, 3200 BC

Northwest shore of the lake now known as Lough Derg

The hunter and his assistant traveled for more than half a day. They carried bows made from yew and strung with sinew. They had walked from the western shore of the great lake, one day to be known as Lough Derg, and headed toward the western coast of the island that would eventually be named Ireland. They now paced over a bracken covered incline, navigating across gentle glens on slopes that future families would call the Slieve Aughty Mountains. The forested terrain was interspersed with bald patches of limestone uplands.

They ignored large grasshoppers, emperor moths and dragonflies as they skirted along light colored sands and fist shaped rocks on the south shore of Lough Rea. They aimed in the general direction of sunset, toward the great cove of the mighty water – features that one day would be named Galway Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. In years past, other men from their settlement had made this same trek to where green waves rolled and birds – purple sandpipers, red shanks and curlews – roughened the air with their raw shrieks. These other travelers had come to fish for wrasse or thornback rays or to explore the jagged coastline.

The two men knew this voyage would test their skills at tracking and trapping. More importantly, it would answer the question of whether the supplications they had offered to the spirits of landscape could deliver the fortune they requested. The two men sought not only meat, but magic.

A westerly wind rustled the late afternoon air. The older of the two hunters, named Uta, stooped to secure a leather ankle strap holding a sandal in place. He was tall with short brown hair and a trimmed golden beard. His presence radiated not only confidence but power to his younger accomplice, named Mwira. Not yet twenty years old, Mwira stood short with long black hair that billowed over his wide shoulders. He hoped one day to emulate the character, skill and patience of Uta, his tutor.

Uta took his spear from where it rested against a granite boulder. Seeing this action, Mwira also bent and retrieved his spear from the earth. As he did he once again recalled the alluring young woman of their settlement. Had she not looked at him with soft eyes when he departed for this hunt? Perhaps not soft, he mused. For in her gaze he had noticed intensity, even passion.

The hunters plodded into a thick birch wood. They knew how to navigate through the forest with ease, having lived below tree cover for much of their lives. At this time much of the island of Ireland was covered by timber – oak, pine, elm, whitethorn, holly, and cherry. The men’s own community thrived within a clearing in hazel and alder woodland on the wet shoreline soils of the great lake. Whenever their people wanted to see how the surrounding countryside swelled around them in gentle, forested curves, they hiked to high rock outcrops or hilltops.

The men smelt salt air waft in from the coast. They soon reached a large clearing devoid of trees. Uta the hunter stopped on the mucky game trail that led toward the ocean. He inspected footprints. These included a heel, sole and pad, as well as a small hole above each toe – identifying claws.

Here, he told Mwira. We will dig in the morning.

They moved back into the woods to sleep.

The men woke before dawn in cool air. They pulled skirts made from animal skins and spun wool cloaks tight to their lean, muscled bodies.

Uta was in his mid twenties. He rubbed both hands together. He had spent a week mentally preparing for this journey, organizing his thoughts on the techniques and timing they needed to accomplish their goal. Now, he considered the spiritual significance of their quest and its relevance to his community. If they failed, there would be no shame, no overt displays of disappointment. But success would cause their families and neighbors to rejoice, and deliver prosperity during the coming year. Tomorrow, Uta reminded himself, was the day to win a prize, a day for magic.

The pair returned to the tracks. They began clearing the area without speaking. Uta lay down his wood-shafted axe made from polished, speckled stone from Rathlin Island. Mwira used his antler pick to clear vegetation. The soil was moist and soft, making the work dirty but not difficult. Exercise warmed the men’s bodies. When the sun crept upward they peeled off their cloaks. Once the area was cleared, Uta dug downward.

Mwira, meanwhile, paced to the sturdy base of a sizable elm tree. From the duff of fallen leaves he pulled away a tangle of branches that had fallen during a recent windstorm. He retrieved his axe and cleared the branches off several poles, each of them greater in diameter than his clenched fist and as tall as his chest. He shaved bark off each shaft, then sharpened points at both ends. After the pit was excavated he would drive one spiked end of each shaft into the soil, leaving the other deadly end aimed upward.

Their prey was a brown bear, a lumbering predator that had roamed Ireland for millennia. Though not completely carnivorous, it devoured meat when given a chance. Like the hyenas that roamed through the land at this time, the numbers of these scavenging bears was growing scarcer each year. Even small communities prized successfully hunting one for the valuable flesh, meat and skin they provided.

Uta and Mwira’s settlement had ample livestock to feed all the members. Although the bear would provide a generous supply of meat, the time needed to hunt, kill and carry the mammal to the community made this journey largely symbolic: killing a bear was regarded as a propitious event, one that ensured good fortune for hunters during the coming year.

The men switched positions. Uta cut and fashioned additional sharpened stakes while Mwira began to dig.

At noon they rested. The men sat on a log. Uta opened a leather satchel and pulled out roasted chestnuts, crab apples and strips of dried goat meat. Both men ate, rested, and talked before resuming their chore.

An hour later Mwira gave a startled call. Uta paced to the pit. He saw that his assistant had found an antler and was digging around it. Uta stepped closer. His mouth opened, his eyes widened, and he squatted at the edge of the pit, incredulous. Both men stared. The antler was unlike either of them had ever seen before – it was abnormally wide and long enough to defy belief. Intrigued, Uta lowered himself into the pit. In another hour the two men had dug down to a depth equal to the height of one and a half men. They dug further to uncover the full rack of antlers. The men then clambered out, using a crude and improvised notched log as a ladder. They hauled out the broken antlers and laid the two muck coated segments on the forest floor. They stood back, awed that such a gigantic creature had ever roamed the earth.

The span of the antlers was twice the length of a human adult.

With his right hand, Mwira swiped the log, brushing off wood lice and ants. He sat again as a mistle thrush flew past. Uta joined him. The men spoke. Each was filled with reverence and dread, shocked that such a creature had once lived. Uta paced the length of the antlers twice, then three times. He stroked his beard and stretched his arms and tried to imagine the height and breadth and weight of the mammal that had once hauled these antlers across coastal plains.

Neither man knew that the Giant Irish deer, though still alive in portions of Siberia at that time, became extinct in Ireland more than two thousand years before humans first arrived by boats on this island’s shores. Humans had seen this colossal deer on the European mainland long before, and were impressed enough to draw paintings of it on the cave walls in Cougnac and Chauvier in France. The creature that carried these antlers measured three yards in height from ground to antler tip, and weighed a thousand pounds.

Eight thousand years before these men lived, sheets of hard ice had retreated from Ireland, molding the topography of the island by carving deep valleys where future rivers would run. Once the ice vanished, grasses, docks and thickets of juniper coated the land. During this era the giant deer had prowled the countryside, traipsing across sage and dwarf willows in splendid majesty, the males and females living in separate herds and congregating only for the autumn rut. Trees at that time grew only in scattered clumps rather than in blankets of continuous wood. This deer, a formidable sight to prowling bears, hyenas, arctic foxes and wolves, avoided woodlands and mountains and roamed across plains and grass covered heaths instead, feeding on twigs of wiry shrubs and willows.

Perhaps five and a half thousand years before the time of Uta and Mwira, cold weather struck Ireland again, this time lasting for more than four centuries. It sent icebergs floating off the island’s western coast and turned the climate harsh and intolerable, altering the vegetation which grew, cutting off the deers’ food supply and causing the mammal to vanish. This cold snap was followed by a period of rising temperature when the confluence of warm ocean currents – the North Atlantic Current from the Caribbean and the Shelf Edge Current from France and Portugal – turned coastlines warmer and winters milder. A new age then dawned. A thick blanket of trees began to coat Ireland for the first time in a hundred millennia.

Uta stood. He imagined hunting this magnificent stag in open fields, killing it with one valiant thrust of his spear.

Determined to complete the pit excavation before sleeping, the men continued. They hauled loose soil out using a reed basket tied to a cord made from woven nettle fibers. When the pit was ready, they anchored nine sharp poles at the base. Mwira next laid a criss-cross lattice of birch branches across the pit, then covered this with leaves.

Uta left the site to find and kill a hare. After doing so, he then skinned this small mammal, sliced its flesh open, and lobbed the carcass onto the middle of the branches covering the pit. The bait would lure their prey, which would then fall onto the inner spikes and die within hours.

By the fading light of summer, the men cleaned their workspace. They next walked to their sleeping place as wolf howls resonated through the moist and temperate hills. Before he slept, Mwira gazed up at starlight. He marveled at the magnificent series of events of the past days. He had been selected to help hunt and kill a great bear, had discovered a strange set of antlers, and had felt powerful affection for a woman in his community. This combination of circumstances made him feel almost as special as the moment when, years earlier, he had learned a strange family secret. Recalling this secret made Mwira wonder: would he be given the opportunity to tap into its powers?

The men roused early the next morning. They paced toward the pit, hoping their labors might yield treasure.

A hundred yards from the pit, Uta spied that the leaf cover was disturbed. His heart raced with anticipation. What if a wild pig had fallen in? He approached cautiously, bent to stare inside the pit, then recoiled with excitement. A dead bear the length of a man lay impaled on the poles below, its thick fur colored cream and black. Uta wheeled and faced Mwira, then howled with joy and raised both fists. Together, they had killed the island’s largest, most dangerous mammal on the second to longest day of the year. Uta knew that magic and prayer had bestowed their success. Their community would now be worthy of receiving spiritual favors for a year.

Uta smiled. He instructed Mwira to return to their community and gather assistants to join them to help butcher the carcass and carry the meat home. Mwira set off. Flushed with adrenaline, his journey of some twenty miles would take four hours or less. He would spend the night, then return the next day with the assistants. With almost seventeen hours of daylight the next day – Midsummer Day – the band of men would be able to return home again in time to feast that same night.

Because of the early hour at which the two men woke, Mwira was able to arrive back at their settlement in the morning. He stumbled toward the lapping waves of the large lake next to their settlement and paced to the community center in a clearing. This consisted of three long rectangular huts. Woven branches covered in mud formed the side of each dwelling.

Inside one hut a young woman cleaned the central room used for gathering and cooking. A burning wood fire inside pushed smoke through the roof opening. Hearing a man’s voice call, she stepped outside onto a crude pathway.

Three dozen community members lived in these huts arranged before a common pasture. Cows, pigs, goats and sheep roamed inside a timber enclosure. The community knew how to work the land, hacking mattocks fitted with blades of polished stone to crack the soil and sow grain. They cut crops with scythes made from branches and embedded with sharpened porcellanite. The leaders had chosen this site based not only on its proximity to the lake, but on the abundance of elm trees that indicated there was fertile soil. Because these farmers did not know how to boost field productivity by using manure, the community would stay in one location for a few years before the soil was exhausted and they were forced to move onward.

Though skilled with using stone tools and tending domesticated animals, these agriculturalists were ignorant about fashioning metal – bronze or iron – as tools or weapons. Instead they used stone and wood for their basic construction needs, and fashioned needles and awls from bone. They ground grain by pushing rocks against stone blocks, and made simple clay pots shaped like the woven bags they replaced.

The woman who stepped outside the hut was named Ilta. She had long black hair and looked up to see Mwira plod back into the settlement. Knowing how far he had traveled, she dashed into her own hut, then ran outside again carrying a bowl filled with the first blackberries of the season, as well as hazelnuts, a crab-apple and a haunch of smoked pig meat. She called aloud, signaling other women tending livestock in a nearby penned enclosure to fetch their leader. These women followed her instruction.

Ilta was in her late teens. She had cloud white skin and smoky brown eyes and wore a periwinkle shell necklace, visible beneath her mantle that was cut low and fastened with a bone pin at the chest. She thrust the bowl of food toward Mwira, then watched him devour the haunch and gulp the fruit and nuts.

She knelt beside him.

Did you have success? Ilta asked.

Mwira held up his hand and smiled, but said nothing. She understood: he first had to inform their leader, Dugo.

Within minutes the community leader Dugo approached, stepping gingerly over loose stones that formed a trail. The gray haired elder wore a bearskin hat. His eyes were clear and intelligent and his gaze was deliberate. He had lived more than a decade past the age of thirty years, far beyond the age at which most males died from disease or from a hard life of intense physical labor. He gazed at Mwira, who raised one fist in triumph.

Success! Mwira said.

During the next hour Dugo sent out word and recruited twelve men who would follow Mwira back to the kill site the next morning. These men abandoned their tasks of fabricating flint javelin points, weaving rope and repairing a hut roof to prepare for their journey. Meanwhile, Ilta attended to Mwira, bringing additional food and a bucket of warm water for him to bathe his scratched and muddy feet.

The community was one of many throughout this lakeside region. Collectively, several of these communities formed a tribe. At specific times each year members of these different communities met and feasted. These gatherings were also a time when men and women met to marry.

While growing up, Mwira presumed that he, like his older brother, would choose a mate from a neighboring community. Now, aching from fast travel and stoked with adrenaline, he looked into the glossy eyes of Ilta who served him, literally mouth and foot. He reconsidered that prospect. He had known her since they were children. With his senses alert and his pride swollen, he now noticed the enticement offered by Ilta. In the past year, she had grown into a full bodied woman – coy, demure, hard working, and attentive.

Mwira woke the next day at the early hours of light. Dugo met him outside of his hut.

The men are assembled, he announced, waving toward a group of young men. Lead them.

Mwira slipped on his sandals and stood. As he readied himself he noticed that Ilta was also awake, eager to see the men off. Mwira brushed his hand lightly against the back of Ilta’s trim torso. Before walking to where the other men assembled by the lakeshore, he