The Last Leprechaun: A Blarney Tale

By Commander Groove

Year 1014 on the Isle of Ireland pits the Celts against the Vikings in the Battle of Clontarf outside the fort city of Dublin. Endrick, the accountant to the royal Celtic monarchy, is blackmailed by his outcast family clan of gypsy lepers known as "The Chaun" into an attempt to seize the treasure horde obtained through the spoils of victory at the battle. Endrick is torn between his loyalty to the Celtic high king Boru and his pregnant wife Erin he so dearly loves who is being held hostage under threat of demise by his own conniving gypsy clan.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 17, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483563558

Book preview

ISBN: 978-1-4835635-5-8

Contents

The Last Leprechaun: A Blarney Tale

Mermaid’s Cave,

The Dark Depth’s of Dunluce Castle

Where the wild tempests sweep,

Over the rolling deep,

Stands on a rocky steep, That castle wondrous.

When the shrill North winds blow,

Down in the cave below,

Roll the waves to and fro,

Foaming and thunderous.

-Sir John Ross

Last Lord Chancellor of Ireland, 1836

Etching from ‘Once a Week,’ by

Eneas Sweetland Dallas, 1860

The Emerald Isle of Ireland languished in the cradle of war. The peoples of prominence amongst the island’s populace were the Celts and the Vikings.

In the year 1014 AD, the two had become sworn enemies vying for superior reign of the Irish terrain that both had grown to cherish.

April twenty-two, a Thursday, found Celtic High King Brian Boru camped outside the walls of the Viking-occupied fort city of Dublin with his army of seven thousand men.

The Celts felt eager to quash the Norsemen whom they considered invaders of their sacred land. Inside Dublin, King Silkenbeard held fast with a thousand Viking sentries armed and ready to defend.

Meanwhile, King Silkenbeard’s top commander, Lord Brodir of Man, set in motion a ruse by casting off the main Viking force in his flotilla of twenty longboats into the Irish Sea; he aimed to fool the Celts into thinking that the Vikings had left the city to fall.

During the midnight hour at sea, the Vikings navigated their longboats back to the west for an amphibious landing just north of the coveted fort city. This formidable force, totaling six thousand, six hundred restless warriors, came ashore still under cover of darkness, with the intention of surprising its Celtic opposition at daybreak.

At Clontarf, the Meadow of the Bull, the two armies faced each other as mist swirled from the meadow across the field of battle, eventually dissipating into a clearing blue sky. Famous knights from both armies taunted each other into one-on-one combat, to the jeering and cheers of the many. Each personal challenge ended in a single death, and thus a single triumph, until the horns sounded and the inevitable fray commenced en masse. The armies clashed in a mighty fury of steel on steel, flesh on flesh, and steel on flesh. Blood spurted and spilled, bone crushed and snapped, and cries of pain and conquest alike echoed through the hills.

Due to better armament, the Vikings at first had the battle sway their way. On counterattack the Celts proved vicious, pushing the Vikings to near full retreat by afternoon. Lord Brodir of Man broke through the disorder and clanked heads with Wolf the Quarrelsome, foster son of Celtic High King Boru. The two, atop their warhorses, Wolf the Quarrelsome brandishing a sword and Brodir wielding a battle-axe, galloped bravely towards each other to strike their weapons. Sparks emitted from that crash and clamor of blades. Wolf the Quarrelsome rammed home a thrust that found Brodir’s shoulder above the heart, knocking him off his mount to the ground. Viking Lord Brodir, saved from certain doom by heavy chainmail armor, managed to escape on foot through the chaos into a nearby forest with a protective escort of troops.

Sentries manning a western rampart of the fort city noticed smoke billowing about on the horizon. A burning monastery beside the Clondalkin round tower, under siege by mutinous Viking rogues, wallowed in peril. A bunch of holy men, there to gain firsthand knowledge of how to construct their own round tower, fled the rampage. These missionary monks from Timahoe held in their possession a long sought-after Book of Revelation, passed down over five centuries. It had been penned by the greatest of all saints of old: the Great Saint Patrick of Ireland.

By dusk, the Celts had won the day, though as the good High King Brian Boru would say to his surviving soldiers, Nobody wins in war. Four thousand Celtic souls perished on that battlefield at Clontarf, along with six thousand casualties amongst the Vikings and East Irish. Celtic treasure, plundered by occupying Vikings throughout decades prior, was recaptured as Dublin succumbed to ransack by the victors.

Late in the night after the long day’s engagement, lifeless bodies were either buried or burned to ash, according to the custom of each individual clan. At the forest’s edge, High King Brian Boru relaxed comfortably inside his tent, elated to be paging through the monks’ Book of Revelation. The sacred book told of a long lost land that lay beneath the Emerald Isle…a place of purity and light, where only good flourished and evil could not exist - a heaven on Earth - a land o’plenty called Cockaigne. High King Brian closed the sacred book, hailing Cockaigne! then began toying with a few loose pieces of gold. There was a scribe attached to the king’s court known as Endrick, whom the king cared for and relied upon greatly. Endrick labored by the king’s side, dutifully archiving all which the king had rescued. Endrick’s next job was to ensure that the precious cache got delivered unharmed to Shenandoah Castle.

With a mindful grunt, the eighty-year-old king flicked a gold coin at Endrick who quickly scribbled its worth on a large piece of parchment. Endrick stood, walked to the tent exit and flicked the coin onto a departing wagon filled to the brim with treasure - the largest treasure the Emerald Isle had ever amassed in one place. But the coin sprang off the heap of booty and fell to the ground, where it rolled to rest by a patch of thick brush. A hand drew out from the shrubbery, grasped the stray coin then rapidly disappeared back into the undergrowth.

A man dressed in a torn and tattered burlap tunic gradually crawled out from the backside of the bushy haven. He stumbled down an embankment, gathered himself, then looked back to see no one in pursuit. The man, Endrick’s conniving cousin Eoin, scurried into the dark forest.

Eoin continued at a turbulent pace for over an hour’s time. When near enough to his destination, he slowed to a nervous walk. The hoot of an owl spooked him into jitters, and he knocked his head hard on the base of a birch tree. Cursing, the scoundrel continued onward, soothing his ache with a gentle rub until abruptly being halted by a man-at-arms.

Who goes there? bade the fearsome fellow.

Fret not, ’tis only I, Eoin from the Clan Chaun, replied the exhausted gypsy.

Fret not, thou sayest, ye ignorant sickly turd. Stay thy distance or thou shalt be run through.

But I bring splendid news for thy Lord Brodir. News of riches beyond imagination…I have seen the Celtic hoard with my very own eyes. Enormous, exquisite, enough to raise a fine army, sir.

Then follow me, but stay thy distance.

So the man-at-arms led coy Eoin to meet with his master, the Viking Lord Brodir, who was now in hiding, though eager for action. Eoin took parley with Lord Brodir. He told of the great Celtic treasure possessed by High King Brian, displayed the coin he had pinched as proof and added that his own cousin Endrick oversaw the well-being of said treasure. Wide-grinned and with a twinkle of hope in his scheming eyes, Lord Brodir approved of the gypsy’s plan to seize the fabulous fortune.

By noon the next day, the treasure-laden wagon arrived safely