1 00:00:14,880 --> 00:00:17,553 There is an Ireland shrouded in cliché... 2 00:00:19,360 --> 00:00:21,476 ...of heroes and villains, 3 00:00:21,520 --> 00:00:23,351 lost battles and sad songs. 4 00:00:23,400 --> 00:00:26,358 Perched on the margins of Europe, 5 00:00:26,400 --> 00:00:29,915 a claustrophobic island cut off from the world, 6 00:00:29,960 --> 00:00:31,916 its people turned in on themselves, 7 00:00:31,960 --> 00:00:36,033 victims of their own ancient hatreds and of a powerful neighbour. 8 00:00:37,360 --> 00:00:40,432 That is not the Ireland of this journey. 9 00:00:40,480 --> 00:00:46,350 Our earliest writings show that we looked to worlds beyond the green island. 10 00:00:46,400 --> 00:00:50,473 From the patterns of our landscape to the roots of our cities, 11 00:00:50,520 --> 00:00:53,796 we were shaped by waves of migration and invasion. 12 00:00:56,080 --> 00:00:59,595 New languages, faiths, cultures came from outside, 13 00:00:59,640 --> 00:01:01,392 and still do. 14 00:01:03,040 --> 00:01:07,079 I will travel through the physical landscape and the ideas and peoples 15 00:01:07,120 --> 00:01:11,193 of a story striking because it is so unpredictable. 16 00:01:12,720 --> 00:01:18,556 But it is also a journey through other worlds whose history changed Ireland. 17 00:01:18,600 --> 00:01:24,869 Crossing continents - from Europe, to America, to Africa. 18 00:01:26,320 --> 00:01:30,438 The old view, which saw the complex history of Ireland 19 00:01:30,480 --> 00:01:33,472 solely within the boundaries of what happened on this island, 20 00:01:33,520 --> 00:01:35,078 or simply through the prism 21 00:01:35,120 --> 00:01:37,509 of conflict between the British and the Irish, 22 00:01:37,560 --> 00:01:40,472 is mistaken, but above all, self-limiting. 23 00:01:40,520 --> 00:01:44,559 The real story of Ireland is so much bigger. 24 00:01:50,000 --> 00:01:58,000 Ripped By mstoll 25 00:02:10,840 --> 00:02:16,437 I remember walking in this garden of remembrance in 1966 with my father. 26 00:02:16,480 --> 00:02:19,790 It was the 50th anniversary of the Rising of 1916 27 00:02:19,840 --> 00:02:24,356 and a great wave of patriotic sentiment swept the country. 28 00:02:29,960 --> 00:02:36,069 Here, they constructed a memorial, which celebrated revolution, faith... 29 00:02:36,120 --> 00:02:38,759 and an idealised ancient world. 30 00:02:38,800 --> 00:02:43,351 At its centre, this sculpture of the mythical Children of Lir, 31 00:02:43,400 --> 00:02:47,871 condemned by an evil stepmother to wander the oceans as swans 32 00:02:47,920 --> 00:02:50,957 until the coming of Christianity sets them free. 33 00:02:52,160 --> 00:02:55,550 It was intended as a symbol of national resurrection, 34 00:02:55,600 --> 00:02:59,036 but also to say to my generation and those that followed 35 00:02:59,080 --> 00:03:01,548 that we belonged to an unbroken line, 36 00:03:01,600 --> 00:03:04,433 stretching back into a glorious Celtic past. 37 00:03:08,360 --> 00:03:12,638 Our leaders stressed our difference to the departed British. 38 00:03:14,440 --> 00:03:19,036 The idea of an ancient people of one faith was central to our identity. 39 00:03:25,840 --> 00:03:28,877 The real Irish were Gaelic and Catholic. 40 00:03:32,440 --> 00:03:34,590 (DRUMS BEAT) 41 00:03:34,640 --> 00:03:38,599 In the Ireland of the mid-1960s, I knew little of an outside world 42 00:03:38,640 --> 00:03:42,713 or of the Ulster Protestants, with their British identity. 43 00:03:44,320 --> 00:03:46,436 They seemed to me an alien tribe, 44 00:03:46,480 --> 00:03:52,396 marching to what the poet Louis MacNeice called "the voodoo of the Orange drums". 45 00:03:54,240 --> 00:03:57,437 But a decade later, in the mid-1970s, 46 00:03:57,480 --> 00:04:01,029 the story of Ireland I was being taught had changed. 47 00:04:01,080 --> 00:04:05,039 School was no longer an echo chamber of the like-minded. 48 00:04:07,360 --> 00:04:11,239 In the shadow of the northern Troubles, the old certainties would not do. 49 00:04:11,280 --> 00:04:16,195 We were being asked to imagine a more complex set of Irish identities. 50 00:04:17,440 --> 00:04:21,035 The idea of Irishness, of what it meant to be an Irishman, 51 00:04:21,080 --> 00:04:24,038 that you grew up, that I grew up with, was pretty simple, wasn't it? 52 00:04:24,080 --> 00:04:27,277 I suppose it was a standard version. 53 00:04:27,320 --> 00:04:31,233 It was a Republican tradition and you didn't see outside that. 54 00:04:31,280 --> 00:04:35,592 We all marched to that song and to that drum, you know. 55 00:04:35,640 --> 00:04:37,278 It took a long time to change it. 56 00:04:37,320 --> 00:04:41,074 When you came here to teach people like me, did you have a sense, 57 00:04:41,120 --> 00:04:44,351 a feeling that you had to broaden our minds? 58 00:04:44,400 --> 00:04:49,190 I suppose what I was trying to do was to show 59 00:04:49,240 --> 00:04:52,676 that there were other ways of looking at maybe the same thing. 60 00:04:52,720 --> 00:04:58,192 I always remember giving an essay, you know, "Carson, Irish patriot." 61 00:04:58,240 --> 00:05:01,198 FERGAL: The great Unionist Loyalist leader in the North? 62 00:05:01,240 --> 00:05:02,992 I left it at that. 63 00:05:04,280 --> 00:05:08,319 I remember one kid said, "Sir, that doesn't make any sense." 64 00:05:08,360 --> 00:05:11,909 I said, "How do you mean, it doesn't make any sense?" 65 00:05:11,960 --> 00:05:16,795 I said, "Carson wanted the union of Ireland and Britain." 66 00:05:16,840 --> 00:05:20,389 He wanted what, for him, was the best thing for Ireland. 67 00:05:20,440 --> 00:05:25,230 Now, can you say that he's not a patriot because he doesn't agree with you? 68 00:05:25,280 --> 00:05:27,430 I was trying to do that kind of thing. 69 00:05:27,480 --> 00:05:30,438 And telling the true history is key to that, isn't it? 70 00:05:30,480 --> 00:05:33,438 It is. But you see, you come back then, "What's truth?" 71 00:05:40,480 --> 00:05:43,631 Walking the streets of Cork now, 72 00:05:43,680 --> 00:05:46,911 I find the city proud of its links with the world beyond, 73 00:05:46,960 --> 00:05:51,431 and willing to acknowledge a history made of many influences, 74 00:05:51,480 --> 00:05:54,916 in which Irishness embraced different allegiances. 75 00:05:59,680 --> 00:06:02,353 Our story of Ireland begins by going back 76 00:06:02,400 --> 00:06:05,631 through a landscape marked by the change of centuries, 77 00:06:05,680 --> 00:06:09,116 through the scattering of tribes... 78 00:06:09,160 --> 00:06:11,674 the rise and fall of kings... 79 00:06:13,080 --> 00:06:16,197 ...through prosperity and war... 80 00:06:17,680 --> 00:06:19,989 ...and a revolution of faith. 81 00:06:23,960 --> 00:06:27,475 The first waves of settlers are thought to have come from Europe 82 00:06:27,520 --> 00:06:29,636 about 10,000 years ago. 83 00:06:29,680 --> 00:06:32,353 This ancient burial site at Newgrange 84 00:06:32,400 --> 00:06:35,472 is the oldest known building in Ireland. 85 00:06:45,120 --> 00:06:49,238 Across the ancient world, men build monuments to their dead. 86 00:06:49,280 --> 00:06:53,478 But this structure at Newgrange predates some of the most famous. 87 00:06:53,520 --> 00:06:59,516 It was built 500 years before the Pyramids of Giza, 1,000 years before Stonehenge. 88 00:06:59,560 --> 00:07:02,154 But what can it tell us about the lives 89 00:07:02,200 --> 00:07:05,909 of some of the earliest inhabitants of this island? 90 00:07:16,520 --> 00:07:21,674 MAN: People first came to Ireland about 8,000 BC, after the end of the Ice Age. 91 00:07:21,720 --> 00:07:24,553 Farming comes into Ireland about 4,000 BC 92 00:07:24,600 --> 00:07:27,592 and Newgrange is built in the centuries just before 3,000 BC. 93 00:07:27,640 --> 00:07:31,918 FERGAL: Why would they build something like this? What were they trying to say? 94 00:07:31,960 --> 00:07:35,430 PROFESSOR COONEY: I think, for early farmers, the notion of ancestry, 95 00:07:35,480 --> 00:07:38,552 that's really the central focus of this world. 96 00:07:38,600 --> 00:07:42,991 The monuments themselves contain selected bones of the ancestors. 97 00:07:44,160 --> 00:07:46,628 This is the world of the dead, 98 00:07:46,680 --> 00:07:49,672 but it's capable of influencing the lives of the living... 99 00:07:49,720 --> 00:07:52,837 which of course is very much orientated around the farming cycle, 100 00:07:52,880 --> 00:07:54,632 the importance of the seasons. 101 00:07:54,680 --> 00:07:57,148 So, of course, you want to align your monuments 102 00:07:57,200 --> 00:07:58,872 to the critical points of the year. 103 00:07:58,920 --> 00:08:01,593 In the case of Newgrange, on sunrise at the winter solstice. 104 00:08:03,000 --> 00:08:06,151 Newgrange is part of a sort of international Atlantic phenomenon 105 00:08:06,200 --> 00:08:11,718 of passage tomb building which takes us from Spain to southern Scandinavia. 106 00:08:13,040 --> 00:08:18,990 FERGAL: So they were conscious of being part of a wider human race, 107 00:08:19,040 --> 00:08:22,396 - not just stuck on this island? - Very much so. Absolutely, and I think 108 00:08:22,440 --> 00:08:26,718 these early farmers building this monument would have realised 109 00:08:26,760 --> 00:08:29,274 and would probably have had stories about places that were far away, 110 00:08:29,320 --> 00:08:31,390 how things worked in other areas. 111 00:08:33,600 --> 00:08:36,239 Neither archaeology or genetics can tell us 112 00:08:36,280 --> 00:08:40,239 the names of any of the tribes who settled in this early Ireland. 113 00:08:51,160 --> 00:08:54,596 But in the beautiful artefacts of the Bronze Age, 114 00:08:54,640 --> 00:08:58,952 we can see a culture shared with groups in Britain and Europe, 115 00:08:59,000 --> 00:09:02,117 whom later historians would call the Celts. 116 00:09:12,200 --> 00:09:14,760 Tiny decorations. 117 00:09:14,800 --> 00:09:19,715 This lovely collar was worn for decorative reasons, one presumes. 118 00:09:19,760 --> 00:09:23,036 What does that tell you about the people who made it 119 00:09:23,080 --> 00:09:24,672 and about the times they lived in? 120 00:09:24,720 --> 00:09:26,199 Beyond being just decorative, 121 00:09:26,240 --> 00:09:32,429 they are actually a way of identifying particular people in society, 122 00:09:32,480 --> 00:09:36,712 because, no more than our own age, um... 123 00:09:36,760 --> 00:09:39,399 you know, I'm not decked out in diamonds, 124 00:09:39,440 --> 00:09:44,719 and I'm hardly likely ever to be, but if I was at that particular level of society, 125 00:09:44,760 --> 00:09:47,638 whether it's a question of wealth or position, 126 00:09:47,680 --> 00:09:49,511 then I would have needed a particular status 127 00:09:49,560 --> 00:09:51,516 in order to be entitled to wear these objects. 128 00:09:51,560 --> 00:09:54,996 Of course, if I was male, I might have been entitled to wear a lunula. 129 00:09:55,040 --> 00:09:57,110 So we know there was a hierarchy by this stage. 130 00:09:57,160 --> 00:09:59,879 Yes, there definitely has to be a hierarchy. 131 00:09:59,920 --> 00:10:04,232 You also have here something which fascinated me when I heard about it 132 00:10:04,280 --> 00:10:06,714 because it comes from so far away, and that's amber. 133 00:10:06,760 --> 00:10:08,830 And you go all the way to the Baltic to find it. 134 00:10:08,880 --> 00:10:13,078 Yes, amber really comes into its own in Ireland in the late Bronze Age. 135 00:10:13,120 --> 00:10:18,353 We're really lucky in this country because most of it has been buried in peat bogs 136 00:10:18,400 --> 00:10:21,073 and as a result it's extremely well-preserved. 137 00:10:21,120 --> 00:10:22,917 - We've got some here. - Yes. 138 00:10:22,960 --> 00:10:25,554 - This is part of a necklace... - How did it get here 139 00:10:25,600 --> 00:10:28,592 from the Baltic coast, from Poland or somewhere like that? 140 00:10:28,640 --> 00:10:31,871 - You always ask difficult questions! - Well, that's my job! 141 00:10:33,480 --> 00:10:36,074 This does at least tell us somebody comes from Northern Europe 142 00:10:36,120 --> 00:10:39,908 here, with this material in quite considerable amounts. 143 00:10:39,960 --> 00:10:43,316 Well, somebody may not have come, somebody may have been handing it on, 144 00:10:43,360 --> 00:10:46,909 and it may have come through many different hands before it reaches Ireland. 145 00:10:46,960 --> 00:10:52,080 What we do know is, a lot of it came and a lot of it has been preserved, 146 00:10:52,120 --> 00:10:56,557 because of this tendency to deposit these hoards in bogs. 147 00:10:59,400 --> 00:11:03,632 There is a surface landscape which offers immediate clues to our past. 148 00:11:03,680 --> 00:11:08,276 And there is the Irish story concealed beneath our bog land. 149 00:11:08,320 --> 00:11:12,472 One-sixth of Ireland, more than any other European country, 150 00:11:12,520 --> 00:11:17,913 lies under bog, formed after early farmers began to clear the upland forest 151 00:11:17,960 --> 00:11:21,032 2,500 years before Christ. 152 00:11:25,240 --> 00:11:27,993 This is a patch of bog in North Kerry 153 00:11:28,040 --> 00:11:32,477 that's been dug by my family for fuel for the fire for several generations. 154 00:11:34,040 --> 00:11:38,033 The poet Seamus Heaney described the men who worked the bogs 155 00:11:38,080 --> 00:11:42,631 as "our pioneers, driving inwards and downwards. 156 00:11:42,680 --> 00:11:46,150 "Every layer they strip seems camped on before." 157 00:11:48,400 --> 00:11:51,358 And as today's farmers have dug deeper, they have found 158 00:11:51,400 --> 00:11:53,436 evidence of our earliest ancestors, 159 00:11:53,480 --> 00:11:57,189 and links with a wider world. 160 00:12:00,960 --> 00:12:06,034 This is Clonycavan Man, a 2,000-year-old Irishman, 161 00:12:06,080 --> 00:12:09,709 whose body was preserved by the unique chemistry of the bogs. 162 00:12:14,440 --> 00:12:19,594 Do we know anything about this man - who he was, where he came from? 163 00:12:19,640 --> 00:12:24,555 Well, we know he was found in a bog on the West Meath border. We know that 164 00:12:24,600 --> 00:12:28,752 he was killed ritually more than 2,000 years ago. 165 00:12:28,800 --> 00:12:31,439 - How was he killed? - He was struck first in the face, 166 00:12:31,480 --> 00:12:32,959 which broke his nose. 167 00:12:33,000 --> 00:12:35,753 And when he fell down, his head was split with an axe. 168 00:12:35,800 --> 00:12:39,918 His stomach was cut across, he was probably disembowelled as well. 169 00:12:39,960 --> 00:12:41,712 - Why would they have done that? - We think 170 00:12:41,760 --> 00:12:46,197 that this man was probably a king who was killed, 171 00:12:46,240 --> 00:12:49,994 and a number of means of execution were employed 172 00:12:50,040 --> 00:12:55,672 because the goddess to whom he was being sacrificed appears in a number of forms, 173 00:12:55,720 --> 00:12:58,234 so they had to sacrifice in all her forms. 174 00:13:01,640 --> 00:13:04,791 You can see, he had this very unusual hairstyle. 175 00:13:04,840 --> 00:13:06,956 The front of the forehead is shaved 176 00:13:07,000 --> 00:13:09,753 and the rest of the hair was bundled up a bit like a Mohawk. 177 00:13:09,800 --> 00:13:12,997 An that was held in place with a hair gel 178 00:13:13,040 --> 00:13:17,875 which was made using resin imported from the Pyrenees. 179 00:13:19,400 --> 00:13:22,915 The very fact that you find resin from the Mediterranean in his hair 180 00:13:22,960 --> 00:13:25,190 suggests we were trading with that region. 181 00:13:27,280 --> 00:13:29,748 EAMONN KELLY: Ireland's position as an island 182 00:13:29,800 --> 00:13:31,791 doesn't isolate it in ancient times. 183 00:13:31,840 --> 00:13:33,671 It makes it more accessible 184 00:13:33,720 --> 00:13:37,190 because travel by sea is much easier than travel over land. 185 00:13:41,360 --> 00:13:45,114 Clonycavan Man gives us our first sight of an Irishman. 186 00:13:49,920 --> 00:13:54,357 And here in the National Museum, we see some of the finest examples 187 00:13:54,400 --> 00:13:57,153 of what we now consider Celtic art. 188 00:14:00,040 --> 00:14:04,795 But the idea of the Irish as racially Celtic, unlike the Anglo-Saxon English, 189 00:14:04,840 --> 00:14:06,478 belongs to the 19th century. 190 00:14:07,800 --> 00:14:10,109 For nationalists and their English enemies, 191 00:14:10,160 --> 00:14:14,039 much depended on belonging to an imagined finer race. 192 00:14:14,080 --> 00:14:17,709 So, was Clonycavan Man a Celt? 193 00:14:17,760 --> 00:14:22,629 He would have been Celtic in the sense that he would have spoken 194 00:14:22,680 --> 00:14:24,750 a Celtic language, he would have spoken 195 00:14:24,800 --> 00:14:28,475 an early form of the Gaelic language, the Irish language. 196 00:14:28,520 --> 00:14:34,914 And the art is associated with Celtic people on the Continent. 197 00:14:36,240 --> 00:14:42,236 I don't think it means that we are racially descended from a Celtic nation. 198 00:14:42,280 --> 00:14:48,355 Genetically, this man doesn't have a lot to do with the Gauls of France 199 00:14:48,400 --> 00:14:52,279 or the Celts of central Europe as described by the Greeks and the Romans. 200 00:14:52,320 --> 00:14:56,598 So we Irish - let me just nail this one down, because it's critical - 201 00:14:56,640 --> 00:15:01,350 we are no more racially Celtic than our English neighbours, are we? 202 00:15:01,400 --> 00:15:05,029 No, we're no more so, nor less so. 203 00:15:05,080 --> 00:15:07,548 Our cousins on the other island 204 00:15:07,600 --> 00:15:12,993 have certainly as much a claim to their Celtic past, I think, as we have. 205 00:15:17,160 --> 00:15:19,594 The murdered man from the Meath bog 206 00:15:19,640 --> 00:15:24,270 reveals something of how the Irish lived several hundred years before Christ. 207 00:15:28,960 --> 00:15:33,317 Their gods were the gods of nature, whom they appeased with sacrifice. 208 00:15:33,360 --> 00:15:38,514 They had developed a social organisation, with kings at the pinnacle of power. 209 00:15:40,080 --> 00:15:43,709 Their artwork was delicate and distinctive. 210 00:15:45,520 --> 00:15:49,433 And they were already linked by trade to the cultures of the classical world. 211 00:15:49,480 --> 00:15:54,474 Clonycavan Man and his contemporaries left no written record. 212 00:15:54,520 --> 00:15:59,594 Our distant ancestors exist for us as tantalising shadows. 213 00:15:59,640 --> 00:16:04,111 And when the story of that ancient Irish world starts to be written, 214 00:16:04,160 --> 00:16:07,630 the narrative is scripted for us by others. 215 00:16:16,800 --> 00:16:21,555 The writers of their classical world conjured their own stories of Ireland. 216 00:16:23,000 --> 00:16:24,638 In the 9th century BC, 217 00:16:24,680 --> 00:16:28,639 the Greek poet Homer described the whole of northwestern Europe as, 218 00:16:28,680 --> 00:16:30,716 "A land of fog and gloom, 219 00:16:30,760 --> 00:16:34,753 "beyond it is a sea of death where hell begins." 220 00:16:40,000 --> 00:16:41,558 But our first detailed account of Ireland 221 00:16:41,600 --> 00:16:47,550 comes long after Classical Greece has been overtaken by an all-conquering new power. 222 00:17:01,480 --> 00:17:06,349 750 years after Homer, the Romans invaded Britain. 223 00:17:10,280 --> 00:17:11,838 (MEN SHOUTING) 224 00:17:20,120 --> 00:17:24,750 Julius Caesar landed here on the Kent coast in 55 BC. 225 00:17:24,800 --> 00:17:27,439 Now, given his restless ambition, 226 00:17:27,480 --> 00:17:31,189 it would have seemed natural for him to complete the conquest of Britain 227 00:17:31,240 --> 00:17:34,789 and then move on to invade the neighbouring island. 228 00:17:34,840 --> 00:17:39,675 But in Caesar's mind, Ireland was a place of fearful myth. 229 00:17:39,720 --> 00:17:42,598 He called it Hibernia, the land of winter. 230 00:17:43,800 --> 00:17:48,920 A geographer living under Caesar's rule described the Irish as a cannibal race 231 00:17:48,960 --> 00:17:52,669 who deemed it commendable to devour their deceased fathers 232 00:17:52,720 --> 00:17:56,793 and who lived a miserable existence because of the cold. 233 00:17:59,040 --> 00:18:03,158 But Mediterranean traders had long been immune to such dire warnings 234 00:18:03,200 --> 00:18:05,998 and with the knowledge they brought back, 235 00:18:06,040 --> 00:18:09,510 a scholar created a geographical masterpiece. 236 00:18:12,440 --> 00:18:15,910 In this medieval copy of his book, Geographia, 237 00:18:15,960 --> 00:18:18,315 we can see how Ptolemy mapped the world 238 00:18:18,360 --> 00:18:22,148 as it was known to the Romans around 150 AD. 239 00:18:23,400 --> 00:18:26,790 And there, on the westernmost point, is Hibernia. 240 00:18:26,840 --> 00:18:30,799 This is the first map of Ireland and its peoples. 241 00:18:35,520 --> 00:18:37,909 (INAUDIBLE) 242 00:18:37,960 --> 00:18:39,598 We can recognise some of the names. 243 00:18:39,640 --> 00:18:42,518 For example, Eblani is usually interpreted as Dublin. 244 00:18:45,000 --> 00:18:46,558 The river names - the Shannon is there, for example. 245 00:18:46,600 --> 00:18:50,878 The River Lee, I suppose, which all Cork people would like to see mentioned. 246 00:18:50,920 --> 00:18:52,911 There are some names, interestingly enough... 247 00:18:52,960 --> 00:18:54,552 Here we have Brigantes, for example, 248 00:18:54,600 --> 00:18:58,798 and the Brigantes over here in West Wales, and they are clearly related. 249 00:18:58,840 --> 00:19:00,432 FERGAL: What does that tell us? 250 00:19:00,480 --> 00:19:03,153 Well, it works two ways. Either it means that there were Brigantes 251 00:19:03,200 --> 00:19:06,636 here in the west of Britain first of all, who then migrated to Ireland. 252 00:19:06,680 --> 00:19:08,159 But it is possible 253 00:19:08,200 --> 00:19:10,953 that they might actually represent population groups 254 00:19:11,000 --> 00:19:14,231 that originated in Ireland and then came to the western province of Britain, 255 00:19:14,280 --> 00:19:15,554 because you do have 256 00:19:15,600 --> 00:19:18,034 quite substantial Irish settlement in western Britain, 257 00:19:18,080 --> 00:19:19,479 in Wales as we know it nowadays. 258 00:19:19,520 --> 00:19:24,116 FERGAL: This notion of the Irish colonising parts of Britain, 259 00:19:24,160 --> 00:19:27,869 it rather turns our historical sense of things on its head, doesn't it? 260 00:19:27,920 --> 00:19:30,070 We always like to see ourselves as the eternally put-upon... 261 00:19:30,120 --> 00:19:32,429 - It could be problematical. ...conquered by the other lot. 262 00:19:32,480 --> 00:19:34,471 - We were doing the same. - In this day and age, 263 00:19:34,520 --> 00:19:38,479 we're insisting that everybody apologise to us, including our nearest neighbours. 264 00:19:38,520 --> 00:19:39,919 But I suppose 265 00:19:39,960 --> 00:19:42,633 if you go back far enough, we invaded them before they invaded us. 266 00:19:42,680 --> 00:19:44,989 So, if there are apologies to be bandied about, 267 00:19:45,040 --> 00:19:47,349 we might take the first step, you know. 268 00:20:00,960 --> 00:20:04,270 It seems the Romans did briefly contemplate an invasion 269 00:20:04,320 --> 00:20:07,630 until trouble in Scotland called the legions away. 270 00:20:08,960 --> 00:20:14,080 And so Ireland was never subordinated to Roman law or government. 271 00:20:17,440 --> 00:20:20,512 But they didn't need to dispatch an army to exert an influence 272 00:20:20,560 --> 00:20:22,118 that extended well beyond trade, 273 00:20:22,160 --> 00:20:24,833 into the realms of society and culture. 274 00:20:30,960 --> 00:20:35,670 This is a small bronze figure of one of the minor Roman deities. 275 00:20:35,720 --> 00:20:38,393 It was found in the River Boyne at Navan. 276 00:20:38,440 --> 00:20:41,432 - So, this is pre-Christian, this? - This is pagan Roman. 277 00:20:41,480 --> 00:20:46,156 It's a bit like if Ireland was on the edge of the European Community, 278 00:20:46,200 --> 00:20:49,033 you would expect that it would be trading with it. 279 00:20:49,080 --> 00:20:50,479 (COWS MOOING) 280 00:20:50,520 --> 00:20:53,751 Ireland had cattle. Cattle would have been shipped over to Britain. 281 00:20:53,800 --> 00:20:58,351 Items like leather. The Roman army consumed vast amounts of leather. 282 00:20:58,400 --> 00:21:00,675 The cattle lords out on the central plains, 283 00:21:00,720 --> 00:21:03,359 they start getting notions of grandeur 284 00:21:03,400 --> 00:21:05,516 and they become important provincial kings 285 00:21:05,560 --> 00:21:06,959 of early medieval Ireland. 286 00:21:07,000 --> 00:21:09,150 You have the establishment of dynasties 287 00:21:09,200 --> 00:21:12,237 that continued in power for hundreds of years afterwards. 288 00:21:12,280 --> 00:21:14,953 But again, they were looking to the Roman world, 289 00:21:15,000 --> 00:21:17,230 to model themselves on the Roman emperors. 290 00:21:18,800 --> 00:21:23,749 By the 4th century, some Irish outposts on the west coast of Britain 291 00:21:23,800 --> 00:21:27,395 had expanded into kingdoms as more settlers came. 292 00:21:27,440 --> 00:21:31,353 "They desire to go eastwards," wrote an early Gaelic poet, 293 00:21:31,400 --> 00:21:34,153 "into the broad long-distant sea." 294 00:21:36,240 --> 00:21:38,470 A medieval scholar would later write that, 295 00:21:38,520 --> 00:21:40,556 "The power of the Irish over the Britons was great." 296 00:21:45,400 --> 00:21:46,799 And there's some evidence 297 00:21:46,840 --> 00:21:50,469 that Irish traders were venturing into the heart of Roman Britain. 298 00:21:52,840 --> 00:21:56,879 Here in 1893, in the middle of the Home Counties, 299 00:21:56,920 --> 00:22:02,756 Victorian archaeologists excavating the Roman town of Silchester 300 00:22:02,800 --> 00:22:05,439 made a fascinating discovery. 301 00:22:05,480 --> 00:22:10,315 It was a 4th-century clue to the existence of a long-vanished Irishman. 302 00:22:15,320 --> 00:22:19,472 This type of inscribed stone is usually found only in Ireland 303 00:22:19,520 --> 00:22:22,637 or the far western fringes of Britain. 304 00:22:22,680 --> 00:22:27,390 These lines represent the oldest form of the Irish language. 305 00:22:31,240 --> 00:22:32,753 Michael, what is this stone? 306 00:22:32,800 --> 00:22:36,475 Well, it's a... it's a small Roman column. 307 00:22:38,160 --> 00:22:41,232 But what's very different about it 308 00:22:41,280 --> 00:22:44,636 is it's got this inscription on it in Ogham, 309 00:22:44,680 --> 00:22:47,433 and this transliterates into a man's name. 310 00:22:47,480 --> 00:22:49,038 Tepicatus. 311 00:22:49,080 --> 00:22:54,359 And here on this line, he's beginning to describe his lineage 312 00:22:54,400 --> 00:22:57,358 - just as you'd find on any Ogham stone. - I mean, I've seen these, 313 00:22:57,400 --> 00:23:01,075 you know, tucked away in graveyards in Ireland or in the middle of fields, 314 00:23:01,120 --> 00:23:02,678 - surrounded by trees. - Yes. 315 00:23:02,720 --> 00:23:04,836 - Here it is, an hour's drive from London. - Yes. 316 00:23:04,880 --> 00:23:08,839 MICHAEL FULFORD: Away, away, away from other finds of such stones. 317 00:23:11,240 --> 00:23:13,435 FERGAL: It's extraordinary to me, 318 00:23:13,480 --> 00:23:16,677 this idea that you have an Irishman who sets out, 319 00:23:16,720 --> 00:23:21,874 settles among people from everywhere, from all corners of the empire. 320 00:23:21,920 --> 00:23:23,558 It truly was a multicultural, 321 00:23:23,600 --> 00:23:27,036 - multilingual world that he lived in. - Yes. Yes. 322 00:23:27,080 --> 00:23:31,153 And it's not just the one person, but it's a group, it's a family, 323 00:23:31,200 --> 00:23:33,316 and it's other people supporting a community. 324 00:23:33,360 --> 00:23:37,592 Now, it may be he was a big figure, he was a local king. I mean, who knows? 325 00:23:37,640 --> 00:23:40,552 Because we have another Celtic man 326 00:23:40,600 --> 00:23:43,831 from another end of Roman town story up in Wroxeter, 327 00:23:43,880 --> 00:23:46,075 who did describe himself as a king. 328 00:23:46,120 --> 00:23:49,237 So, you may have had Irishmen who had his domain here 329 00:23:49,280 --> 00:23:53,353 in those sort of end days of the Roman world, in the 5th, 6th century. 330 00:23:58,480 --> 00:24:02,712 FERGAL: The Roman Empire in which Tepicatus lived was already in decline. 331 00:24:02,760 --> 00:24:06,514 But its impact was still profound. 332 00:24:06,560 --> 00:24:09,199 Christianity had become the state religion. 333 00:24:09,240 --> 00:24:13,438 Clerics were dispatched all over Europe to spread the word. 334 00:24:17,480 --> 00:24:21,439 The faith that would come to be seen as a core part of Irish identity 335 00:24:21,480 --> 00:24:25,268 was brought to an island steeped in the worship of pagan gods. 336 00:24:31,560 --> 00:24:36,156 Rome's first Bishop to Ireland was dispatched in AD 431. 337 00:24:36,200 --> 00:24:41,911 He was Palladius, the son of a Roman general, who found, by one account, that, 338 00:24:41,960 --> 00:24:46,795 "The fierce and cruel men did not receive his doctrine readily." 339 00:24:46,840 --> 00:24:49,593 His memory would be obliterated 340 00:24:49,640 --> 00:24:51,835 by events which would create 341 00:24:51,880 --> 00:24:56,317 Ireland's first and most enduring cult of personality. 342 00:24:57,680 --> 00:25:03,391 It is the story of a spiritual revolution born in an age of imperial collapse. 343 00:25:03,440 --> 00:25:05,078 (SHOUTING) 344 00:25:08,400 --> 00:25:13,633 Since the beginning of the 5th century, barbarian attacks on Rome had escalated 345 00:25:13,680 --> 00:25:17,878 and the legions were called from Britain to defend the eternal city. 346 00:25:17,920 --> 00:25:21,356 In the vacuum after the departure of the army, 347 00:25:21,400 --> 00:25:24,676 Irish raids on the British coast expanded. 348 00:25:29,800 --> 00:25:33,793 The expansion was driven by a lust for plunder and by trade, 349 00:25:33,840 --> 00:25:38,152 and one of the most lucrative markets of all was slavery. 350 00:25:44,080 --> 00:25:47,550 From harbours up and down the Irish coastline, 351 00:25:47,600 --> 00:25:51,354 slave raiding boats set out to attack British settlements. 352 00:25:55,000 --> 00:25:57,798 But one of those raids would have consequences 353 00:25:57,840 --> 00:26:02,630 that the rough warriors on board could never have imagined. 354 00:26:02,680 --> 00:26:06,229 For amongst the thousands carried off 355 00:26:06,280 --> 00:26:10,353 was a Welshman who would become the most celebrated Irishman of all. 356 00:26:14,280 --> 00:26:17,556 The St Patrick we commemorate each March 17th 357 00:26:17,600 --> 00:26:18,828 escaped from Ireland, 358 00:26:18,880 --> 00:26:23,510 but returned after a vision in which the pagan Irish called him back 359 00:26:23,560 --> 00:26:25,949 to spread the Christian faith. 360 00:26:36,080 --> 00:26:40,153 But much of what was taken to be the truth of his life was invented by others, 361 00:26:40,200 --> 00:26:44,478 like the 18th-century clergyman who claimed the shamrock was used by Patrick 362 00:26:44,520 --> 00:26:47,478 to explain the Holy Trinity. 363 00:26:49,440 --> 00:26:53,399 Patrick hovers between the pagan past and the Christian future. 364 00:26:53,440 --> 00:26:57,672 He is the man who vanquishes troublesome kings with magic spells, 365 00:26:57,720 --> 00:27:01,315 banishes the snakes from the face of Ireland. 366 00:27:02,760 --> 00:27:07,231 But what do we know of the real Patrick, beyond myth and symbol? 367 00:27:17,120 --> 00:27:21,079 What is his practical impact on Christianity's development here? 368 00:27:21,120 --> 00:27:24,954 DÁIBHI Ó CRÓIN: He himself says that he went where no man went before. 369 00:27:25,000 --> 00:27:27,639 It's a famous expression that survives down to the present day, 370 00:27:27,680 --> 00:27:31,468 and he clearly did go where no other Christian missionary had gone before, 371 00:27:31,520 --> 00:27:34,830 and that's important, because in the history of the Western Christian Church, 372 00:27:34,880 --> 00:27:36,279 that wasn't the practice. 373 00:27:36,320 --> 00:27:40,393 People, generally speaking, didn't head out into the brave blue yonder 374 00:27:40,440 --> 00:27:42,476 cos it was too dangerous a thing to do. 375 00:27:42,520 --> 00:27:45,080 And you certainly get the impression from his own writings 376 00:27:45,120 --> 00:27:46,519 that he was able to get on with the Irish 377 00:27:46,560 --> 00:27:50,439 to a degree which wasn't possible, say, for continental missionaries. 378 00:27:52,480 --> 00:27:55,950 Patrick was not the druid-destroying figure of myth. 379 00:27:56,000 --> 00:27:57,672 He left two documents, 380 00:27:57,720 --> 00:28:02,669 the most important, his confession, notable for its humility. 381 00:28:02,720 --> 00:28:07,840 "I am a sinner,"he apologised, "the least among all Christians." 382 00:28:07,880 --> 00:28:11,873 It was these writings that would provide the later Church 383 00:28:11,920 --> 00:28:14,275 with a vital unifying symbol. 384 00:28:14,320 --> 00:28:16,390 TOM Ó LOUGHLIN: At the end of the 7th century, 385 00:28:16,440 --> 00:28:21,355 the Church has an interest in a far more stable society, 386 00:28:21,400 --> 00:28:24,995 the idea of a single island, and therefore a single people, 387 00:28:25,040 --> 00:28:28,112 and therefore a single nation, and therefore a single faith. 388 00:28:28,160 --> 00:28:32,073 Every other Church could look back to the great converting saint. 389 00:28:32,120 --> 00:28:34,236 "Gosh, we need to be as good as that." 390 00:28:34,280 --> 00:28:38,831 And it looked back to its origins and it had no documents, with one exception, 391 00:28:38,880 --> 00:28:41,599 and that was Patrick's apology, 392 00:28:41,640 --> 00:28:43,870 so that had to be carefully edited 393 00:28:43,920 --> 00:28:48,471 and that becomes the myth of the great patron saint. 394 00:28:53,360 --> 00:28:56,670 Patrick died around 460 AD. 395 00:28:57,800 --> 00:28:59,677 But there were other missionaries 396 00:28:59,720 --> 00:29:04,350 who blended Gaelic traditions with the Christian faith. 397 00:29:06,920 --> 00:29:08,717 Monasteries were founded. 398 00:29:08,760 --> 00:29:14,073 As a later Gaelic poem put it, "Heathendom has gone down. 399 00:29:14,120 --> 00:29:17,192 "God the Father's kingdom fills heaven, earth and air." 400 00:29:20,840 --> 00:29:24,799 But Ireland was not luxuriating in a Celtic idyll. 401 00:29:24,840 --> 00:29:27,308 The early missionaries moved through kingdoms 402 00:29:27,360 --> 00:29:29,157 frequently at war with each other. 403 00:29:31,520 --> 00:29:35,957 Tell me what happens when the monks arrive. 404 00:29:36,000 --> 00:29:39,276 DÁIBHI Ó CRÓIN: They would have first of all made their way to the local king, 405 00:29:39,320 --> 00:29:40,799 the local lord or something like that, 406 00:29:40,840 --> 00:29:43,638 because you couldn't just arrive off the next available flight and announce, 407 00:29:43,680 --> 00:29:46,558 "I am your new local Christian mission." You'd end up dead. 408 00:29:46,600 --> 00:29:49,558 So, you'd have to get some kind of physical protection. 409 00:29:49,600 --> 00:29:51,830 Once you had the king's protection, 410 00:29:51,880 --> 00:29:53,552 on that basis go around, spread the message. 411 00:29:53,600 --> 00:29:57,593 Certainly with the passage of time, monasticism is the growing trend, 412 00:29:57,640 --> 00:30:01,872 if you like, and it's a cool thing to have a monastery on your land, 413 00:30:01,920 --> 00:30:04,878 it's cool to have a member of your family a member of a monastic community. 414 00:30:04,920 --> 00:30:07,309 If you can have a brother, a sister who's actually a saint, 415 00:30:07,360 --> 00:30:09,316 somebody who's so high in the hierarchy, 416 00:30:09,360 --> 00:30:12,557 then obviously that adds a certain prestige as well. 417 00:30:15,000 --> 00:30:19,357 As the influence of Patrick and his successors expanded, 418 00:30:19,400 --> 00:30:22,597 the monasteries would emerge as the focal points of intellectual and artistic life. 419 00:30:29,280 --> 00:30:32,955 Patrick was born a child of the Roman Imperium. 420 00:30:33,000 --> 00:30:35,309 But by the time of his death in the 5th century, 421 00:30:35,360 --> 00:30:37,271 that empire had disintegrated, 422 00:30:37,320 --> 00:30:41,711 and across Europe there was a catastrophic decline in learning. 423 00:30:41,760 --> 00:30:45,116 In the 6th century, the scholar Gregory of Tours wrote that, 424 00:30:45,160 --> 00:30:48,391 "In the cities of Gaul there could be found no scholar 425 00:30:48,440 --> 00:30:50,317 "trained in ordered composition, 426 00:30:50,360 --> 00:30:53,158 "who could present a picture in prose or verse, 427 00:30:53,200 --> 00:30:56,795 "of the things that have befallen." 428 00:30:56,840 --> 00:30:59,149 Everywhere except Ireland. 429 00:30:59,200 --> 00:31:02,670 There, a cultural revolution was under way. 430 00:31:18,480 --> 00:31:23,600 The Church in Ireland was untouched by the traumas afflicting Europe. 431 00:31:25,920 --> 00:31:29,037 And as the kings of Ireland were converted, 432 00:31:29,080 --> 00:31:31,150 the monks found protectors and patrons, 433 00:31:31,200 --> 00:31:35,159 a culture that blended the native and the Latin flourished. 434 00:31:39,280 --> 00:31:42,477 At the centre of this flowering were the monasteries. 435 00:31:44,360 --> 00:31:46,351 FERGAL: And this is the great settlement of Clonmacnoise. 436 00:31:46,400 --> 00:31:49,995 As you sweep round this turn in the River Shannon, you get the round towers, 437 00:31:50,040 --> 00:31:51,439 the churches and everything, 438 00:31:51,480 --> 00:31:54,870 and you get the first idea that this is a really substantial monastic foundation. 439 00:31:54,920 --> 00:31:56,990 Had we arrived here at the height of its powers, 440 00:31:57,040 --> 00:31:59,076 what would we have seen coming around the bend? 441 00:31:59,120 --> 00:32:00,519 If you believe the sources, 442 00:32:00,560 --> 00:32:02,551 there were several thousand people here living already 443 00:32:02,600 --> 00:32:05,797 in the 6th and 7th centuries, so you can imagine a pretty dense settlement. 444 00:32:05,840 --> 00:32:08,912 There would have been an obvious substantial farming element. 445 00:32:08,960 --> 00:32:12,316 This would have looked like a very prosperous economic unit. 446 00:32:17,680 --> 00:32:19,079 And there would have been markets 447 00:32:19,120 --> 00:32:20,997 and people would have been coming both by land 448 00:32:21,040 --> 00:32:23,315 and here on the sea as well, on the water. 449 00:32:26,640 --> 00:32:30,235 And the whole place would have been pretty much a bustling, buzzing kind of place. 450 00:32:35,880 --> 00:32:37,836 FERGAL: Not just trade, of course, 451 00:32:37,880 --> 00:32:40,599 but the whole business of setting down in text. 452 00:32:42,160 --> 00:32:44,674 DÁIBHI Ó CRÓIN: A place like Clonmacnoise would have had 453 00:32:44,720 --> 00:32:46,870 a thriving school of people who were coming here, 454 00:32:46,920 --> 00:32:48,797 not only from other Irish monasteries, 455 00:32:48,840 --> 00:32:51,912 but we know of people who would have been travelling from either England 456 00:32:51,960 --> 00:32:53,359 or even from continental Europe. 457 00:32:53,400 --> 00:32:54,958 - FERGAL: From that far away? - Oh, yeah. 458 00:32:55,000 --> 00:32:56,991 We had a reputation as scholars all the way back, 459 00:32:57,040 --> 00:32:59,315 and certainly it was the place to be in the 7th century. 460 00:32:59,360 --> 00:33:03,273 If you wanted higher learning, if you wanted advanced knowledge of the Bible 461 00:33:03,320 --> 00:33:07,598 or grammar or something like that, then you came to Ireland. 462 00:33:12,280 --> 00:33:15,989 Perhaps the greatest bequest of the monastic tradition in Ireland 463 00:33:16,040 --> 00:33:17,837 was literary. 464 00:33:17,880 --> 00:33:22,317 The monks transcribed the Bible and set down in writing ancient laws. 465 00:33:25,640 --> 00:33:27,039 But not only in Latin. 466 00:33:27,080 --> 00:33:31,870 They developed a written form of the people's Celtic tongue. 467 00:33:34,480 --> 00:33:39,156 Religious and legal texts were translated into Gaelic by the intellectual elite. 468 00:33:41,560 --> 00:33:45,075 Ireland had the most abundant vernacular literature in Europe. 469 00:33:48,520 --> 00:33:52,832 One of the greatest examples is the Lebor Gabála Érenn, the Book of Invasions, 470 00:33:52,880 --> 00:33:55,189 an imagined history of Ireland. 471 00:33:55,240 --> 00:33:57,595 This extraordinary book 472 00:33:57,640 --> 00:34:00,359 is the first written story of Ireland. 473 00:34:00,400 --> 00:34:04,188 It purports to tell the story of how the Irish came into being. 474 00:34:04,240 --> 00:34:07,118 The tales here come from the 7th century, 475 00:34:07,160 --> 00:34:12,393 and they would have a profound impact on the way the Irish came to see themselves. 476 00:34:12,440 --> 00:34:17,036 What it says is that the Irish are at the centre of the world. 477 00:34:17,080 --> 00:34:20,311 They are not a small, insignificant people. 478 00:34:20,360 --> 00:34:24,831 It was woven together in the 11th century from earlier sources 479 00:34:24,880 --> 00:34:27,314 as a statement of Irish uniqueness. 480 00:34:27,360 --> 00:34:32,354 They didn't want to be seen as peripheral people living at the edge of Europe. 481 00:34:32,400 --> 00:34:35,790 One of the main themes in early Irish history 482 00:34:35,840 --> 00:34:38,479 is the sense that Ireland is central, culturally, 483 00:34:38,520 --> 00:34:40,431 to what happens in the Christian world. 484 00:34:40,480 --> 00:34:44,632 So, what they do is they insert the Irish at various points 485 00:34:44,680 --> 00:34:46,398 into key events in world history. 486 00:34:46,440 --> 00:34:49,830 So, what they're doing is they start off with the creation of the world 487 00:34:49,880 --> 00:34:51,279 in the Book of Genesis, 488 00:34:51,320 --> 00:34:54,949 so it's almost like the Scripture of Ireland, the Old Testament of Ireland. 489 00:34:55,000 --> 00:35:00,711 And then they show the ancestors of the Irish appearing at various key events. 490 00:35:00,760 --> 00:35:04,799 So, when Moses goes on the exodus, an Irish guy sort of pops up 491 00:35:04,840 --> 00:35:07,638 so he can find out what the Ten Commandments are. 492 00:35:07,680 --> 00:35:10,797 They look about the sort of origins of their own language, 493 00:35:10,840 --> 00:35:14,071 and an Irish guy pops up at the Tower of Babel 494 00:35:14,120 --> 00:35:17,590 and he makes Irish from all of the best bits of the languages 495 00:35:17,640 --> 00:35:19,039 when they're divided up. 496 00:35:19,080 --> 00:35:22,914 At a very early point, the Irish begin to write in Irish, 497 00:35:22,960 --> 00:35:25,554 and one of the things that Lebor Gabála does 498 00:35:25,600 --> 00:35:28,990 is it brings in an awful lot of traditional lore. 499 00:35:29,040 --> 00:35:32,396 So you get elements of popular culture and elite culture being brought in together, 500 00:35:32,440 --> 00:35:36,991 along with sort of the learning of the Old Testament or of Christian writers. 501 00:35:37,040 --> 00:35:41,716 What were they trying to do by setting it in such an international context, 502 00:35:41,760 --> 00:35:43,796 this idea that we came from everywhere? 503 00:35:43,840 --> 00:35:45,239 The basic framework which it takes 504 00:35:45,280 --> 00:35:49,353 is that Ireland has been populated by various waves of people over time. 505 00:35:49,400 --> 00:35:51,516 Some of these people are invaders, 506 00:35:51,560 --> 00:35:54,313 some are more refugees than invaders, for example, 507 00:35:54,360 --> 00:35:57,591 and they admit that not everybody who lives on the island 508 00:35:57,640 --> 00:36:01,519 in the early medieval period are descended from one group of people. 509 00:36:01,560 --> 00:36:04,597 So there is an acceptance in the Lebor Gabála 510 00:36:04,640 --> 00:36:07,279 that the Irish are of multiethnic origins. 511 00:36:07,320 --> 00:36:12,519 At what point do we lose that sense of being part of something greater 512 00:36:12,560 --> 00:36:19,636 and take on board this narrow idea that it's us in a misty Celtic past... 513 00:36:19,680 --> 00:36:21,636 - Yeah... ...a people alone? 514 00:36:21,680 --> 00:36:23,398 Certainly from the 18th century. 515 00:36:23,440 --> 00:36:26,432 If you look at the Irish themselves during this period 516 00:36:26,480 --> 00:36:28,038 when they're putting together the Lebor Gabála 517 00:36:28,080 --> 00:36:29,877 and the very elements that go into it, 518 00:36:29,920 --> 00:36:32,753 the one element they don't pick themselves is Celtic. 519 00:36:32,800 --> 00:36:34,313 They know about the existence 520 00:36:34,360 --> 00:36:37,352 of groups called Celts and Gauls from classical writers. 521 00:36:37,400 --> 00:36:39,960 They never identify with them. 522 00:36:40,000 --> 00:36:43,072 In fact, they're far more confident about their identity, you could say, 523 00:36:43,120 --> 00:36:45,475 than maybe modern people are about theirs. 524 00:36:50,120 --> 00:36:54,716 Irish monks would carry their Gospel across the seas. 525 00:36:54,760 --> 00:36:56,432 Men like Brendan the Voyager, 526 00:36:56,480 --> 00:37:00,553 Colum Cille in the Irish kingdom of Dál Riata in Scotland, 527 00:37:00,600 --> 00:37:03,751 or Aidain at Lindisfarne in Northumbria. 528 00:37:07,560 --> 00:37:12,475 "Now the Lord had said, 'Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred 529 00:37:12,520 --> 00:37:17,594 "'and from thy father's house unto a land that I will show thee. "' 530 00:37:23,520 --> 00:37:26,080 The words of Abraham, from the Old Testament, 531 00:37:26,120 --> 00:37:28,793 and they would echo in the minds of Irish monks. 532 00:37:28,840 --> 00:37:34,233 At their heart, a simple concept in the Latin, potior peregrinatio, 533 00:37:34,280 --> 00:37:36,794 a lifelong pilgrimage for Christ. 534 00:37:36,840 --> 00:37:39,513 And it would bring some of those Irish clergy here 535 00:37:39,560 --> 00:37:44,350 to the lands at the heart of the old Roman Empire. 536 00:37:46,640 --> 00:37:49,598 The monks arriving in northern Italy in 613 537 00:37:49,640 --> 00:37:52,359 had already established monasteries in Gaul. 538 00:37:52,400 --> 00:37:55,836 Their zeal persuaded the powerful king of the Lombards 539 00:37:55,880 --> 00:37:59,316 to offer them land at Bobbio, in the Apennines. 540 00:38:00,640 --> 00:38:04,633 These Irish churchmen brought their own version of Christianity. 541 00:38:04,680 --> 00:38:08,639 They were told to avoid earthly temptation and Church power. 542 00:38:08,680 --> 00:38:11,558 "Fear women and bishops," their leader said. 543 00:38:11,600 --> 00:38:16,469 He was austere and querulous and a fierce disciplinarian. 544 00:38:16,520 --> 00:38:19,114 His name was Columbanus. 545 00:38:21,080 --> 00:38:22,479 It meant "dove". 546 00:38:22,520 --> 00:38:27,514 But this reforming Irish monk railed against the abuse of power, 547 00:38:27,560 --> 00:38:32,315 sparing neither clergy nor princes from his censure. 548 00:38:37,160 --> 00:38:40,152 Columbanus even had the temerity to confront the Pope. 549 00:38:40,200 --> 00:38:43,590 It was a complex dispute about the dating of Easter. 550 00:38:43,640 --> 00:38:48,031 To Columbanus, it wasn't simply spiritual pedantics, 551 00:38:48,080 --> 00:38:51,755 he felt he was standing up for something he truly believed in. 552 00:38:51,800 --> 00:38:55,190 And when the Gallic bishops summoned him to account for himself, 553 00:38:55,240 --> 00:38:57,231 he simply refused to go. 554 00:38:57,280 --> 00:38:59,589 He saw them as an elite, 555 00:38:59,640 --> 00:39:02,438 ministering only to the chosen few. 556 00:39:05,400 --> 00:39:08,631 But Columbanus was deeply loyal to the idea 557 00:39:08,680 --> 00:39:11,194 of a Church led by the Pope from Rome. 558 00:39:13,600 --> 00:39:16,319 He was a dissenter, not a revolutionary. 559 00:39:18,520 --> 00:39:20,511 He looked beyond the monastery walls, 560 00:39:20,560 --> 00:39:24,951 imagining a Europe united in faith and culture. 561 00:39:29,080 --> 00:39:32,152 (MAN SPEAKS ITALIAN) 562 00:40:14,600 --> 00:40:16,238 (BELL CHIMES) 563 00:40:20,600 --> 00:40:22,955 In the letters and words of Columbanus, 564 00:40:23,000 --> 00:40:27,949 Europe heard an Irish voice that was learned, sometimes uncompromising, 565 00:40:28,000 --> 00:40:29,513 and always thoughtful. 566 00:40:34,000 --> 00:40:37,993 At Bobbio he established one of the greatest libraries of the medieval world. 567 00:40:43,520 --> 00:40:48,958 Columbanus described himself as a "dissenter whenever necessary". 568 00:40:50,040 --> 00:40:52,838 I can't help thinking of James Joyce writing about 569 00:40:52,880 --> 00:40:56,270 setting out to forge the uncreated conscience of his race. 570 00:40:56,320 --> 00:41:01,553 Columbanus, it seems to me, was doing it centuries before. 571 00:41:04,480 --> 00:41:06,471 By the time he died, here in Bobbio, 572 00:41:06,520 --> 00:41:09,990 Columbanus had established a thriving monastic centre, 573 00:41:10,040 --> 00:41:13,999 and he would look back, too, at Ireland with some satisfaction. 574 00:41:20,960 --> 00:41:23,793 For the monasteries were still producing great works of art. 575 00:41:26,160 --> 00:41:30,711 He might have been less enamoured at the political manoeuvring. 576 00:41:34,080 --> 00:41:37,629 The status of clergy could have much to do with their alliances 577 00:41:37,680 --> 00:41:41,229 and family ties with the local aristocracy. 578 00:41:41,280 --> 00:41:43,919 Indeed, from the earliest times, 579 00:41:43,960 --> 00:41:47,839 monasteries could be the launching pads for earthly ambitions. 580 00:41:50,800 --> 00:41:53,360 The Abbot here at Ardmore in County Waterford 581 00:41:53,400 --> 00:41:55,834 came from a powerful local family. 582 00:41:55,880 --> 00:41:59,668 Declan was said to have been a contemporary of St Patrick. 583 00:41:59,720 --> 00:42:04,236 The story goes that, together, they went to a banquet of local nobility 584 00:42:04,280 --> 00:42:07,238 and, together, chose the new king of the region. 585 00:42:07,280 --> 00:42:09,111 Was this story true? 586 00:42:09,160 --> 00:42:10,957 Well, we've simply no way of knowing. 587 00:42:11,000 --> 00:42:14,037 But it does underline a significant truth - 588 00:42:14,080 --> 00:42:18,392 churchmen were becoming increasingly powerful political players. 589 00:42:18,440 --> 00:42:22,513 And this foreshadows an enduring theme of the Irish story - 590 00:42:22,560 --> 00:42:26,269 that embrace between spiritual and temporal power. 591 00:42:26,320 --> 00:42:29,073 Christ and Caesar together. 592 00:42:29,120 --> 00:42:33,113 FERGAL: So the abbot of the monastery is much more than a spiritual man. 593 00:42:33,160 --> 00:42:35,594 He becomes a major political player. 594 00:42:35,640 --> 00:42:40,919 DONNCHADH Ó CORRÁIN: He controls a vast number of people and enormous resources. 595 00:42:40,960 --> 00:42:43,918 And if you think the Abbot was getting up in the morning 596 00:42:43,960 --> 00:42:46,076 to say a five o'clock Mass, he was not. 597 00:42:46,120 --> 00:42:48,076 He was much more like a Medici prince. 598 00:42:48,120 --> 00:42:52,796 Because the church is rich, the church gets involved in political violence. 599 00:42:52,840 --> 00:42:57,436 There's one famous one in which there was a battle between Cork and Clonfert 600 00:42:57,480 --> 00:43:00,790 in which the annals say there was "an innumerable slaughter" 601 00:43:00,840 --> 00:43:04,310 of the ecclesiastical men and superiors of Cork. 602 00:43:04,360 --> 00:43:06,316 FERGAL: It sounds an extraordinary idea 603 00:43:06,360 --> 00:43:08,749 that you have religious men, spiritual figures, 604 00:43:08,800 --> 00:43:10,472 going to war with each other. 605 00:43:10,520 --> 00:43:14,433 I mean, it doesn't fit the notion we have of this island of saints and scholars. 606 00:43:14,480 --> 00:43:17,552 It doesn't fit the notion, but it is the reality. 607 00:43:17,600 --> 00:43:22,355 The Abbot of Armagh or the Bishop of Clonmacnoise 608 00:43:22,400 --> 00:43:25,597 had a social status equal to that of a king. 609 00:43:25,640 --> 00:43:27,676 (CAT MIAOWS) 610 00:43:27,720 --> 00:43:32,396 FERGAL: But a new power was to loom out of the northern seas. 611 00:43:38,320 --> 00:43:43,394 In 795, monks on an island near Dublin saw a fleet of ships approaching. 612 00:43:43,440 --> 00:43:48,309 The long ships with a dragon's head carved on the bow carried a force of warriors 613 00:43:48,360 --> 00:43:52,114 who would plunder the treasures accumulated by the monastery 614 00:43:52,160 --> 00:43:53,718 over two centuries. 615 00:44:01,040 --> 00:44:04,635 A monk wrote later of the terror of Viking attack. 616 00:44:04,680 --> 00:44:07,990 "There were a hundred hard-steeled iron heads on one neck, 617 00:44:08,040 --> 00:44:12,830 "and a hundred sharp, ready, never-rusting brazen tongues in every head. 618 00:44:12,880 --> 00:44:17,635 "And a hundred garrulous, loud, unceasing voices from every tongue." 619 00:44:23,000 --> 00:44:26,595 The age of the Vikings had arrived. 620 00:44:28,440 --> 00:44:32,991 CLARE DOWNHAM: We're probably standing about three metres under street level, 621 00:44:33,040 --> 00:44:36,396 and this is where people would have been walking in the Viking age. 622 00:44:36,440 --> 00:44:41,116 FERGAL: I mean, there's no whitewashing the incredible terror that they sowed. 623 00:44:41,160 --> 00:44:43,435 From a fairly early stage, 624 00:44:43,480 --> 00:44:45,436 once Vikings are raiding the Irish coast, 625 00:44:45,480 --> 00:44:48,756 they're taking people captive to sell them on as slaves. 626 00:44:48,800 --> 00:44:50,597 So a good early example of that is in 821, 627 00:44:50,640 --> 00:44:53,200 the Vikings raided Howth, just north of Dublin, 628 00:44:53,240 --> 00:44:54,753 and took a great prey of women. 629 00:44:54,800 --> 00:44:57,268 So I think their fate was probably the slave market. 630 00:44:57,320 --> 00:45:01,518 It must have stricken absolute fear into the hearts of people, 631 00:45:01,560 --> 00:45:04,870 the idea of being captured and then sold abroad. 632 00:45:04,920 --> 00:45:08,754 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there are some kind of snippets of Irish poetry 633 00:45:08,800 --> 00:45:11,155 testifying to the fear that people had. 634 00:45:11,200 --> 00:45:15,671 "Lord protect us from these foreigners coming in and taking people away." 635 00:45:15,720 --> 00:45:21,556 There's an early 11th-century tale about an Irish poet 636 00:45:21,600 --> 00:45:25,070 who's said to have been taken captive by Vikings and, and even as a man, 637 00:45:25,120 --> 00:45:28,237 he's been gang-raped by the Vikings on the ship. 638 00:45:28,280 --> 00:45:32,751 There's also a record in 940 of an Irish bishop taken captive 639 00:45:32,800 --> 00:45:35,917 from Dalkey Island, and he's so eager to escape 640 00:45:35,960 --> 00:45:39,191 he tries to swim out from the island and he drowns. 641 00:45:42,360 --> 00:45:46,558 The Vikings offer us the earliest example 642 00:45:46,600 --> 00:45:51,276 of those figures who will dominate the written and spoken stories of Ireland, 643 00:45:51,320 --> 00:45:53,117 the foreign invaders. 644 00:45:55,080 --> 00:45:57,435 But where did the raiders come from? 645 00:45:57,480 --> 00:46:00,836 And what drove them to Irish shores? 646 00:46:15,560 --> 00:46:18,518 The Vikings who would eventually descend on Ireland 647 00:46:18,560 --> 00:46:21,358 had their ancestral roots here in Norway. 648 00:46:21,400 --> 00:46:24,676 From these fjords, they created a maritime empire 649 00:46:24,720 --> 00:46:28,110 that stretched from the shores of America in the West 650 00:46:28,160 --> 00:46:30,720 to central Russia in the East. 651 00:46:34,600 --> 00:46:38,354 The Viking world of the 7th and 8th centuries was in a state of flux. 652 00:46:38,400 --> 00:46:42,075 Warrior clans fought for control of the best land. 653 00:46:44,040 --> 00:46:48,830 Land meant wealth and power. But there was too little to go around. 654 00:46:51,360 --> 00:46:54,750 In an early Norse poem, a mother says to her son, "Get thee a ship 655 00:46:54,800 --> 00:46:58,349 "and go out on the seas and kill men." 656 00:46:58,400 --> 00:47:00,868 They're lines which reflect a society 657 00:47:00,920 --> 00:47:04,754 where a man's worth was defined by his skill with the sword. 658 00:47:07,200 --> 00:47:10,988 What kind of society did these Viking warlords inhabit? 659 00:47:11,040 --> 00:47:14,635 Competition was actually the key element in this society. 660 00:47:14,680 --> 00:47:18,195 Who could travel the furthest, who was the bravest in battle, 661 00:47:18,240 --> 00:47:21,710 who could eat the most, and who drank the most. 662 00:47:21,760 --> 00:47:24,069 FERGAL: What is the principle dynamic 663 00:47:24,120 --> 00:47:27,749 that's driving them out of these fjords towards Ireland? 664 00:47:27,800 --> 00:47:32,590 It was important for the local chieftains to be able to give good gifts 665 00:47:32,640 --> 00:47:36,076 to their followers, their friends, or throw big parties. 666 00:47:36,120 --> 00:47:39,476 And there was not a lot of wealth in Norway. 667 00:47:39,520 --> 00:47:43,069 So I think that one of the main reasons they actually left for Ireland 668 00:47:43,120 --> 00:47:47,079 was just to plunder some Irish monasteries and churches and steal the goods. 669 00:47:47,120 --> 00:47:51,750 FERGAL: The Irish, in popular memory, tend to see the Vikings 670 00:47:51,800 --> 00:47:55,952 as rapists, pillagers and killers. Is that something you'd go along with? 671 00:47:56,000 --> 00:47:59,754 Partly, yes. But you have to look at the Vikings, 672 00:47:59,800 --> 00:48:03,759 that they can actually change... shapes over the night. 673 00:48:03,800 --> 00:48:08,874 One day they're actually killers, the next day they are actually traders. 674 00:48:08,920 --> 00:48:12,879 And on the third day they are cattlemen. On the fourth day they're settlers. 675 00:48:16,040 --> 00:48:18,395 For over 40 years, 676 00:48:18,440 --> 00:48:21,876 the Vikings raided Ireland's coastal villages and monasteries, 677 00:48:21,920 --> 00:48:24,878 carrying off plunder and slaves in their longboats. 678 00:48:29,360 --> 00:48:32,193 They struck suddenly and caught the Irish unawares. 679 00:48:35,200 --> 00:48:39,876 So the Vikings became bolder and began to sail down the rivers of Ireland. 680 00:48:42,160 --> 00:48:44,799 The raiders were to become settlers. 681 00:48:47,200 --> 00:48:49,873 The east coast of Ireland was strategically well placed 682 00:48:49,920 --> 00:48:53,356 for trading with an expanding Viking world. 683 00:49:01,000 --> 00:49:06,393 In the winter of 842, a substantial Viking fleet rounded the headland at Howth 684 00:49:06,440 --> 00:49:09,398 and sailed up the River Liffey. 685 00:49:20,240 --> 00:49:24,199 Here, at the "black pool" - in Irish, Dubh Linn - 686 00:49:24,240 --> 00:49:26,913 the Vikings hauled their longboats ashore. 687 00:49:26,960 --> 00:49:30,077 And just a few yards away from the banks of the River Liffey, 688 00:49:30,120 --> 00:49:33,032 they began to construct the first defensive stockade. 689 00:49:33,080 --> 00:49:37,073 From these small beginnings, Ireland's greatest city would emerge. 690 00:49:48,640 --> 00:49:52,553 Over the next century, Dublin would become a boom town, 691 00:49:52,600 --> 00:49:55,433 with the largest slave market in Europe. 692 00:49:59,360 --> 00:50:02,955 CLARE DOWNHAM: The Vikings had a huge trading network, which spread 693 00:50:03,000 --> 00:50:06,151 all the way down the Russian river systems to the Middle East, 694 00:50:06,200 --> 00:50:08,998 Constantinople, all the way across the North Atlantic, 695 00:50:09,040 --> 00:50:12,191 and Dublin was quite centrally placed within these long-distance routes. 696 00:50:12,240 --> 00:50:15,198 Ten bananas there, one euro. 697 00:50:15,240 --> 00:50:17,993 FERGAL: What kind of things would people have been buying in these markets? 698 00:50:18,040 --> 00:50:20,952 Amber from the Baltic, silk from Byzantium. 699 00:50:21,000 --> 00:50:23,833 Gold, silver, looted goods from Irish monasteries, 700 00:50:23,880 --> 00:50:26,792 all would have been traded through the port of Dublin. 701 00:50:26,840 --> 00:50:29,513 It would have been a very noisy place, bustling, crammed, 702 00:50:29,560 --> 00:50:34,156 houses next to each other, narrow streets. Lots of people milling around, 703 00:50:34,200 --> 00:50:38,671 shopping, exchanging things, gossiping. Kids, pigs, everything. 704 00:50:38,720 --> 00:50:42,156 FERGAL: And you'd probably have seen people from right across Europe in Dublin 705 00:50:42,200 --> 00:50:43,519 at this point. 706 00:50:43,560 --> 00:50:46,791 It would have been a really cosmopolitan place, with traders from all over Europe. 707 00:50:46,840 --> 00:50:49,513 And this is followed by a series of royal intermarriages 708 00:50:49,560 --> 00:50:52,199 and a lot of cultural interchange. 709 00:50:52,240 --> 00:50:55,516 So, by the 10th century, you've got a whole new culture emerging 710 00:50:55,560 --> 00:51:00,953 which is a kind of hybrid of Scandinavian and Irish, 711 00:51:01,000 --> 00:51:03,230 and it's very distinctive. You can see it in art styles 712 00:51:03,280 --> 00:51:06,955 and the culture of these two peoples. 713 00:51:20,720 --> 00:51:24,076 By the 11th century, the Vikings who had settled in Ireland, 714 00:51:24,120 --> 00:51:28,033 the Hiberno-Norse, had been here for over a century and a half. 715 00:51:28,080 --> 00:51:32,756 They'd intermarried, become Christian and formed local alliances. 716 00:51:33,960 --> 00:51:36,076 They'd founded thriving port cities, 717 00:51:36,120 --> 00:51:38,714 like Waterford, Wexford, Cork and Limerick. 718 00:51:40,360 --> 00:51:43,272 They became enmeshed in Irish politics. 719 00:51:45,840 --> 00:51:48,798 They would learn the lesson of all conquerors here - 720 00:51:48,840 --> 00:51:51,274 the longer you stay around, the more likely you are 721 00:51:51,320 --> 00:51:54,118 to become drawn into the quarrels of your neighbours. 722 00:52:01,160 --> 00:52:04,550 This was a country where local Gaelic kings were fighting 723 00:52:04,600 --> 00:52:06,352 for land and supremacy. 724 00:52:11,480 --> 00:52:15,519 They did so as power was being centralised across Europe. 725 00:52:16,960 --> 00:52:21,636 Small kingdoms were eaten up by the leaders of emerging dynasties. 726 00:52:22,840 --> 00:52:27,356 In northern France, Rollo the Viking had founded the Norman empire. 727 00:52:30,560 --> 00:52:35,429 In England, power was consolidating around the house of Wessex. 728 00:52:39,440 --> 00:52:44,912 Such change could hardly have escaped the attention of an ambitious Irish king. 729 00:52:49,320 --> 00:52:52,232 This new leader was a man with the ruthlessness and energy 730 00:52:52,280 --> 00:52:53,679 to humble kingdoms. 731 00:52:53,720 --> 00:52:56,075 He stormed the strongholds of his enemies, 732 00:52:56,120 --> 00:52:59,635 and in four years was able to come here, to the great Rock of Cashel, 733 00:52:59,680 --> 00:53:02,274 and proclaim himself king of all Munster. 734 00:53:02,320 --> 00:53:06,279 He demanded tributes from the defeated - of wine and gold, 735 00:53:06,320 --> 00:53:09,471 and the most precious commodity of the age - cattle. 736 00:53:09,520 --> 00:53:12,034 They called him Brian of the Cattle Tributes. 737 00:53:12,080 --> 00:53:15,516 In the Irish, Brian Boru. 738 00:53:19,400 --> 00:53:23,279 Brian did not see himself as a king among equals, 739 00:53:23,320 --> 00:53:25,629 but as high king of all Ireland. 740 00:53:25,680 --> 00:53:29,992 And with a mighty army, he set about trying to control the island. 741 00:53:34,600 --> 00:53:38,434 DONNCHADH Ó CORRÁIN: In the only statement of his that we know about, 742 00:53:38,480 --> 00:53:43,190 he describes himself as Imperator Scottorum, Emperor of the Irish. 743 00:53:43,240 --> 00:53:47,438 Imperator means a man who rules over many different peoples, 744 00:53:47,480 --> 00:53:52,600 and he saw himself as ruling equally over the Irish and the Vikings. 745 00:53:52,640 --> 00:53:57,634 He subjected Limerick to himself and made Limerick a dynastic capital. 746 00:53:57,680 --> 00:54:01,309 He subjected Cork and Waterford to himself. 747 00:54:01,360 --> 00:54:03,237 Dublin was next on the list. 748 00:54:10,680 --> 00:54:15,435 In Dublin City Hall, the legend of Brian is commemorated on the dome. 749 00:54:19,280 --> 00:54:22,909 In the telling of Ireland's story, he would become 750 00:54:22,960 --> 00:54:27,875 an icon of native resistance - the first nationalist hero... 751 00:54:30,240 --> 00:54:34,358 ...his soldiers holy warriors who defeated a Viking invasion. 752 00:54:34,400 --> 00:54:37,756 But the truth is more complex. 753 00:54:39,600 --> 00:54:42,717 In 1014, after defeating the city of Waterford, 754 00:54:42,760 --> 00:54:46,230 Brian moved to confront the Gaelic kingdom of Leinster 755 00:54:46,280 --> 00:54:48,316 and the Viking port of Dublin. 756 00:54:49,480 --> 00:54:52,995 Irish and Viking united in defence against Brian. 757 00:54:53,040 --> 00:54:56,396 They recruited Viking mercenaries from Britain. 758 00:54:58,120 --> 00:55:00,953 It's thought Brian too had Vikings in his army. 759 00:55:02,880 --> 00:55:06,555 For both sides, Dublin was the glittering prize. 760 00:55:09,440 --> 00:55:12,193 DONNCHADH Ó CORRÁIN: The Battle of Clontarf is not a battle 761 00:55:12,240 --> 00:55:15,676 between savage Vikings and the Irish. 762 00:55:15,720 --> 00:55:19,679 It's not the saving of Holy Ireland from the pagans. 763 00:55:19,720 --> 00:55:25,750 It is a power struggle in which Brian Boru was finally going to get Dublin, 764 00:55:25,800 --> 00:55:29,839 because every king wanted to control the trading cities. 765 00:55:39,160 --> 00:55:42,869 On Good Friday 1014, the opposing forces faced each other 766 00:55:42,920 --> 00:55:44,717 at Clontarf, outside Dublin. 767 00:55:44,760 --> 00:55:49,550 There were two Irish armies, but both with their Viking allies. 768 00:55:49,600 --> 00:55:53,070 Of these Vikings, it was said they carried arrows, 769 00:55:53,120 --> 00:55:57,398 anointed and browned in the blood of dragons. 770 00:55:57,440 --> 00:56:00,477 The monks who wrote this account were highly partisan. 771 00:56:00,520 --> 00:56:04,149 After all, they'd been commissioned by a descendant of Brian Boru. 772 00:56:04,200 --> 00:56:07,192 Of his men, they said they had beautiful white hands. 773 00:56:08,720 --> 00:56:13,157 Hands that they would now use to hack, hew and maim. 774 00:56:14,520 --> 00:56:16,556 The battle lasted all day. 775 00:56:16,600 --> 00:56:18,192 (CLAMOUR OF BATTLE) 776 00:56:18,240 --> 00:56:22,028 Late in the afternoon, the Dublin men and their allies began to fall back 777 00:56:22,080 --> 00:56:25,072 to the River Liffey and into the advancing tide. 778 00:56:25,120 --> 00:56:26,872 (CLAMOUR OF BATTLE) 779 00:56:26,920 --> 00:56:30,230 An account written years later records 780 00:56:30,280 --> 00:56:34,432 that they "retreated to the sea like a herd of cows, 781 00:56:34,480 --> 00:56:39,429 "tormented by heat and insects. They were pursued closely." 782 00:56:39,480 --> 00:56:43,189 (CLAMOUR OF BATTLE) 783 00:56:43,240 --> 00:56:46,198 By nightfall, bodies drifted on Dublin Bay, 784 00:56:46,240 --> 00:56:49,676 and the field at Clontarf was strewn with corpses. 785 00:56:51,280 --> 00:56:56,308 Brian had won the battle, but he wouldn't live to enjoy the fruits of victory. 786 00:56:56,360 --> 00:57:01,480 A Danish Viking called Brodar came hacking his way through the Irish lines 787 00:57:01,520 --> 00:57:03,272 and found Brian's tent. 788 00:57:03,320 --> 00:57:06,790 Entering inside, he saw the old king on his knees at prayer, 789 00:57:06,840 --> 00:57:09,035 and lifting his giant battleaxe, 790 00:57:09,080 --> 00:57:11,469 he cleaved Brian's head from his shoulders. 791 00:57:11,520 --> 00:57:13,715 In this version of the story, 792 00:57:13,760 --> 00:57:18,515 Brian becomes the first martyr for faith and fatherland in Irish history. 793 00:57:20,880 --> 00:57:23,997 Without Brian, his dynasty declined. 794 00:57:24,040 --> 00:57:27,555 There would be no all-powerful high king of Ireland. 795 00:57:29,440 --> 00:57:31,476 Clontarf resolved nothing. 796 00:57:31,520 --> 00:57:34,557 Indeed, so great was the fighting after Brian's death 797 00:57:34,600 --> 00:57:37,751 that one annalist described how competing kings 798 00:57:37,800 --> 00:57:40,633 had turned the country into a trembling sod. 799 00:57:40,680 --> 00:57:44,355 Ireland was now a ripe prize for foreign adventurers, 800 00:57:44,400 --> 00:57:49,520 and they would come here in the shape of the greatest military force in Europe, 801 00:57:49,560 --> 00:57:53,439 to launch on these shores a fateful conquest. 802 00:57:59,800 --> 00:58:03,759 Next week, we will see how the rise of the Norman empire 803 00:58:03,800 --> 00:58:06,234 changed the Story of Ireland. 804 00:58:09,500 --> 00:58:17,500 Ripped By mstoll