The King on the Hill

The king is dead. They dismembered him, quartered to be precise, and the parts of his body were sent to the four corners of Ireland. A way of showing what happens to foreigners who dare to interfere with the time-honoured practice of Irish and English slaughtering each other. But then he himself was a practitioner of slaughter and scorched earth, a man holding on to power with the help of Scotsmen brought over from the kingdom of his brother across the sea. He was first welcomed to the Emerald Isle and its bloodshed, even crowning himself High King. But he slaughtered Anglo-Irish and Gaelic indiscriminately, and in the end that cost him the throne and his life.

At some point his four parts were gathered again, or whoever created his grave on the Hill of Faughart buried what was at hand. The king, almost forgotten by history, lies today where he made his last stand, on a hill where 865 years before his demise a holy woman was born, or the idea of a holy woman was merged with an old Celtic goddess, to become one of the patron saints of Ireland. Her feast day marks the beginning of spring, but she will never be able to call the king back from the rich earth.

From where he is buried, partially or not, you can see the mountains and the Gap of the North, through which he and his Scots marched into Louth, and the sea in Dundalk Bay. There is a wind wheel nearby, and young bulls graze in the field behind the cemetery wall that encloses the hill with the ruins of a church, the holy well and wishing tree. The place where the king crowned himself High King of all Ireland, down in Dundalk, is a pub today. The king is dead. Long live the king.

Edward de Brus, the destroyer of Ireland in general, both Foreigners and Gaels, was killed by the Foreigners of Ireland by dint of fighting at Dun-Delgan. And there were killed in his company Mac Ruaidhri, king of Insi-Gall Hebrides and Mac Domhnaill, king of Argyll, together with slaughter of the Men of Scotland around him. And there was not done from the beginning of the world a deed that was better for the Men of Ireland than that deed. For there came death and loss of people during his time in all Ireland in general for the space of three years and a half and people undoubtedly used to eat each other throughout Ireland.

The Annals of Ulster