It’s Time to Celebrate the Battle of Clontarf

Irish Savant
May 28, 2014

Battle_of_Clontarf_Hugh_Frazer
The Battle of Clontarf

‘Tis the time for celebrating anniversaries, some whose origins go back a long way, others of more recent vintage.  As every schoolboy knows this year is the one thousandth anniversary of Ireland’s defeat of the Vikings at the Battle Of Clontarf.  Although victorious, the Munstermen who made up the bulk of the Irish army (and particularly the O’Brien clan amongst them) suffered such enormous casualties that it took them centuries to recover.  If indeed they ever did fully recover.

But it freed us of foreigners, didn’t it?

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Dublin’s football team ‘Insaka’.

And today you can be damn sure that, whatever about Clontarf, every schoolboy certainly knows that we celebrate the Irish edition of Africa Day. Which I first deliriously celebrated here…..all of six years ago.  Things have moved on.  As the picture here of Dublin football team Insaka shows, our ability to repel foreigners ain’t what it used to be.  And unlike the Vikings and Normans, who became ‘more Irish than the Irish themselves’, this collection of lovelies seem like staying among their own. Which, I suppose, is on balance a good thing.

So let us all head to the nearest Social Welfare office and join with the ‘new Irish’ in celebrating their……good luck in landing among a nation of gullible fools.

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