Hunting for the genetic legacy of Brian Boru in Irish historical sources (Pre-published version)

Abstract

In his travels in Ireland in 1842, Thackeray followed the course of the Shannon up river from Tarbert to Limerick and then travelled through Clare to Galway, visiting “a decent little library” in Ennis where he bought “six volumes of works strictly Irish”. As he describes them subsequently, “these yellow-covered books are prepared for the people chiefly” and included tales of a highwayman entitled Adventures of Mr James Freeny, legends in Hibernian Tales2 and “the lamentable tragedy of the ‘Battle of Aughrim’ writ in the most doleful Anglo-Irish verse.” He does not refer explicitly in his Irish Sketchbook to Brian Boru but it seems fair to assume that his description of Barry Lyndon’s ancestry was based, at least in part, on stories he had heard when travelling through Thomond or, perhaps, even elsewhere in Ireland.