Some might say that the mother of Robert E. Howard’s angry outlaw Crusader, Cormac Fitzgeoffrey, had been slighted in the two complete stories told about him. She is merely described as “a woman of the O’Briens.” True, little is told of his father, Geoffrey the Bastard, but at least we’re given his name and told that he carried the blood, “it is said,” of William the Conqueror. We know the names of Cormac’s two brothers and how they died. Shane was apparently Cormac’s full brother because he had, REH tells us through Cormac’s mouth, “Fitzgeoffrey blood.” (Al Harron pointed this out in his post for The Cimmerian blog, “Calavaria ad Victoriam: A Look at Cormac Fitzgeoffrey, Part Three.” It was posted on July 11, 2009. Thanks, Al.)
Shane was killed by a Norse sea-king making a raid into Munster. Cormac’s other brother, Donal, may be a half-brother, not a son of Geoffrey the bastard’s; we’re not told. We are informed that an O’Donnell chief ate his heart after a battle at Coolmanagh. That’s in County Carlow, a few miles west of Hacketstown. Since there was a feud between Cormac and Donal, it’s possible, Cormac admits, that he might have killed his brother if someone else had not – “but for all that, I burned the O’Donnell in his own castle.” He swiftly avenged Shane’s death, too, by killing the finely accoutered Norseman. Cormac reminisces to Rupert de Vaile that the sea-king “…was a fine sight in his coat of mail with silvered scales. His silvered helmet was strong too – ax, helmet, and skull shattered together.”
(In passing, this occurred at the end of the twelfth century when the Viking Age proper had passed; but that never stopped Norse pirates from raiding and plundering. Neither did the Christian religion that was now official in Norway, Denmark, and Sweden. Many chiefs and most peasants were still heathen, no matter what the kings decreed. As REH wrote, “… from Norway and the Orkneys, the still half-pagan Vikings ravaged all impartially.”)
About the mother of Cormac, Shane, and presumably Donal, hardly anything is said. She’s passed over in one line and not even named. Possibly that complete anonymity should be fixed, even if it has to be done out of the imagination.
In a previous post or two, I’ve posited that her name was Radharc O’Brien. It would be inappropriate to think she was anything but a descendant of REH’s character Turlogh Dubh O’Brien, the grandson of the great Brian Boru. He fought at Clontarf in 1014, aged about nineteen. (Turlogh Dubh fought, that is, not Brian Boru. Brian was past seventy by then.)
Turlogh was outlawed from his clan on false charges, due to “the jealousy of a cousin and the spite of a woman,” as all strong fans of REH’s writing know. I have averred here and there that the historical king of Munster who reigned until his death in 1086, and was also named Turlogh O’Brien, was Turlogh Dubh’s son, born in 1023 or 1024—not 1009, as is usually stated. I have also chosen to suppose that Turlogh Dubh, the outlaw, and his namesake son, born to a Turgaslav woman in Russia (there were quite a few Turlogh O’Brien’s in the clan’s history), were combined into one person by legend and popular memory. The younger Turlogh became King of Munster and married three times.
King Turlogh’s known wives, the ones who provided him with children, were Dubchoblaig of Ui Cheinnselaig and Derbforgaill of Osraige. He had a third wife, Gormlaith of Ui Fogarta, but her children have not been recorded in the annals. Perhaps she did not have any. Dubchoblaig’s offspring included a son named Diarmait, who ruled Waterford and raided Wales as a youth of about twenty. He was nothing but trouble to his greater half-brother Murtogh. Murtogh O’Brien succeeded his father as King of Munster in 1086 and later declared himself the High King of Ireland. He died in 1119. Their complicated family tree, as I picture it, looked like this:
King Turlogh O’Brien of Munster (Born 1023 or 1024 – Died 1086) Married: Dubchoblaig of Ui Cheinnselaig (Born 1029 – Died 1094) [Son: Diarmait O’Brien (Circa 1060 -1118)] Married: (2) Derbforgaill of Osraige (Born 1034 – Died 1071) [Sons: (Diarmait’s half-brothers) Teige O’Brien and Murtogh O’Brien]
In 1114, Murtogh O’Brien became desperately ill. His half-brother Diarmait (a son of Dubchoblaig) seized his chance to depose Murtogh and take the Munster crown. He banished his half-brother. Possibly, this gave Murtogh such deep offense that he recovered his health through sheer anger—long enough to attack Diarmait, capture him, and regain control of Munster anyway. But then he retired to a monastery at Lismore in 1116 and died three years later.
Radharc O’Brien, mother of Cormac Fitzgeoffrey, descended from Diarmait. (She was his granddaughter.) Diarmait, despite his brother Murtogh’s illness, died the year before him, in 1118. But he had married a woman called Mor ua Conchobar and fathered four sons, along with unknown daughters. The sons were yet another Turlogh—Turlogh mac Diarmait O’Brien—Conchobar na Catharach, Teige Glae, and Donnachad. Teige Glae O’Brien is the brother of interest here since he fathered Radharc.
Caveat to the reader: Radharc O’Brien, whose by-name was Radharc Casidhe (Clever), is fictional. Her mother was Daimhin O’Brien, a distant cousin of Teige Glae, and Daimhin is fictional too, but Teige Glae and his brothers really lived. This writer proposes that Daimhin descended from King Brian Boru’s sixth son, Domnall, who was likely born of Brian’s second wife, Echrad of the Ui Aeda Odba. Radharc was thus an O’Brien on both sides of her lineage.
If her family tree is complicated, the political situation when she was born seems even more so. Briefly, her great ancestor Brian Boru (Brian of the Tributes) had been High King of Ireland and fought the Danish invaders to a gory, pyrrhic victory at Clontarf in 1014. His descendants, the O’Briens, were dominant until roughly 1125. The situation changed when Turlogh O’Connor of Connacht (not to be confused with any of the numerous Turlogh O’Briens) decided he would become dominant instead. In 1118, aided by the king of Meath and Tiernan O’Rourke of Briefne, he led a host into Munster and ravaged the province. To reduce O’Brien power, he used the old “divide and conquer” technique. He awarded North Munster (which the Normans would later call Thomond) to the sons of Diarmait O’Brien. South Munster (Desmond) he gave to their rivals, the MacCarthys. It seemed certain to O’Connor that both clans being Irish, they would be too busy fighting each other to give him trouble. He was wrong. Conchobar na Catharach O’Brien, son of Diarmait, made an alliance with Cormac MacCarthy of Desmond and tried to kill his overlord and patron, Turlogh O’Connor.
They didn’t succeed. And Cormac MacCarthy, who must have forgotten to watch his back, was murdered by Conchobar na Catharach’s brother. This set a pattern for the future. O’Briens and MacCarthys might be rivals and mistrust each other – war against and murder each other inveterately – but in spite of it, they would sometimes join together against the men of Connacht.
King Turlogh O’Connor decided he’d have to teach the O’Briens a sharper lesson. He’d defeated them, but in stubborn ingratitude, they refused to concede it and went on resisting. Beginning in 1121, O’Connor ravaged Munster three years running and left seventy churches burned-out ruins.
Diarmait O’Brien’s son, Conchobar na Catharach O’Brien, succeeded his father as king in 1118 or 1119. It was during Conchobar’s reign that Radharc was born (1132). Not King Conchobar mac Nessa of Ulster who ruled in the time of the hero Cuchulainn and Queen Medb; that was centuries before. This Conchobar was a different fellow.
Radharc means “vision.” It’s a hard name to live up to, but she managed it effortlessly, being one of those girls who are too beautiful from the outset for their own good or anyone else’s, like Deirdre. She was her father’s treasure. Her earliest memory was of being held in front of him on his horse while he rode fast and hard and she shrieked with delight. Radharc didn’t scare easily. When she was little, she was as wild and unkempt as she was pretty. She played with her three brothers more often than with other girls. In order, her parents had five children: Ailill (born 1126), Muiredach (1128), her sister Eithne (1129), Radharc herself, and her younger brother Daui (1134).
Her parents’ home was a sprawling rath on the eastern shore of Lough Derg, a long, narrow body of water between North Riding, Tipperary, and County Clare, with the river Shannon flowing into the north end and out the south end towards the Shannon estuary. At the lough’s southern end stood Killaloe, the site of a greatly revered church supposed to have been founded by Saint Molua the Leper in the sixth century. Radharc’s uncle, King Conchobar na Catharach, died there on pilgrimage in 1142 when she was ten.
Another uncle of hers, Turlogh, became king of North Munster after him. This latest Turlogh O’Brien (who ruled North Munster from 1142 until 1167) had a certain amount of trouble with his living brothers. He suspected Radharc’s father of intriguing with the High King, Turlogh O’Connor, and for safety, kept Teige Glae in fetters for two years. Radharc was fifteen when he was released. This was kind treatment for twelfth-century Ireland; the standard way of dealing with brothers, sons, or nephews whose loyalty you doubted was killing or blinding.
A fast-growing girl, Radharc now looked like a full-figured eighteen. Holy abbots had been heard expressing blasphemous admiration when they saw her sashay along. She was black-haired, blue-eyed, and active, her glands included, and she became close to a pair of her kinsmen, the brothers Conor and Lugaid O’Brien. Just as she was a granddaughter of Diarmait mac Turlogh O’Brien, they were the grandsons of Diarmait’s half-brother Murtogh. Radharc was thus their third cousin or third half-cousin.
Conor and Lugaid, by the way, were real people and are known to history, at least their names are. It’s been difficult to learn much more about them, though. What follows is speculation and invention about their relations with Radharc, who, to reiterate, is fictional.
They both wanted to marry her. Gossip averred that she had tried them both out in the hay and couldn’t decide between them. They were both good lovers, evidently young, tall, strong, and brave, and it was a difficult decision. Then she discovered the pair tossing dice for her and took offense. That, she ruled, was an insultingly trivial way to settle the matter, but swords, on the other hand, were too extreme. She proposed they hold a hurley match, each leading a side, with the winner marrying Radharc. They agreed that was fair.
Hurley was a game almost as violent as war, like hockey, it was played with sticks and a ball but with fewer rules than the modern game. Instead of scoring goals, you had to cover distance with the ball against the other team’s opposition. Many didn’t survive.
It was Conor who won. His cheering team carried him off the field shoulder-high with a broken arm and a grin, while Lugaid lay unconscious on the muddy turf. Conor and Radharc were married at Killaloe in 1149. Ten months later, she bore a boy, Donal.
In the meantime, her uncle Turlogh had made a fierce incursion into southern Connacht to exact payment from High King Turlogh O’Connor for what he’d done to Munster. Her father, Teige Glae, supported him with followers and fighting to show loyalty; he’d had all the time in shackles he wanted. They destroyed O’Connor’s stronghold at Galway and returned to Munster with a few thousand head of stolen cattle. Cattle-raiding was reckoned fine manly sport rather than a crime, as it had been in the days of Cuchulainn and Queen Medb – the latter also a Connacht ruler.
Then, in 1150, Radharc’s uncle invaded Brega (essentially Meath, southern Louth, and Dublin Fingal). At this distance, it looks as though he was making a desperate effort to restore O’Brien power and regain the high kingship for his clan before it was too late. No one could realistically hold the high kingship of Ireland any longer unless he first held Dublin – and the way to Dublin from Munster lay through Brega. King Turlogh of Munster had prepared well and made sure his battle-host was well supplied, but what he couldn’t do was launch his assault with the strength and resources his clan had possessed in earlier times. He did prevail in Brega – for the time being – but the question was whether he could sustain it.
Turlogh O’Brien had more family troubles to plague him as the year 1151 opened. His wife Mor was the daughter of the High King. That meant that his son Murtogh was also the grandson of his greatest enemy. At their instigation, no doubt, Murtogh tried to depose his father. Radharc’s father, Teige Glae, captured the young man and handed him over to Turlogh O’Brien, who, as he’d once done with Teige himself, put Murtogh in shackles.
(Teige evidently didn’t like Murtogh, and it’s certain that Radharc did not. She had declared in public that he wasn’t worthy to empty slop buckets for either her husband Conor or her brother-in-law Lugaid. Perhaps Murtogh had wanted to enjoy Radharc’s favors and failed where they succeeded.)
Since Murtogh, his grandson, had bungled the overthrow of the O’Brien clan, Turlogh O’Connor sent his son, Ruaidri, at the head of a considerable force to achieve it. The MacCarthys of South Munster burst into the O’Brien lands, roaring their battle-chants, craving redress in blood for old grudges like the murder of Cormac MacCarthy – urged by the High King’s messengers, we may suppose. The O’Briens, under Turlogh, were again prepared, and Teige Glae again supported his brother – though perhaps he was merely waiting for a better chance to betray him. The MacCarthys were beaten, but the brothers Conor and Lugaid did not see them withdraw. They sprawled dead on the ground, and Radharc, with an infant son, was widowed at twenty.
A larger battle ensued, and Radharc didn’t learn that the brothers were dead until afterward. The MacCarthys, who had retreated south across Moin Mhor, sent swift riders to Connacht and Leinster for help. Ruaidri O’Connor, with his father’s army, answered the call, and Tiernan O’Rourke of Breifne accompanied him. Tiernan was another of those who changed sides fairly often; since 1148, he had broken with the High King and carried out raid after ferocious raid into Connacht. Now he marched with the High King’s host once more. Perhaps he hoped to return to the O’Connor’s good graces thereby, or perhaps he just thought it would be fun to plunder O’Brien lands.
The King of Leinster, Diarmait mac Murchada, took part in the same campaign. His motives were probably to oblige the High King and clip the wings of the O’Briens. They couldn’t have included a liking for Tiernan O’Rourke, who had once ravaged Leinster in his characteristically brutal fashion. In fact, Diarmait had marked O’Rourke for his future attention – but it wasn’t a practical prospect just then.
The Battle of Moin Mhor followed. There has been disagreement about the site of the battle, some saying it occurred near Emly Parish in Tipperary. It actually seems to have occurred just outside a pass through the Nagles Mountains, on the southern side of the Blackwater River, between Mallow and Fermoy. That’s in County Cork, not Tipperary.
The MacCarthys from South Munster rushed to avenge their recent thrashing and older combats. Lacking big enough numbers, they would have been trounced again, but now they were joined to the Leinster and Connacht forces. It was an outstandingly bloody affair, in which some seven thousand men were killed altogether. The O’Briens were defeated, and their power was restricted after that to North Munster, while the MacCarthys were confirmed in their lordship of South Munster.
By then, Radharc had heard that her husband and brother-in-law were slain. Before long, she also found that she was pregnant again. Well, Radharc lived in a time when women were often widowed early. It was never surprising when that happened, or when yet-unborn babies were left fatherless. She keened and grieved, then thought about her children, about their future, and her clan’s future – which amounted to the same thing.
Since Murtogh, his grandson, had bungled the overthrow of the O’Brien clan, Turlogh O’Connor sent his son, Ruaidri, at the head of a considerable force to achieve it. The MacCarthys of South Munster burst into the O’Brien lands, roaring their battle-chants, craving redress in blood for old grudges like the murder of Cormac MacCarthy – urged by the High King’s messengers, we may suppose. The O’Briens, under Turlogh, were again prepared, and Teige Glae again supported his brother – though perhaps he was merely waiting for a better chance to betray him. The MacCarthys were beaten, but the brothers Conor and Lugaid did not see them withdraw. They sprawled dead on the ground, and Radharc, with an infant son, was widowed at twenty.
A larger battle ensued, and Radharc didn’t learn that the brothers were dead until afterward. The MacCarthys, who had retreated south across Moin Mhor, sent swift riders to Connacht and Leinster for help. Ruaidri O’Connor, with his father’s army, answered the call, and Tiernan O’Rourke of Breifne accompanied him. Tiernan was another of those who changed sides fairly often; since 1148, he had broken with the High King and carried out raid after ferocious raid into Connacht. Now he marched with the High King’s host once more. Perhaps he hoped to return to the O’Connor’s good graces thereby, or perhaps he just thought it would be fun to plunder O’Brien lands.
The King of Leinster, Diarmait mac Murchada, took part in the same campaign. His motives were probably to oblige the High King and clip the wings of the O’Briens. They couldn’t have included a liking for Tiernan O’Rourke, who had once ravaged Leinster in his characteristically brutal fashion. In fact, Diarmait had marked O’Rourke for his future attention – but it wasn’t a practical prospect just then.
The Battle of Moin Mhor followed. There has been disagreement about the site of the battle, some saying it occurred near Emly Parish in Tipperary. It actually seems to have occurred just outside a pass through the Nagles Mountains, on the southern side of the Blackwater River, between Mallow and Fermoy. That’s in County Cork, not Tipperary.
Brian and Consaidhin gave her their views on events in Leinster. (Her brother Muiredach did too, but he wasn’t as sharp or subtle an observer as his cousins, particularly Consaidhin.) She discovered, to her regret, that her father and King Diarmait were hatching schemes of which her uncle Turlogh would not have approved. That naturally meant that the longer Brian and Consaidhin, Turlogh’s sons, were held in Leinster, the safer Teige Glae would be. His brother had already held him in fetters once for intriguing with the High King, O’Connor of Connacht. Radharc was torn. She didn’t want her cousins silenced permanently, which her father and the King of Leinster might decide to do. Nevertheless, Teige Glae was her father, and she loved him despite his faults.
She didn’t betray him, but she did take back a perceptive report on Diarmait of Leinster’s court and the foreign liaisons he was fostering. His alliance with Norman adventurers from Wales still lay in the future – but French and Spanish traders, and one Polish exile, were guests in Leinster during Radharc’s visit. So were messengers from the King of Cenel nEogain, Muirchertach mac Lochlainn. That, to Radharc, was interesting – and to her uncle Turlogh as well.
The man who would be her next husband, the “renegade Norman knight” Geoffrey the Bastard, who had fought through the Second Crusade, was then (in the summer of 1152) crossing the Channel from Normandy to England. He saw opportunities there. A hellish two decades of anarchy and civil war had ravaged England, with no end yet visible. Bandits and outlaw nobles could do as they pleased. Sides could be changed rapidly, and were. (See “Cormac Fitzgeoffrey’s Kin in the Crusades – Part Three.”) Oh, the end would come, and soon, when Henry Plantagenet took the English throne as Henry II, but nobody knew that. When he entered England, Geoffrey had taken the first step on his fated path to Ireland, but he hadn’t the faintest inkling of that either.
