“For round them there, like shorn grass, the foe in hundreds bleed; Yet, fast as e’er they fall, each side, do hundreds more succeed; With naked breasts undaunted meet the spears of steel-clad men, And sturdily, with axe and skian, repay their blows again. “Now crushed with odds, their phalanx broke, each Norman fights alone, And few are left throughout the field, and they are feeble grown, But high o’er all, Sir Tristram’s voice is like a trumpet heard, And still, where’er he strikes, the foemen sink beneath his sword. “But once he raised his visor up—alas, it was to try If Hamo and his boy yet tarried on the mountain nigh, When sharp an arrow from the foe pierced right through his brain, And sank the gallant knight a corse upon the bloody plain. “Then failed the fight, for gathering round his lifeless body there, The remnant of his gallant band fought fiercely in despair; And, one by one, they wounded fell—yet with their latest breath, Their Norman war-cry shouted bold—then sank in silent death.” When Cathal Mor finally became King of Connaught, he caused a monastery, which he called “the Abbey of Victory,” but which has been known to the Irish of Connaught for ages as “Abbey Knockmoy,” to be erected on or near the site of the battle. Tradition, not a very reliable guide, fails to exactly define the scene of Cathal’s victory over the Normans. Knocktuagh, an inconsiderable eminence, is within a few miles of the city of Galway, whereas Knockmoy, where stands the historic abbey, is fully twelve miles east of that ancient borough, on the highroad to Athlone. Cathal of the Red Hand fought many battles and won many splendid victories, although he occasionally sustained defeats at the hands of the Normans and their traitorous native allies; his greatest victory was won over his bitter rival, albeit his nephew, Caher Carragh O’Conor, whom he encountered somewhere in the county of Galway. There was an awful slaughter on both sides, but Cathal prevailed, and, no doubt, built the abbey on the spot where Caher and his leading chieftains, Irish and Norman, fell. De Courcy was the only foreigner allied with Cathal Mor in this great battle. Abbey Knockmoy is one of the most interesting of Irish ruins, and contains friezes and frescoing most creditable to Irish art in the thirteenth century. The victory gave Cathal Mor the undisputed sway of Connaught. Adopting the policy of the invaders, for the benefit of his country, he used Norman against Norman; allied himself with Meyler FitzHenry, the last of Strongbow’s lieutenants, to punish Connaught’s inveterate foe, William de Burgo, ancestor of the Clanricardes in Limerick, and to humble the pride of the ambitious De Lacys in Leinster. In 1210, this gallant Irish monarch compelled King John of England to treat with him as an independent sovereign, and, while he lived, no Norman usurper dared to lord it over his kingdom of Connaught. Like his royal father and brother, he was a