"I have left them with the foreigners After being cut down, O Mahon! In hardship they followed me on every field, Not like as thy people." It was Brian who in that council caused appeal to be made to the Clan Dalcais whether they would have peace or war, and "War", they answered, "and this was the voice of hundreds as the voice of one man". The work that was begun at Kincora was finished sixty years later outside Dublin when the Danish menace was finally broken and dispelled on the shore by Clontarf: and in that fight the old lord of Kincora, Brian of the Tribute, High King by then of all Ireland, fell gloriously in the hour of a victory almost too dearly won. You can see in Killaloe the little old church, built somewhere in the eighth or ninth century, with its high-pitched roof of stone slabs, under which Brian worshipped more than ten centuries ago. Beside it is the cathedral built by his descendants, and adorned with noble archways in the rich Romanesque style of native Irish architecture. It is probable--certain, indeed, to my thinking--that Brian's rath and strong place of abode was where the market-place of Killaloe still is, on the top of the high ground to which the streets climb from the river and the churches. The fort at the ford is called in Irish _Beul Boroimhe_, that is the "Mouth of the Tribute": and one can easily see how it came by its name, for here was the strategic position which commanded all the traffic from the long navigable reaches of the upper Shannon and its lakes to the tideway at Limerick. Here portage must be made, here toll could be taken; and not only on the river traffic but on all the cattle that came down from Clare into Tipperary by this the one really practicable ford. [Illustration: BLARNEY CASTLE] From Killaloe to Limerick the road is pleasant, along the ever-widening valley which is blocked by Keeper to the north, but trends opening and widening towards West Clare and the sea. Yet to understand the beauty and the charm of that characteristic piece of Irish landscape, you should be taken down the stream in the characteristic boat of those waters, the long pole-driven cot. Shooting the rapids in these craft is a wonderful sensation, and even on a chill day in February the tumult of lashing water sends warmth into the blood. So you can follow the stream till at last below Athlunkard bridge you reach the long Lax Weir, which keeps the memory of Scandinavian settlers in its name (_lax_ is Norse for salmon, to-day as then), and the memory of early Norman settlement in the odd little tower built in the middle of the weir to command the passage, as long ago as the days of King John.