The day on which the battle was fought was Good Friday, 1014. King Brian himself was too aged to go into battle; besides, it was against his will to fight on a fast-day; so his bodyguard made a fastness round him with their linked shields upon a little height, and from the time of the beginning of the combat he knelt upon a cushion, with his psalter open before him, and began to read the psalms and to pray aloud. There was with him a young lad, an attendant, who watched the course of the fighting from the height, and from time to time he told his master what was going forward. After the King had said fifty psalms and prayed awhile he asked his attendant how the battle went. “Intermingled together and closely fighting are the battalions, each of them within the grasp of the other,” said the boy; “and not louder would be the sound of blows of wood-cutters on Tomar’s Wood if seven battalions together were cutting it down, than are the resounding blows that fall from the swords on both sides upon bones and skulls.” The King said: “Do you see the standard of Morrogh, my son?” “It is standing,” said the lad, “and the banners of Munster close about it; but many heads are falling round it, the heads of our own clan and the heads of foreigners also.” “That is good news,” said the King. Then the lad readjusted the cushion under Brian, and the King prayed again and sang another fifty psalms; and all the time the fighting was going on below. “What is the condition of the battalions,” Brian asked again, “and where is Morrogh’s standard?” The lad said that there was not a man on earth who could distinguish friend from foe, so covered were they all with gore and wounds; but as for the standard of Munster it was still standing, but it had passed away to the westward. Then the King said: “The men of Ireland will do well so long as that standard stands.”