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Dysert O'Dea, 1318As far as the de Clare power in Thomond was concerned, the result was decisive. The Normans lost everything, even Bunratty Castle, which was their strongest hold. Murtough pursued the survivors to Bunratty and found the castle and the English settlement there in flames; Richard's widow had set alight what would burn and had fled by boat to Limerick. The de Clares never came back. The victorious O'Briens preserved that part of the old Thomond which lay north of the Shannon for the Gaelic order until the sixteenth century. When at that time they took the opposite side to O'Neill and O'Donnell, who were the last defenders of that order, they did so of their own free will. Like the Campbells in Scotland, they elected to go a different way from their neighbours. The present Bunratty Castle, built in the fifteenth century, is an Irish, not an Anglo-Norman structure.The Irish of Thomond did at Dysert O'Dea what the Irish of Connacht, facing the longer established and tougher houses of de Burgh and de Bermingham, failed to do at Athenry. It was the greatest Gaelic victory of a period which, because of the sufferings of the Anglo-Norman colony from the Scots, was full of promise for Gaelic Ireland. And it was a new kind of battle for the Irish. The delaying action at the stream and the ambush in the wood, which marked its opening phases, were well-tried tactics; but the stubborn stand of heavily armed Gaelic warriors willing to accept casualties and determined to fight it out was something new. It was seen for the first time in the Irish wars at Athenry, where it was a stand made in vain, and for the second at Dysert O'Dea, where it brought victory. These were standing fights-occasions of a 'plain melee'; they were not hit and miss affairs of the bogs and forests that some writers have regarded as typical of medieval Irish warfare. The only early account of the battle of Dysert O'Dea which enters into any detail is that in Caithréim Thoirdhealbhaigh (The Triumphs of Turlough), written in the third quarter of the fourteenth century by one of the MacGraths, the hereditary historians of Thomond. The Caithréim has been translated by Standish H. O'Grady and was published by the Irish Texts Society in 1929. (The translation is in Vol. II and the account of the battle on pp. 119 ff).
Taken from Irish Battles by G.A. Hayes-McCoy, published by Appletree Press. Further reading: A Little History of Ireland by Martin Wallace with illustrations by Ian McCullough. Click here for more information on the book. Previous instalments of 'the Battle of Dysert O'Dea': Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 |
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