I look upriver towards the hulking castle, admiring the broad spread of Shannon water, mighty, even at low tide. Three anglers wade waist high, in the flat below Curragour. Over a thousand years ago, Vikings fished that spot, plundering the river’s store, of silver salmon and trout, until the mighty Brian and his Dalcasians, took the matter in hand – slew the Danish fighting men, and put manners on those of them, who would live in peace, work and pay tributes, in later times – one built a laxweir, a mile upstream, first having taken the wise precaution, of marrying a Limerick beauty.