PROSE WRITERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
During the first half of the seventeeth century, the Irish, heavily
handicapped as they were, and deprived of the power of printing,
nevertheless made tremendous efforts to keep abreast of the rest of
Europe in science and literature. It was indeed an age of national
scholarship which has never since been equalled. It was this half
century that produced in rapid succession Geoffrey Keating, the Four
Masters, and Duald Mac Firbis, men of whom any age or country might be
proud, men who amid the war, rapine, and conflagration, that rolled
through the country at the heels of the English soldiers, still
strove to save from the general wreck those records of their country
which to-day make the name of Ireland honourable for her antiquities,
traditions, and history, in the eyes of the scholars of Europe.
Of these men, Keating, as a prose writer, was the greatest. He was
a man of literature, a poet, professor, theologian, and historian,
in one. He brought the art of writing limpid Irish to its highest
perfection, and ever since the publication of his history of Ireland
some two hundred and fifty years ago, the modern language may be said
to have been stereotyped.
Born in Tipperary, not of a native Irish, but of an ancient Norman
family, as he takes care to inform us, he was at an early age sent to
the Continent to be educated for the priesthood. There in the cloisters
of some foreign seminary his young heart was early rent with accounts
of robbery, plunder, and confiscation, as chieftain after chieftain
was driven from his home and patrimony, and compelled to seek asylum
and shelter from the magnanimous Spaniard. "The same to me," cries, in
the hexameter of the Gael, some unhappy wanderer contemporaneous with
Keating, driven to find refuge where he could, "the same to me are
mountain or ocean, Ireland or the West of Spain, I have shut and made
fast the gates of sorrow over my heart."[1] And there was scarcely a
noble family in any corner of the island whose members might not have
repeated the same. At this particular period there were few priests of
note who had not received a foreign education, and few of the great
houses who had not the most intimate relations with France and Spain:
indeed in the succeeding century these two countries, especially
France, stood to the Irish Celts in nearly the same familiar relation
as England does at present.
After his return from Spain, Keating, now a doctor of divinity, was
appointed to a church in Tipperary, where his fame as a preacher soon
drew crowds together. Amongst these arrived one day--unluckily for
Keating, but luckily for Ireland--a damsel whose relations with the
English Lord President of Munster were said not to bear the strictest
investigation, and it so chanced that the preacher's subject that day
was the very one which, for good reasons, least commended itself to the
lady. All eyes were directed against her, and she, returning aggrieved
and furious, instigated Carew to at once put the anti-Popery laws in
execution against Keating.
The difficulties which the learned men of Ireland had to fight their
way through, even from the first quarter of the seventeenth century,
have scarcely been sufficiently understood or appreciated, but they
are well illustrated in the case of Keating. It is usually assumed
that the Penal laws did not begin to operate to the intellectual ruin
of the Irish until the eighteenth century. But, in truth, the paths
of learning and progress were largely barred by them after the first
quarter of the seventeenth century. Already, as early as 1615, King
James had issued a commission to inquire into the state of education in
Ireland, and the celebrated Ussher, then Chancellor of St. Patrick's,
was placed at the head of it. Ussher was far and away the greatest
scholar of the Pale in the seventeenth century, and his efforts in
the cause of Irish antiquities have received deserved recognition
from all native writers, and yet even Ussher appears to have shut up
remorselessly the native schools wherever he found them, on the ground
that the teachers did not conform to the established religion. Here
is how he acted towards the father of the celebrated John Lynch, the
learned antiquarian and author of the "Cambrensis Eversus,"[2] who was
at the head of a native college in Galway.
"We found," says Ussher, "at Galway a publique schoolmaster, named
Lynch, placed there by the cittizens, who had great numbers of
schollers not only out of the province [of Connacht] but (even), out
of the 'Pale' and other partes resorting to him. Wee had proofe during
our continuance in that citty, how his schollers proffitted under
him by the verses and orations which they presented us. Wee sent for
that schoolemaster before us, and seriously advised him to conform to
the religion established; and not prevailing with our advices, _we
enjoyned him to forbear teaching_; and I, the Chancellour, did take
recognizance of him and some others of his relatives in that citty, in
the sum of 400 _li_ sterling [at that time, fully equal to £2,000] to
his Majesty's use, that from thenceforth he should forbeare to teach
any more, without the speciall license of the Lord Deputy."[3]
Twelve years later we find this enlightened and really great scholar
lending all his authority to a pronouncement headed: "The judgment of
divers of the Archbishops and Bishops of Ireland concerning toleration
of Religion," in which he thus delivers himself:--
"The religion of the Papists is superstitious and idolatrous, their
faith and doctrine erroneous and heretical; their church in respect of
both apostatical. To give them therefore a toleration is to consent
that they may freely exercise their religion and profess their faith
and doctrine, and is a grievous sin, and that in two respects:
"1. It is to make ourselves accessory not only to their superstitious
idolatries and heresies, and in a word to all the abominations
of Popery, but also (which is a consequent of the former) to the
perdition of the seduced people which perish in the deluge of the
Catholick apostacy.
"2. To grant them toleration in respect of any money to be given or
contribution to be made by them, is to set religion at sale, and with
it the souls of the people whom Christ our Saviour hath redeemed with
His most precious blood," etc.
This document was signed by James Ussher, of Armagh, Primate, with
eleven other bishops, and promulgated on the 23rd of April, 1627.[4]
It may have been in consequence of the fresh fillip thus given to
a policy which had till then been largely in abeyance--for fear of
provoking physical resistance--that Carew, already incited against
Keating by his lady friend, sent out a force of soldiers to seize
him and bring him a prisoner into Cork. Keating, however, received
information of the design, and fled into the famous Glen of Aherlow,
where he remained for some years effectually hidden. It was at this
time, that finding himself unable to continue his priestly labours,
he conceived the ambitious design of writing a history of Ireland
from the earliest times down to the Norman Conquest. In pursuance of
this intention he is said to have travelled in disguise up and down
through the island to consult the ancient vellum books, at that time
still preserved in the families of the hereditary brehons or in the
neighbourhood of the ancient monasteries, which are said to have been
everywhere gladly shown to him except in the province of Connacht and
parts of Ulster, where some of the old families refused to allow him to
inspect their books because he was a Norman by race and not a Gael!
"I conceive," says Keating, in his preface, "that my testimony ought
the more readily to be admitted from the fact that I treat therein
more particularly of the Gaels, and if any man deem that I give them
too much credit, let him not imagine that I do so through partiality,
praising them more than is just through love of my own kindred,
for I belong, according to my own extraction, to the Old Galls or
the Anglo-Norman race. I have seen that the natives of Ireland are
maligned by every modern Englishman who speaks of the country. For
this reason, being much grieved at the unfairness those writers have
shown to Irishmen, I have felt urged to write a history of Ireland
myself."
The value of Keating's history is very great to the student of Irish
antiquity, not because of any critical faculty on the part of Keating
himself, for (perhaps luckily) this was a gift he was not endowed
with, but on account of the very lack of it. What Keating found in the
old vellums of the monasteries and the brehons, as they existed about
the year 1630--they have, many of them, perished since--he rewrote
and redacted in his own language like another Herodotus. He invents
nothing, embroiders little. What he does not find before him, he does
not relate, οὐδε γαρ οὐν λέγεται, as is the formula of Herodotus.
He composed his history in the south of Ireland, at nearly the same
time that the Four Masters in the north of Ireland were collecting the
materials for their annals, and though he wrote _currente calamo_, and
is in matters of fact less accurate than they are, yet his history is
an independent compilation made from the same class of ancient vellums,
often from the very same books from which they also derived their
information, and it must ever remain a co-ordinate authority to be
consulted by historians along with them and the other annalists.[5]
The opening words of his history may serve as a specimen of his style.
It begins thus--
"Whoever sets before him the task of inquiring into and investigating
the history and antiquity of any country, ought to adopt the mode
that most clearly explains its true state, and gives the most correct
account of its inhabitants. And because I have undertaken to write
and publish a history of Ireland, I deem myself obliged to complain
of some of the wrongs and acts of injustice practised towards its
inhabitants, as well towards the Old Galls [Anglo-Normans], who have
been in possession of the country for more than four centuries since
the English invasion, as towards the Gaels themselves, who have
owned it for three thousand years. For there is no historian who
has written upon Ireland since the English invasion, who does not
strive to vilify and calumniate both Anglo-Irish colonists and the
Gaelic natives. We have proofs of this in the accounts of the country
given by Cambrensis, Spenser, Stanihurst, Hanmer, Camden, Barclay,
Morrison, Davis, Campion, and all the writers of the New Galls
[_i.e._, later English settlers] who have treated of this country.
So much so that when they speak of the Irish one would imagine that
these men were actuated by the instinct of the beetle[6]; for it is
the nature of this animal, when it raises its head in the summer,
to flutter about without stooping to the fair flowers of the meadow
or to the blossoms of the garden--not though they be all roses and
lilies--but it bustles hurriedly around until it meets with some
disgusting ordure, and it buries itself therein. So it is with the
above-named writers. They never allude to the virtues and the good
customs of the old Anglo-Irish and Gaelic nobility who dwelt in
Ireland in their time. They write not of their piety or their valour,
or of what monasteries they founded, what lands and endowments they
gave to the Church, what immunities they granted to the ollamhs, their
bounty to the ecclesiastics and prelates of the Church, the relief
they afforded to orphans and to the poor, their munificence to men of
learning, and their hospitality to strangers, which was so great that
it may be said, in truth, that they were not at any time surpassed
by any nation of Europe in generosity and hospitality, in proportion
to the abilities they possessed. Witness the meetings of the learned
which they used to convene, a custom unheard of amongst other nations
of Europe. And yet nothing of all this can be found in the English
writers of the time, but they dwell upon the customs of the vulgar,
and upon the stories of ignorant old women, neglecting the illustrious
action of the nobility, and all that relates to the ancient Gaels that
inhabited this island before the invasion of the Anglo-Normans."
Keating's history[7] was perhaps the most popular book ever written in
Irish, and, as it could not be printed, it was propagated by hundreds
of manuscript copies all over the island. He is the author of two other
voluminous books of a theological and moral nature, called the "Key
to the Shield of the Mass," and the "Three Shafts of Death." Keating
was witty, and very fond of a good story. Here is a specimen which I
translate from his latter work. Pirates were a familiar feature in the
life of Keating's day, and he tells the following amusing tale of one
engaged in this trade, probably an O'Driscoll. Talking of the fruit of
this world Keating remarks that though it tastes sweet it ends bitterly.
THE STORY OF MAC RAICÍN.
"I think it happens to many a one in this world as it did to the wild
and ignorant Kerne from the west of Munster who went aboard a warship
to seek spoils on the ocean. And he put ashore in England, and at
the first town that they met on land the townspeople came to welcome
them and bring them to their houses to entertain them, for the people
of the town were mostly innkeepers. And the Kerne wondered at their
inviting himself, considering that he did not know any of them. But he
himself and some of the people who were with him went to the house of
one of them, to the inn, and the people of the house were very kind to
them for a week, so that what between the cleanliness of the abode,
and the excellence of his bed, food, and drink, the Kerne thought his
position a delightful one.
"However, when he and his company were taking their leave the
innkeeper called the accountant he had, saying, '_make reckoning_'
that means in Irish, 'pay your bill,' and with that the accountant
came, and he commenced to strip the people so that they were obliged
to give full payment for everything they had had in the house while
there, and they were left bare when they went away. And, moreover,
the Kerne wondered what was the cause of himself and the others being
plundered like that, for before this he had never known food to be
bought or sold.
"And when he came to Erin his friends began asking him to give an
account of England. He began to tell them, and said that he never did
see a land that was better off for food and drink, fire and bedding,
or more pleasant people, and I don't know a single fault about it,
says he, except that when strangers are taking leave of the people who
entertain them, there comes down on them an infernal horrid wretch
that they call Mac Rakeen[8] (make reckoning) who handles strangers
rudely, and strips and spoils them."
Keating then draws the moral in his own way, "that land of England is
the world; the innkeepers, the world, the flesh, and the devil; the
Kerne, people in general; and Mac Rakeen the Death."
During the time when Keating was in hiding he is said to have visited
Cork and to have transcribed manuscripts which he required for the
purposes of his history almost under the very eyes of the Lord
President himself, and to have visited Dublin in the same manner. After
the departure of Carew he reappeared, and seems to have died quietly as
parish priest of Tubrid in Tipperary about the year 1650.
Almost every native scholar produced by Ireland during the seventeenth
century seems to have been hampered by persecution in the same way as
Keating, and loud and bitter were the complaints of the Irish at the
policy of the English Government in cutting them off from education.
Peter Lombard, the Catholic Archbishop of Armagh, who died in 1625,
and who wrote in Latin and published--of course abroad, he would not
well do it at home--a "Commentary on the Kingdom of Ireland," assures
his countrymen and all Europe that it had been the steady plan of the
English Government to cut off education from the Irish, and to prevent
them having a university of their own, despite the keen longing which
his countrymen had for liberal studies, and the way in which they had
always hitherto distinguished themselves in them. Even, he asserts,
whilst England was still Catholic, her policy had been the same, and
when the question of an Irish university was being debated in the
English Council it had no bitterer enemy than a celebrated Catholic
bishop. When some one afterwards remonstrated with this dignitary for
opposing a work at once so holy and so salutary as the establishment of
a Catholic university in Ireland, the answer made him was that it was
not as a Catholic bishop he opposed it, but as an English senator.[9]
"Well for him," remarks Lombard grimly, "if in the council of God and
his saints, when the severe sentence of the Deity is passed upon the
bishop, the senator by a like display of nimble wit may escape it."
When the university, so long and so anxiously sought for, was actually
founded, "most capacious, most splendid," as Lombard puts it, _at their
expense_, in the shape of Trinity College, Dublin, and they found
themselves excluded from its benefits, their indignation, as expressed
by Lombard and others, knew no bounds.[10] But their indignation was
of little use, because they could not back it by their arms, and
when they did so, they were beaten by Cromwell, and their last state
rendered twenty times worse than their first.
Mac Firbis was another native Irish author of great learning who wrote
in Irish contemporaneously with Keating. He was himself descended from
Dathi, the last pagan monarch of Ireland, and his family had been for
time out of mind the hereditary historians of North Connacht. The great
Book of Lecan was compiled by one of his ancestors. His own greatest
surviving work is his Book of Genealogies which contains enough to fill
thirteen hundred pages of O'Donovan's edition of the "Four Masters."
This he compiled during the horrors of the Cromwellian war, simply as a
labour of love, and in the hope that at least the names and genealogies
of the nation might be saved to posterity out of what then seemed
the ruin of all things. Another book of his was a catalogue of Irish
writers.[11] Mac Firbis mentions that even in his own day he had known
Irish chieftains who governed their clans according to the "words of
Fithal and the Royal Precepts," that is, according to the books of the
Brehon law. He also compiled or wrote out the "Chronicon Scotorum,"
apparently from old manuscripts preserved in his family. He compiled,
too, a glossary of the ancients laws, of which only a fragment exists,
and made copies of five other ancient glossaries and law tracts.
He says himself, in his Book of Genealogies, that he had compiled
a dictionary of the Brehon laws in which he had given extensive
explanations of them. His genealogical volume is divided into nine
books. The first treats of Partholan, the second of the Nemedians, the
third of the Firbolg, the fourth of the Tuatha De Danann, the fifth of
the Milesians, chiefly the Eremonians, the sixth of the Irians and the
Eremonian tribes that went under the generic name of the Dal Fiatach,
the seventh of the Eberians and of the Ithians of Munster, the eighth
of the Saints of Ireland, and the ninth and last treats ot the families
descended from the Fomorians, Danes, Saxons, and Anglo-Normans.
"Here," says Mac Firbis, "is the distinction which the profound
historians draw between the three different races which are in Erin.
Every one who is white of skin, brown of hair, bold, honourable,
daring, prosperous, bountiful in the bestowal of property wealth
and rings, and who is not afraid of battle or combats, they are the
descendants of the sons of Milesius in Erin.
"Every one who is fair-haired, vengeful, large, and every plunderer,
every musical person, the professors of musical and entertaining
performances, who are adepts in all druidical and magical arts, they
are the descendants of the Tuatha De Danann in Erin.[12]
"Every one who is black-haired, who is a tattler, guileful,
tale-telling, noisy, contemptible, every wretched, mean, strolling,
unsteady, harsh, and inhospitable person, every slave, every mean
thief, every churl, every one who loves not to listen to music and
entertainment, the disturbers of every council and every assembly, and
the promoters of discord among people, these are of the descendants
of the Firbolg, of the Gailiuns,[13] of Liogairné, and of the Fir
Domhnann in Erin. But, however, the descendants of the Firbolg are the
most numerous of all these.
"This is taken from an old book. And, indeed, that it is possible to
identify a race by their personal appearance and dispositions I do not
take upon myself positively to say, for it may have been true in the
ancient times, until the race became repeatedly intermixed. For we
daily see even in our own time, and we often hear it from our old men,
that there is a similitude of people, a similitude of form, character,
and names in some families of Erin compared with others."
Mac Firbis's book, which is an enlarged continuation down to the
year 1650 or so, of the genealogical trees contained in the Books of
Leinster, Ballymote, and Lecan, is as O'Curry remarks, perhaps the
greatest national genealogical compilation in the world, and it is
sad to think that almost every tribe and family of the many thousands
mentioned in this great work has either been utterly rooted out and
exterminated, or else been dispersed to the four winds of heaven, and
the entire genealogical system and tribal polity, kept with such care
for fifteen hundred years, has disappeared off the face of the earth
with the men who kept it.
Lughaidh [Lewy] O'Clery, the great northern poet, ollamh and historian
of the O'Donnells, who, in the "Contention of the Bards" opposed Mac
Dairé, lived somewhat earlier than Keating and Mac Firbis. He has left
behind him, written in the difficult archaic Irish of the professional
ollamhs, an interesting life of Red Hugh O'Donnell, giving the history
of the time from 1586 to 1602,[14] with a full account of his hero's
birth, his treacherous capture and confinement in Dublin Castle,
his escape and recapture, his second escape, and the hardships he
underwent in returning to his people in Donegal, his inauguration as
the O'Donnell, and his "crowded hour of glorious life," until his death
at Simancas in 1608, poisoned as we now know almost to a certainty,
from the publication of the State Papers, by an emissary of Mountjoy
the Lord Deputy, and Carew the President of Munster. Of this, however,
Lughaidh O'Clery had no suspicion, he only tells of the sudden and
unexpected sickness which overtook O'Donnell and killed him after
sixteen days, to the utter ruin of the cause of Ireland. Here is his
account, which I give as a specimen of his style, of O'Donnell's
preparations before the Battle of the Curlews:
"The occupation of O'Donnell's forces during the time that he was in
this monastery was exercising themselves and preparing for the fight
and for the encounter which they were called to engage in. They were
cleaning and getting ready their guns, and drying and exposing to
the sun their grain powder, and filling their pouches, and casting
their leaden bullets and heavy spherical balls, sharpening their
strong-handled spears and their war-pikes, polishing their long
broadswords and their bright-shining axes, and preparing their arms
and armour and implements of war."
O'Donnell's address to his soldiers is quite differently recorded from
the way in which O'Sullivan Beare relates it; it is much less ornate
and eloquent, but is probably far more nearly correct, for Lughaidh
O'Clery may very well have heard it delivered himself, and it had not
passed with him through the disfiguring medium of the Latin language.
"We, though a small number," said O'Donnell, "are on the side of the
right as it seems to us, and the English whose number is large are
on the side of robbery, in order to rob you of your native land and
your means of living, and it is far easier for you to make a brave,
stout, strong fight for your native land and your lives whilst you
are your own masters and your weapons are in your hands, then when
you are put into prison and in chains after being despoiled of your
weapons, and when your limbs are bound with hard, tough cords of hemp,
after being broken and torn, some of you half dead, after you are
chained and taken in crowds on waggons and carts through the streets
of the English towns through contempt and mockery of you. My blessing
upon you, true men. Bear in your minds the firm resolution that you
had when such insults and violence were offered to you (as was done
to many of your race) that this day is the day of battle which you
have needed to make a vigorous fight in defence of your liberty by
the strength of your arms and by the courage of your hearts, while
you have your bodies under your own control and your weapons in your
hands. Have no dread nor fear of the great numbers of the soldiers of
London, nor of the strangeness of their weapons and arms, but put
your hope and confidence in the God of glory. I am certain if ye take
to heart what I say the foreigner must be defeated and ye victorious."
O'Clery's summing up of the effects of the fatal battle of Kinsale,
almost the only battle in which the Irish were defeated throughout the
whole war, is pathetic.
"Though there fell," he writes, "but so small a number of the Irish
in that battle of Kinsale, that they would not perceive their absence
after a time, and, moreover, that they did not perceive it themselves
then, yet there was not lost in one battle fought in the latter times
in Ireland so much as was lost then.
"There was lost there, first, that one island which was the richest
and most productive, the heat and cold of which were more temperate
than in the greater part of Europe, in which there was much honey and
corn and fish, many rivers, cataracts, and waterfalls, in which were
calm productive harbours, qualities which the first man of the race
of Gaedhal Glas, son of Niall, who came to Ireland beheld in it....
There were lost, too, those who escaped from it of the free, generous,
noble-born descendants of the sons of Milesius and of the prosperous,
impetuous chiefs, of the lords of territories and tribes, and of the
chieftains of districts and cantreds, for it is absolutely certain
that there were never in Erin at any time together men who were better
and more famous than the chiefs who were then, and who died afterwards
in other countries one after the other, after their being robbed of
their fatherland and their noble possessions which they left to their
enemies on that battlefield. Then were lost besides, nobility and
honour, generosity and great deeds, hospitality and goodness, courtesy
and noble birth, polish and bravery, strength and courage, valour and
constancy, the authority and the sovereignty of the Irish of Erin to
the end of time."
An interesting prose work, evidently written by an eye-witness, exists
of the wanderings of O'Neill and O'Donnell upon the Continent after
they had fled from Ireland in 1607. It describes how they were driven
by a storm past Sligo harbour and past the Arran islands, where they
were unable to land for fear of the king's shipping then in Galway bay.
For thirteen days they were hurried along by a tremendous storm. The
narrator notes a curious incident which took place during the rough
weather at open sea: two merlin falcons descended and alit upon the
ship, which were caught by the sailors who kept and fed them; they were
ultimately given by O'Neill to the governor of a French town. After
long buffeting by the storm and after hopelessly losing their way they
fell in with three Danish ships who informed them that they were in
Flemish waters. They were afterwards nearly wrecked on the coast of
Guernsey, and finally, after twenty-one days at sea, they managed with
the utmost difficulty to put in at "Harboure de Grace," on the French
coast, just as their provisions had run out. Their reception by the
French king, the machinations of the English ambassador against them,
and their journey into Spain[15] are minutely described, evidently
by some one who had been in their own company, probably a Franciscan
friar. Their life and adventures in Spain are minutely recounted down
to the period of O'Donnell's death, who was treacherously poisoned by
an emissary from Carew, the President of Munster, with the sanction of
Mountjoy, the Lord Deputy. It is noticeable that the Irish biographer
entertained no suspicion of this foul crime, which has, as we have
said, only come to light through the publication of the State Papers
during the last few years.[16]
Another curious piece of historical narrative by a religious is the
account given of the Irish wars from November, 1641, to January, 1647,
by a northern friar called O'Mellon, who was an eye-witness of much of
what he relates.[17]
Of a somewhat similar nature is the interesting account of Montrose's
wars in the Book of Clanranald, a manuscript written in pure Irish and
in Irish characters, by a Gael from the Islands, Niall Mac Vurich, the
hereditary bard and historian of the Clanranald.[18] The Mac Vurichs,
who are descended from a celebrated bard, Muireach O'Daly,[19] who fled
into Scotland from O'Donnell about the year 1200, enjoyed the farm of
Stailgarry and the "four pennies of Drimsdale, in South Uist, down to
the middle of the last century, by virtue of their hereditary office."
The object of Mac Vurich in writing the history of Montrose's campaign
is to vindicate and extol the career of Alaster Mac Donald and the
Gael. "Nothing," says the writer, "is here written except of the people
whom I have seen myself and with a part of whose deeds I am acquainted
from my own recollection." He gives detailed accounts of several of
Montrose's battles in which the Gael, Irish and Scottish, were engaged.
His account of the fight of Auldearn is an interesting specimen of his
style. He tells us how Alaster Mac Donald, son of Coll Ciotach, son of
Gillespie,[20] commanded on the right of the army that day, and was in
the act of marshalling his foot when
"a gentleman from Lord Gordon came with a message to him and spoke in
this manner: 'Mac Donald, we have heard that there was an agreement
and a friendship between our ancestors, and that they did not strike
a blow against one another, whatever strife might have been between
the other Scots and them; neither was the fame of any other tribe
for valour greater than theirs; therefore, by way of renewing the
agreement, I would wish to receive a favour from you, namely, an
exchange of foot on the first day of my service to my earthly king,
that is, you taking my foot forces and you sending me your own.
"That (arrangement) was promptly carried out by Alaster, son of Colla.
He sent four score and ten of the veteran soldiers who had often been
tested in great dangers in many places; and there came in their stead
three hundred foot of the men of the Bog of Gight, Strathbogey, and
the Braes,[21] who were not accustomed to skirmishing, hard conflict,
or the loud, harsh noise of battle. Although that was a bad exchange
for Alaster it was good for his men, for they were never in any battle
or skirmish from which they came safer--it seemed to them that the
cavalry of the Gordons had no duty to perform but to defend the foot
from every danger!
"Alaster drew up his men in a garden which they had come to, and
he found that there remained with him of his own men but two score
and ten of his gentlemen. He put live and twenty of these in the
first rank, and five and twenty of them in the rear rank, and drew
up his three hundred foot of the Gordons in their midst and marched
before them. The men who opposed him were the regiment of the laird
of Lawers, well-trained men, and the gentlemen of Lewis along with
them. The clamour of the fight began as is usual in every field of
battle, which the foot who were behind Alaster son of Colla, could not
well endure, for some of them would not hear the sough of an arrow
or the whistling of a ball without ducking their heads or starting
aside. Alaster's defence was to go backwards, beckoning to his
party with his hand to be of good courage and march on quickly while
his gentlemen were entirely engaged in keeping their companies in
order, but they failed to do it; and I knew men who killed some of
the Gordons' foot in order to prevent them from flying. And when the
enemy perceived this they prepared to attack them and charge. Alaster
ordered his men then to gain the garden which they had forsaken
before, but they were attacked with pikes and arrows and many of them
were slain on every side of the garden before the party got into it.
Alaster's sword broke, and he got another sword into his hand, and he
did not himself remember who gave it to him, but some persons supposed
it was his brother-in-law, Mac Cáidh [Davidson] of Ardnacross, who
gave him his own sword. Davidson [himself], Feardorcha Mackay, and
other good gentlemen fell at that time at the entrance of the garden
who were waiting to have Alaster in before them."
Mac Vurich goes on to describe what happened to one of Alaster's
gentlemen, Ranald Mac Ceanain of Mull, who found himself assailed by
numbers of the enemy on the outside of this garden.
"He turned his face to his enemy, his sword was round his neck, his
shield on his left arm, and a hand-gun in his right hand. He pointed
the gun at them, and a party of pikemen who were after him halted.
There happened to be a narrow passage before them, and on that account
there was not one of his own party that had been after him but went
before him. There was a great slaughter made of the Gordons' foot by
the bowmen.[22] It happened at that moment that a bowman was running
past Ranald, and he shooting at the Gordons. The bowman looked over
his shoulder and saw the halt to which Ranald had brought the pikemen,
and he turned his hand from the man that was before him, and aimed
his arrow at Ranald, which struck him on the cheek, and he sent a
handbreadth of it through the other cheek. Then Ranald fired the
shot, but not at the bowman. He threw the gun away and put the hand
to his sword, whilst his shield-arm was stretched far out from him
in front, to defend himself against the pikes. He made an effort to
get the sword, but it would not draw, for the belt turned round, and
the sword did not come out. He tried it the second time by laying
the shield-hand under his [other] armpit against the scabbard of the
sword, and he drew it out, but five pikes were driven into him between
the breast and chin on his thus exposing (?) himself. However, not
one of the wounds they gave him was an inch deep. He was for a while
at this work, cutting at the pikes, and at all that were stuck in
the boss of the shield. He set his back against the garden to defend
himself, and was with difficulty working his way towards the door.
The pikemen were getting daunted by all that were being cut, except
one man who was striking at him desperately and fiercely. That man
thought that he would keep his pike from being cut, and that his
opponent would fall by him. Ranald was listening all the time to
Alaster (inside the wall) rating the Gordons for the bad efforts they
were making to relieve himself from the position where he was, and he
was all the time step by step making for the door of the garden. At
last when he thought that he was near the door he gave a high ready
spring away from the pikeman, turning his back to him and his face to
the door, stooping his head. The pikeman followed him and stooped his
own head under the door, but Alaster was watching them and he gave the
pikeman a blow, so that though he turned quickly to get back, his head
struck against Ranald's thigh, from the blow Alaster gave him, and his
body falls in the doorway and his head in the garden, and when Ranald
straightened his back and looked behind him to the door, it was thus
he beheld his adversary. The arrow that was stuck in Ranald was cut,
and it was taken out of him, and he got it drawn away, and he found
the use of his tongue all right, and power of speech--a thing he never
thought to get again."
This book, which is in pure Irish, was meant to be read not only by the
Highland Gaels, but by Irishmen as well, and indeed the Black Book of
Clanranald was picked up on a second-hand bookstall in Dublin.
There were several other prose writers during the seventeenth century,
whose books, unlike those of Keating, Mac Firbis, O'Clery, and others
we have mentioned, had the good fortune to be printed, but their works
are mostly religious. Florence Conry published in 1626 at Louvain
a book called "the Mirror of the Pious"[23]; Hugh Mac Cathmhaoil,
Archbishop of Armagh, published in 1618, also at Louvain, a book called
"the Mirror of the Sacrament of Penance"[24]; Theobald Stapleton
published at Brussels in 1639, a "Book of Christian Doctrine," one
side Latin and the other Irish; Anthony Gernon published at Louvain
in 1645, a book called "The Paradise of the Soul"[25]; Richard Mac
Gilla Cody printed in 1667, a book on Miracles in Irish and English;
Father Francis O'Mulloy published a long book called "The Lamp of the
Faithful"[26] in Irish at Louvain in 1676, and in the following year
his rare and valuable Irish Grammar in Latin and Irish, one half of
which is dedicated to the subject of prosody, and is the fullest, most
competent, and most interesting account which we have of the Irish
classical metres as practised in the later schools, by one who was
fully acquainted both with them and their methods.
Several minor romantic stories, mostly fabulous creations unconnected
with Irish history, seem to have been written during this century, and
many more were translated from French, Spanish, Latin, and possibly
English.[27] Of the more important works of Michael O'Clery, we shall
speak in the next chapter.
[1]
"Ionann dam sliabh a's sáile
Eire a's iarthar Easpáine,
Do chuireas dúnta go deas
Geata dlúth ris an doilgheas."
Copied from a MS. in Trinity College. I forget its number.
[2] Published by the Celtic Society in 1848, in 3 vols., with a
translation and copious notes.
[3] Regal Visitation Book, A.D. 1622, MS. in Marsh's Library, Dublin,
quoted by D'Arcy McGee in his "Irish Writers of the Seventeenth
Century," p. 85; but Hardiman, in his "West Connaught," no doubt
rightly gives the date of this visitation as 1615. A writer in the
"Dublin Penny Journal," identified this schoolmaster with the author of
the "Cambrensis Eversus," but Hardiman shows that it, must have been
his father. _See_ "West Connaught," p. 420 note.
[4] Elrington's great edition of Ussher's works in 17 vols., but I have
not noted volume or page.
[5] The books of ancient authority which Keating quotes as still
existing in his own day, are the Psalter of Cashel, compiled by Cormac
mac Culinan; the Book of Armagh, apparently a different book from
that now so-called; the Book of Cluain-Aidnech-Fintan in Leix, the
Book of Glendaloch, the Book of Rights, the [now fragmentary] Leabhar
na h-Uidhre, the Yellow Book of Moling, the Black Book of Molaga. He
also mentions the Book of Conquests, the Book of the Provinces [a book
of the genealogies of the Gaelic tribes of each province], the Book
of Reigns [said to have been written by Gilla Kevin, a bard of the
eleventh century], the Book of Epochs, the Book of Synchronisms [by
Flann of the Monastery], the Dinnseanchus [a book of the etymologies,
and history of names and places, published from various MSS. by Whitley
Stokes, in the "Folklore Review"], the Book of the Pedigrees of Women,
and a number of others.
[6] "Innus gur ab é nós, beagnach, an phrimpolláin do ghnid, ag
scríobhadh ar Eirionchaibh."
[7] The first volume of Keating's History was published in Dublin
by Halliday, in 1811, but that brilliant young scholar did not live
to complete it. John O'Mahoney, the Fenian Head Centre, published a
splendid translation of the whole work from the best MSS. which in his
exile he was able to procure, in New York in 1866, but its introduction
into the United Kingdom was prohibited on the grounds that it infringed
copyright. Dr. Todd remarks on this translation, "notwithstanding the
extravagant and very mischievous political opinions avowed by Mr.
O'Mahoney, his translation of Keating is a great improvement upon
the ignorant and dishonest one published by Mr. Dermod O'Connor more
than a century ago,"--a foolish remark of Dr. Todd's, who must have
understood that most readers of Keating are to be found amongst men
to whom his own political opinions thus unnecessarily vented, were
equally "mischievous." Dr. Robert Atkinson published the Text of
the "Three Shafts of Death" without a translation, but with a most
carefully-compiled and admirable glossary in 1890. Keating's third work
has never been published, but I printed some extracts from a good MS.
of it lent me by the O'Conor Don in an American paper. My friend Mr.
John Mac Neill has pointed me out what is apparently a fourth work of
Keating's on the Blessed Virgin.
[8] From the Kerne's, who was of course utterly ignorant of English,
mistaking "make" for the Irish "Mac," it is plain that the ancient
pronunciation of this word (Anglo-Saxon _macian_) had not then been
lost.
[9] "Cum Hiberni et bene sint affecti, et insigniter idonei ad studia
literarum et liberalium artium, utpote ingeniis bonis et acutis passim
præditi, non potuit hactenus obtineri unquam à præfectis Anglis ut in
Hibernia Universitas studiorum erigeretur. Imò dum aliquando de eâ
re etiam, Catholico tempore, in Concilio Angliæ propositio fieret,
obstitit acerrimé unus e primariis Senatoribus, et ipse quidem celebris
episcopus, quem cum postea alius quidam admoneret, mirari se quod is
utpote episcopus Catholicus tam sanctum atque salutare opus impediret.
Respondit ille se non ut Episcopum Catholicæ Ecclesiæ sed ut Senatorem
regni Angliæ sententiam istam in concilio protulisse, quâ opus istud
impediretur.
"Quod bene forte se haberet si in Concilio Dei et Sanctorum ejus quando
de Episcopo severior daretur sententia, ab eâ, pari posset acumine
Senator liberari" ("De Hibernia Commentarius." Louvain, 1632).
[10] "Toties requisita studiorum Universitas ante annos aliquot
erectum fuit decreto Reginæ (tametsi sumptibus Indigenarum) juxta
civitatem Dubliniensem, capacissimum et splendidissimum collegium,
in quo ordinatum est ut disciplinæ omnes liberales traderentur, sed
ab hæreticis magistris, quales cùm Hibernia nequaquam subministraret
ex Anglia submissi sunt. Qui pro sua etiam propaganda et confirmanda
religione, insuper acceperunt, et munus prædicandi doctrinam suam
Evangelicam in civitate Dublinensi et mandatum exigendi juramentum,
supremæ potestatis Reginæ in rebus ecclesiasticis, ab adolescentibus
quos in literis instituebant," etc.
These extracts show the light in which the native Irish regarded the
foundation of Trinity College.
[11] The late Mr. Hennessy I believe discovered and made a transcript
of a portion of this book, which is in the Royal Irish Academy, but I
have been unable to lay my hands on it.
[12] It must be observed that no Irish family is traced to a Tuatha De
Danann ancestry.
[13] O'Curry. MS. Mat. p. 224. For a very different estimate of the
Gailiuns or Gaileóins, _see_ above p. 323.
[14] It is a mere accident that this valuable work has survived. The
only known copy of it is in the handwriting of Lughaidh's son Cucogry,
and the book was unknown to O'Reilly when he compiled his "Irish
Writers." It was handed down in the O'Clery family until it came to
Patrick O'Clery who lent it to O'Reilly, the lexicographer, some time
after 1817, and, O'Reilly dying, the book was sold at his auction in
spite of the protests of poor O'Clery. It is now in the Royal Irish
Academy and has been edited by the late Father Denis Murphy, S.J., in
1893, whose translation I have for the most part followed. The text of
this biography would fill about 150 pages of this book.
[15] This interesting work, though drawn on by Father Meehan, seems to
be unknown to Irish scholars. It contains 135 closely written pages. It
was discovered in Colgan's cell at Louvain after his death, and is now
amongst the uncatalogued manuscripts in the Franciscans' Monastery in
Dublin, where it escaped the research of the late Sir John Gilbert, who
catalogued their books for the Government, and of M. de Jubainville,
who also spent some days in examining their MSS. I owe its discovery
to the courtesy of the learned librarian, Father O'Reilly, who has
permitted me to make a transcript of it for future publication.
[16] Here is a specimen of the language of this book: "Do rala
ambasadoir rig Saxan sa geath_raigh_ in tan sin. Bui ag dénomh a
landithill aidhmhillte _ocus_ urchoide do na maithip dia madh eidir
leiss. Teid sin a ndimhaoineass _ocus_ a mitharbha, oir ni thug in Ri
audiens no eisteacht go _feadh tri_ lá do _acht_ ag dhol dfiadhach gach
laithe."
[17] Here is a specimen of the language of this work which is much
shorter than the account of O'Neill's and O'Donnell's wanderings; there
is a fine copy of it made by O'Curry from the original in the Royal
Irish Academy, which fills one hundred pages: "Fagbadh na croidheachta
[what the English called _creaghts_] bochta, rugadar leo a ttoil féin
diobh, an chuid do imthigh dona croidheachtaibh sios suas sair siar.
Ann do marbhadh Cormac Ua Hagan mac Eoghain, oc oc as bocht! S do bhi
Sior Feidhlinn a Cill Cainnigh an tan so. Do cuaidh cuid dinn don
Breifni, cuid dinn go Conndae Arda Macha, co Conndae Tir Eoghain, co
condae Luth," etc.
[18] Published in "Reliquiæ Celticæ," vol ii. p. 149, with an
interesting introduction, but a most inaccurate translation.
[19] _See_ pp. 491-2 for an account of this O'Daly.
[20] These are the names alluded to by Milton in his famous sonnet,
on his _Tetrachordon_, which name, he says, the public could not
understand.
"Cries the stall-reader, 'Bless us! what a word on
A title-page is this!' and some in file
Stand spelling false while one might walk to Mile-
End Green. Why it is harder, sirs, than _Gordon_,
_Colkitto_ or _Macdonnel_ or _Galasp!_"
"Colkitto" is for Colla Ciotach, "left-handed Coll or Colla," and
"Galasp" is Giolla-easpuig, now Gillespie. Alaster Mac Donald was
killed at the battle of Cnoc na ndos by the renegade Murough O'Brien in
1647.
[21] "Do mhuinntir bhug na gaoithe, agus srathabhalgaidh agus bhraighe
an mhachuire."
[22] "Do bhi marbhadh tiugh ag lucht bóghadh ga dhénamh ar na
coisidhibh Gordonac[ha]." Readers of the "Legend of Montrose" will
recollect the surprise and scorn with which Major Dugald Dalgetty
learns that some of the Highlanders carried bows, but here we see the
execution they wrought even in the hands of the Covenanters.
[23] "Sgathán an chrábhaidh."
[24] "Sgathán Sacrameinte na h-Aithrighe."
[25] "Párrthas an Anma."
[26] "Lóchran na gcreidhmheach."
[27] In the MS. marked H. 2. 7. in Trinity College there is a story
of Sir Guy, Earl of Warwick and Bocigam [Buckingham], and p. 348 of
the same MS. another about Bibus, son of Sir Guy of Hamtuir. These
must have been taken from English sources. Of the same nature, but of
different dates, are Irish redactions of Marco Polo's travels, the
Adventures of Hercules, the Quest of the Holy Grail, Maundeville's
Travels, the Adventures of the Bald Dog, Teglach an bhuird Chruinn,
_i.e._, the Household of the Round Table, the Chanson de geste of
Fierabras, Barlaam and Josaphat, the History of Octavian, Orlando and
Melora, Meralino Maligno, Richard and Lisarda, the Story of the Theban
War, Turpin's Chronicle, the Triumphs of Charlemagne, the History of
King Arthur, the Adventures of Menalippa and Alchimenes, and probably
many others.