ELIZABETHAN IRELAND
[Sidenote: Natural features of Ireland.]
The physical features of a country must always have great influence
on its history. Plains naturally submit to strong and centralised
government, while mountains tend to isolation and to the development
of local liberties. Where races have warred for the possession of
a country, the weaker has been often driven into some mountainous
corner, which the conquerors have been contented to bridle by castles
or fortified towns. But where mountains or other natural strongholds
are scattered over the face of the land, the conditions of conquest
are different. It has been noted that while no country is more easily
overrun than Spain, none is more difficult to occupy permanently. And
this was the case of Ireland. As long as the Anglo-Norman settlement
retained its vigour, the natives were driven into the less fertile
districts, while fortresses protected the good land. But as the
policy of the Plantagenet kings gradually weakened the colony, the
castles were deserted and the native race resumed possession of the
soil. Feudal law sought the protection of walled towns, which were
of Danish or Anglo-Norman origin; and those nobles who retained
their power did so only upon condition of more or less perfectly
assimilating themselves to Irish chiefs. When the Tudor reconquest
began, it was seen that two courses were open to the Crown. Englishmen
were encouraged to settle, and a system of garrisons was gradually
established. Sometimes the prevailing idea was to substitute English
for Irish proprietors; at other times it was thought better to
conciliate the native chiefs, while taking such military precautions
as might prevent them from preying upon the settlers. During the whole
of the sixteenth century statesmen did what they could to persuade
the Irish chiefs to hold of the Crown, and thus to become liable to
forfeiture.
[Sidenote: Want of communications.]
[Sidenote: Irish strongholds.]
Ireland has long been covered with a network of good roads, but a
glance at any tolerable map will show how difficult it was to occupy
before the roads were made. In clear weather mountains are always
visible, both to the crew of a circumnavigating ship and to the
sportsman who seeks snipe or waterfowl in the central bogs. It is said
that when the ordnance survey was made, fires lit upon the Galties
in Tipperary were answered by fires on a mountain in Cavan; and the
great range of Slieve Bloom must be passed between those two points.
Nor was it with mountains only that Elizabethan generals had to deal.
Lord Grey is said to have introduced the first coach, but Ireland had
no tolerable roads for long after his time. There were a few stone
causeways, but great part of the island was covered with natural woods,
and these could be crossed only by passes which the chiefs periodically
agreed to cut both for troops and for peaceful travellers. When war
broke out--and the doors of Janus were seldom shut for long--these
rudimentary roads were easily closed. A few trees were felled, so as
to prevent horse from passing at all. The branches of others were
partially cut and skilfully interlaced, so that even infantry, while
they struggled through the barrier, were exposed to the fire of an
unseen enemy. Bridges were but few, and holes dug in the beds of rivers
made the fords impassable, or at least very dangerous. When the Irish
were hard pressed, they could retire to dry spots surrounded by bogs,
and nearly every little lake contained a _crannoge_, where some oats
had been stored, and which might be held until the assailants had
exhausted their provisions. The little active cattle accompanied their
light-footed masters, while the soldiers, whose clothes were seldom
dry, perished miserably of dysentery and marsh-fever. In the absence
of field artillery, very rude earthworks might be long held, and in
any case they could be easily abandoned, while Tyrone made it a point
of not defending castles, which experience had shown to be untenable
against cannon. Garrisons, and garrisons only, could starve out the
guerillas, and it was by their multiplication and maintenance that
Mountjoy was enabled to accomplish Elizabeth's lifelong task.
[Sidenote: Natural defences. Ulster.]
[Sidenote: Connaught.]
[Sidenote: Leinster.]
[Sidenote: Munster.]
Ulster is, on the whole, very hilly, and it is easy to see how strong
it must have been when the woods were still uncut, when there were
practically no roads, and when drainage had not yet been thought
of. The most inaccessible forest was that of Glenconkein, about
Draperstown in Londonderry; but the whole province was a stronghold,
and a mere enumeration of woods and bogs would be useless. Connaught
also is a land of mountains and bogs, and was once a land of woods. It
was about the Curlews that the hardest fighting took place, and the
northern part of Leitrim was very difficult to attack. In Leinster
Glenmalure was famous for a great disaster to the English arms, and
was the chief stronghold of Feagh MacHugh O'Byrne. The oak wood of
Shillelagh in Wicklow was a noted fastness, and, from having given
its name to a rustic weapon, it is of all the best remembered. Both
King's and Queen's Counties were full of woods and lurking places, the
great bog called the Togher, near Maryborough, being one of the most
important. The Slievemargy range between Monasterevan and Carlow was
the frequent resort of Rory Oge O'More and of his son Owen MacRory, and
the O'Byrnes were not very far off. Wexford had many bogs and woods;
but the Kavanaghs and other turbulent clans were scarcely formidable
towards the close of Elizabeth's reign, except during the general
collapse of authority which followed the disaster of 1598. In Munster
what was generally called the 'great wood' lay to the north of Mallow.
Glengariffe was another great Cork stronghold, and Limerick was full
of forests. In Kerry, besides Glanageenty, where Desmond was killed,
there was Glenflesk near Killarney, and indeed the whole county is
evidently suited for guerilla warfare. Sir Nicholas Browne reported, in
1597, that Iraghticonnor, the country of O'Connor Kerry, was wedged in
between his deadly enemies, Lord Fitzmaurice and the Knight of Glin:
'his country is but small, and he is not able to make above seven score
men, but by reason of his woods and bogs he was wont to hold his own
in spite of them both.' But of all the Munster strongholds none was so
famous as the glen of Aherlow in Tipperary. 'Who knows not Arlo-hill?'
says Spenser, applying the name of the vale to the lofty peak of
Galtymore which overshadows it. The poet had much to tell of a mythical
golden age in those wilds, but a curse had come upon them, and in his
time, he says:
'those woods, and all that goodly chase,
Doth to this day with wolves and thieves abound;
Which too, too true that land's indwellers since have found.'
Inseparably connected as it is with his memory, that glen of Aherlow
caused Spenser's ruin; for from it Owen MacRory and Tyrrell issued
forth to destroy the undertakers and all their works.
[Sidenote: Field sports.]
[Sidenote: Hawks.]
[Sidenote: Hounds.]
[Sidenote: Horses.]
[Sidenote: Game.]
Fighting in Ireland was the serious business of life, but soldiers,
officials, and settlers found some time for amusement also. Irish
hawks, hounds, and horses were all thought worthy to be sent as
presents to great men in England; and hawks were often made the subject
of treaties with Irish chiefs. Falconry no doubt was practised in
Ireland, but we hear much more of hunting, and the game was plentiful.
Irish wolf-hounds were famous, and were considered handsome presents;
the Great Mogul, Jehangir, being glad to accept some in 1615. Perrott
sent a brace, one black and the other white, to Walsingham. 'This
great white dog,' said Sir S. Bagenal when sending one to Cecil, 'is
the most furious beast that ever I saw.' These hounds were of great
size, but doctors differ as to their points, and it is not even certain
whether they had rough or smooth coats. A modern club, which has tried
to restore the breed, lays down that the Irish wolf-hound should be
'not quite so heavy or massive as the Great Dane, but more so than the
deer-hound, which in general type he should otherwise resemble.' Red
deer abounded all over the country; and martens, now almost extinct,
were so plentiful that the Earl of Ossory, in Henry VIII.'s time, kept
a pack of hounds for them alone. As many as twelve dozen marten-skins
could sometimes be sent as a present, and even Strafford hoped to get
enough to line a gown for Archbishop Laud. The ambling nags called
hobbies were also much valued in England. Wolves were very common,
and neither they nor the hounds which pursued them died out until the
eighteenth century. Wild fowl, of course, abounded, and Moryson says
he had seen sixty pheasants served at one feast; but partridges were
scarce. Magpies seem to have been introduced late in the seventeenth
century.[422]
[Sidenote: Agriculture.]
[Sidenote: Cattle.]
About the towns, and in the parts settled by Englishmen, tillage was
carried on as in England. Many of the Irish chiefs also encouraged
corn-growing, and in time of war the soldiers were much occupied in
destroying these crops. No doubt the husbandry was rude, as it long
continued to be, and the barbarous custom of ploughing by the tail was
restrained by order in Council in 1606, but was still practised in
remote places as late as Charles II.'s reign, when it was prohibited by
Act of Parliament. The custom of burning oats from the straw, and so
making cakes without threshing, was equally long-lived and had also to
be restrained by authority. But the chief wealth of the Irish was in
their cattle, and the following statement of Moryson is sustained by
innumerable letters:--
'Ireland, after much blood spilt in the civil wars, became less
populous, and as well great lords of countries as other inferior
gentlemen laboured more to get new possessions for inheritance than by
husbandry and peopling of their old lands to increase their revenues,
so as I then observed much grass (with which the island so much
abounds) to have perished without use, and either to have rotted,
or in the next spring-time to be burned, lest it should hinder the
coming of new grass. This plenty of grass makes the Irish have infinite
multitudes of cattle, and in the late rebellion (Tyrone's) the very
vagabond rebels had great multitude of cows, which they still (like the
Nomades) drove with them, whithersoever themselves were driven, and
fought for them as for their altars and families. By this abundance of
cattle the Irish have a frequent, though somewhat poor, traffic for
their hides, the cattle being in general very small, and only the men
and the greyhounds of great stature. Neither can the cattle possibly
be great, since they eat only by day, and then are brought at evening
within the bawns of castles, where they stand or lie all night in a
dirty yard, without so much as a lock of hay, whereof they make little
for sluggishness, and that little they altogether keep for their
horses. And they are thus brought in by night for fear of thieves, the
Irish using almost no other kind of theft, or else for fear of wolves,
the destruction whereof being much neglected by the inhabitants,
oppressed by greater mischiefs, they are so much grown in numbers,
as sometimes in winter nights they will come to prey in villages and
the suburbs of cities.... The wild Irish feed mostly on whitemeats,
and esteem for a great dainty sour curds, vulgarly called by them
_bonnyclabber_. And for this cause they watchfully keep their cows,
and fight for them as for religion and life; and when they are almost
starved, yet they will not kill a cow, except it be old and yield no
milk. Yet will they upon hunger in time of war open a vein of the cow,
and drink the blood, but in no case kill or much weaken it.'
Sir Nicholas White has recorded that the first red cattle were brought
to Dingle from Cornwall, and it is probably from the cross between
these red Devon or Cornish beasts and the black cattle of the country
that the famous Kerry breed is descended. The butter commonly made in
Ireland in the sixteenth century is described as very bad.[423]
[Sidenote: Exports. Fish.]
Guicciardini says the Irish exported hides, fur, and coarse linens
and woollens to Antwerp. The consumption of wine was great; and for
this the chief article sent in exchange was fish. In 1553 Philip II.
agreed to pay 1,000_l._ a year for twenty-one years to gain for his
subjects the right to fish on the Irish coast. Fishermen of all nations
resorted to Berehaven, paying O'Sullivan Bere for leave. In the North
O'Donnell was called the King of Fish, and he owned the salmon-leap
at Ballyshannon. A Norse writer, older than the Tudor period, had
already noted that Lough Erne contained salmon enough to feed all the
people in Ireland. The fisheries of the Bann and Foyle were also of
great importance, and Spenser says that both the Suir and the Barrow
were full of salmon. As to sea fish, we hear more of foreign than of
native vessels. The few port towns certainly produced good sailors, and
among native clans the O'Driscolls, O'Flaherties, and O'Malleys loved
the sea. About the famous sea-Amazon, Grace O'Malley, many legends
have been preserved; but of her, and of all the other Celtic rovers,
it may be said that they were rather pirates than peaceful traders or
fishermen.[424]
[Sidenote: Manufactures.]
[Sidenote: Woollens.]
The only Irish manufacture of much importance was that of woollens,
though frequent attempts were made to introduce others. Linen was
made to a limited extent, and furnished the material for the enormous
shirts, 'thirty or forty ells in a shirt, all gathered and wrinkled
and washed in saffron, because they never put them off till they were
worn out,' which fashion died out with the sixteenth century; but flax
continued to be grown and yarn exported chiefly from Ulster, and it
was upon this foundation that Strafford built. Irish frieze and other
coarse woollens had been famous in the middle ages. Drugget is said
by French antiquaries to have been so called from Drogheda. In the
sixteenth century Ireland had come to be specially famous for a kind of
rug, of which Moryson says the best were made at Waterford. They were
thought worthy of kings' houses, and Vice-Chamberlain Heneage asked
Sir George Carew to 'provide half-a-dozen of the finest and lightest
Irish rugs to lay upon beds, that can be gotten.' The little sheep of
the country were numerous, but it is agreed that the wool was coarse.
The making of the rugs was a craft in itself, and was probably known to
few. Petty, who wrote under Charles II., remarks that the rebellion had
injured the cloth trade, and that making the 'excellent, thick, spungy,
warm coverlets' was a lost art. In Elizabeth's time restraints were
placed on the export of wool, with a view to encourage manufactures,
but the prohibition was never really effective.[425]
[Sidenote: Drinking.]
[Sidenote: Wine.]
[Sidenote: Whisky.]
[Sidenote: Ale and beer.]
Hard drinking was but too common, and the materials were abundant.
The trade in claret had gone on from the time when Gascony belonged
to the kings of England. But sherry and other strong vintages of the
Peninsula were even more popular. 'When they come to any market town,'
says Moryson, 'to sell a cow or a horse, they never return home till
they have drunk the price in Spanish wine (which they call the King of
Spain's daughter) or in Irish _usquebagh_, and till they have outslept
two or three days' drunkenness. And not only the common sort, but even
the lords and their wives, the more they want this drink at home, the
more they swallow it when they come to it, till they be as drunk as
beggars.' Usquebagh, that is whisky, was made in many places in the
primitive fashion followed by illicit distillers in our own time.
It was generally considered more wholesome than any spirit produced
in England, and the damp climate was made the excuse for excessive
indulgence. Raisins and fennel-seeds were used to flavour it. An Act
of Parliament passed in 1556 recites that '_aqua vitæ_, a drink
nothing profitable to be daily drunken and used, is now universally
throughout this realm of Ireland made, and especially in the borders
of the Irishry, and for the furniture of Irishmen; and thereby much
corn, grain, and other things are consumed, spent, and wasted;' and
its manufacture was prohibited except with the Lord-Deputy's licence.
A fine of 4_l._ and imprisonment during pleasure were the prescribed
penalties for each offence; but peers, landowners worth 10_l._ a year,
and freemen of cities and boroughs were allowed to make enough for
their own use; and the Act was probably a dead letter. Bodley, who
wrote in 1603, tells us that it was usual for lay and cleric, churl
and noble, in short 'men and women of every rank, to pour usquebaugh
down their throats by day and by night; and that not for hilarity
only (which would be praiseworthy), but for constant drunkenness,
which is detestable. Beer made of malt and hops was not yet brewed in
Ireland, and what the soldiers consumed was imported. But strong ale
was produced in the country and was probably preferred by the people,
for hops were not in general use even in 1690. Early in James I.'s
reign nothing struck an Englishman more than the number of alehouses in
Dublin. 'I am now,' says one, 'to speak of a certain kind of commodity
that outstretcheth all that I have hitherto spoken of, and that is the
selling of ale in Dublin: a quotidian commodity that hath vent in every
house in the town every day in the week, at every hour in the day, and
in every minute in the hour. There is no merchandize so vendible, it is
the very marrow of the commonwealth in Dublin: the whole profit of the
town stands upon ale-houses and selling of ale.'[426]
[Sidenote: Description of the people.]
[Sidenote: Dymmok.]
[Sidenote: Moryson.]
[Sidenote: Trollope.]
'The people,' says Dymmok, 'are of nature very glorious, frank, ireful,
good horsemen, able to endure great pains, delighted in war, great
hospitality, of religion for the most part Papists, great gluttons,
and of a sensual and vicious life, deep dissemblers, secret in
displeasure, of a cruel revenging mind and irreconcilable. Of wit they
are quick and capable, kind-hearted where they take, and of exceeding
love towards their foster brethren. Of complexion they are clear and
well-favoured, both men and women, tall and corpulent bodies, and of
themselves careless and bestial.' This is very much the view taken by
English travellers generally, and in many points they are confirmed
by the Spaniard Cuellar. Mountjoy complains of the want of clean
linen, and his secretary has much to say on that subject. 'Many of the
English-Irish,' he tells us, 'have by little and little been infected
with the Irish filthiness, and that in the very cities, excepting
Dublin, and some of the better sort in Waterford, where the English
continually lodging in their houses, they more retain the English
diet.... In cities passengers may have feather-beds soft and good,
but most commonly lousy, especially in the high ways; whether that
come by their being forced to lodge common soldiers or from the nasty
filthiness of the nation in general. For even in the best city, as
at Cork, I have observed that my own and other Englishmen's chambers
hired of the citizens, were scarce swept once in the week, and the dust
laid in a corner was perhaps cast out once in a month or two. I did
never see any public inns with signs hanged out among the English or
English-Irish; but the officers of cities and villages appoint lodgings
to the passengers, and perhaps in each city they shall find one or
two houses where they will dress meat, and these be commonly houses
of Englishmen, seldom of the Irish; so as these houses having no sign
hung out, a passenger cannot challenge right to be entertained in them,
but must have it of courtesy and by entreaty.... Some of our carriage
horses falling into wild Irish hands, when they found soap or starch
carried for the use of our laundresses, they did eat them greedily,
and when they stuck in their teeth, cursed bitterly the gluttony of us
English churls, for so they term us.' And Andrew Trollope, an English
lawyer, who wrote with more force than politeness, says the Irish,
except in the walled towns, were almost savages, and that 'at night
Mr., or Mrs., or dame, men-servants, maid-servants--women-servants I
should have said, for I think there be no maids--guests, strangers, and
all, lie in one little room not so good or handsome as many a hogscote
in England, and when they rise in the morning they shake their ears
and go their ways, without any serving of God or other making of them
a-ready.' On arriving in Dublin, he says, 'I lodged in a lawyer's
house, a man of my own profession, where I found my entertainment
better than my welcome, as all Englishmen shall do.'[427]
[Sidenote: Tyrone's soldiers.]
[Sidenote: How they were armed.]
[Sidenote: Diet and pay.]
The gallowglasses, with their axes, and the kerne, with their darts,
became gradually obsolete during the Elizabethan period, pikemen
taking the place of the former and musketeers of the latter. Tyrone
taught his men the use of firearms, and they became better shots than
the English. The difficulty of recruiting in England was great, and
deserters were habitually replaced by Irishmen, who often passed over
to their countrymen, arms and all. When Tyrone was loyal he was allowed
a certain number of men in the Queen's pay, and these he frequently
changed, so as to increase the number of trained soldiers about him;
thus anticipating on a small scale the famous expedient of Scharnhorst.
From Spain there was a constant supply of arms, and the merchants in
corporate towns made no difficulty about selling contraband of war
to rebels with whom they had religious sympathies. Deserters sold
their matchlocks, and they were resold to the Irish. Even officers
were accused of selling powder. Nor were English ports closed to such
good customers. 'I dare not trust any Chester man,' said the mayor
of that town, and Liverpool turned an honest penny in the same way.
Powder could not be made in Ulster, for there was no sulphur, but it
was imported even from Dantzig. There was also a constant supply of
ammunition from Scotland, and Fenton proposed that the Queen should
employ factors to buy up all the powder at Glasgow and Ayr, which
could only have made the trade more lucrative. Tyrone fed his men on
oatmeal and butter, which was exacted, according to certain rules,
from the people on whom they were billeted. The pay was at the rate of
24_s._ a quarter, and when money was scarce the deficiency was made up
in milk. If a prisoner was ransomed, his captor had one-third of the
amount and the rest went to the chief. Mountjoy believed that Tyrone
raised a revenue of more than 80,000_l._ a year in Ulster.[428]
[Sidenote: Dress.]
[Sidenote: The Irish mantle.]
'In Ireland,' says Moryson, who spoke from actual observation, 'the
English and the English-Irish are attired after the English manner, for
the most part, yet not with such pride and inconstancy, perhaps for
want of means: yet the English-Irish, forgetting their own country, are
somewhat infected with the Irish rudeness, and with them are delighted
in simple light colours, as red and yellow. And in like sort the
degenerated citizens are somewhat infected with the Irish filthiness,
as well in lousy beds, foul sheets, and all linen, as in many other
particulars; but as well in diet and apparell, the citizens of Dublin
most of all other, and the citizens of Waterford and Galway in some
good measure, retain the English cleanliness. Touching the meer or wild
Irish, it may truly be said of them, which of old was spoken of the
Germans, that they wander slovenly and naked, and lodge in the same
house (if it may be called a house) with their beasts. Among them the
gentlemen or lords of countries wear close breeches and stockings of
the same piece of cloth, of red or such light colour, and a loose coat,
and a cloak or three-cornered mantle, commonly of coarse, light stuff
made at home, and their linen is coarse and slovenly. I say slovenly,
because they seldom put off a shirt till it be worn; and these shirts,
in our memory before the last rebellion, were made of some twenty or
thirty ells folded in wrinkles and coloured with saffron to avoid
lousiness, incident to the wearing of foul linen.... Their wives living
among the English are attired in a sluttish gown, to be fastened at the
breast with a lace, and in a more sluttish mantle and more sluttish
linen; and their heads be covered after the Turkish manner with many
ells of linen: only the Turkish heads or turbans are round in the top,
but the attire of the Irish women's heads is more flat in the top and
broader on the sides, not much unlike a cheese-mot, if it had a hole
to put in the head.' Moryson also mentions the loose mantles worn by
both men and women, often as an excuse for wearing nothing else, which
Spenser, who is very eloquent on the subject, calls 'a fit house for
an outlaw, a meet bed for a rebel, and an apt cloke for a thief.'
The shock-heads of curled hair called glibbs also excited the poet's
wrath, 'being as fit masks as a mantle is for a thief. For whensoever
he hath run himself into that peril of law, that he will not be known,
he either cutteth of his glibb quite, by which he becometh nothing
like himself, or putteth it so low down over his eyes that it is very
hard to discern his thievish countenance.' In a contemporary drawing
of Tirlogh Luineach's submission to Sidney all his followers are
represented with glibbs, and it became a matter of treaty with Tyrone
that he should allow none of his people to wear them.[429]
[Sidenote: Progress of civilisation. Richard, Earl of Clanricarde.]
As the tribal age passed away, Irish and Anglo-Irish chiefs became
more civilised. Among the native nobility the house of Clanricarde had
been remarkable for lawlessness; but Earl Richard, who succeeded in
1601, not only distinguished himself at Kinsale but also made a great
figure at court. 'The affairs of Ireland,' said the French ambassador,
'prosper, so that not a single rebel keeps the field. I believe that
this prosperous condition of things proceeds from the favour which
that Irish Earl enjoys here. On the other hand, he is very cold by
nature and in his love, and has neither understanding nor conduct to
lift himself high, although there is no lack of counsel and support to
him. Flatterers of the court, to curry favour, say that he resembles
Essex; on the other hand the Queen declares, with equal dissimulation,
that she cannot love him, inasmuch as he recalls her sorrow for the
Earl; and this contest occupies the entire court.' Clanricarde, who is
described by another contemporary as 'a goodly, personable gentleman,
something resembling the late Earl of Essex,' spent lavishly but paid
honestly. The gossips at first coupled his name with that of Lady
Strange, but in the autumn of 1602 he married Frances Walsingham, widow
of the unfortunate favourite whom he was thought to resemble, and of
Sir Philip Sidney. In 1604 Sir John Davies saw the Earl and Countess
living together at Athlone in most honourable fashion, and reported
that she was very well contented, and every way as well served as ever
he saw her in England.[430]
[Sidenote: Bards and musicians.]
[Sidenote: Gamblers.]
Spenser, and every other Englishman, condemned the Irish bards as
stirrers of sedition and preservers of barbarism. They were often very
highly paid, and were feared as well as admired, for they knew how
to satirise their hosts where the cheer was not abundant or to their
liking. The bagpipe was commonly used in the field, and harps became
scarce towards the close of the sixteenth century, so that in 1588
Maguire said he hardly knew of a good one in his country. It sometimes
formed part of the furniture of a gentleman's house, the portion of a
bride in Tipperary being sworn to as 'four score cows, four-and-twenty
mares, five horses, and a pair of playing tables (backgammon probably),
and a harp, besides household stuff.' Professional card-players,
called _carrows_, abounded, and Campion says they would play away their
clothes, and then, wrapping themselves in straw, would stake their
glibbs, or bits of their flesh, against any chance-comer's money.
Captain Bodley tells how certain Irish gentlemen came masquerading to
the officers' quarters at Downpatrick, asking to be allowed to play.
These prudent gamblers brought ten pounds of the new debased currency
wrapped up in a dirty pocket-handkerchief, and their hosts sent them
empty away at two o'clock in the morning. Sometimes higher stakes were
played for than a few pounds of copper, and there is a tradition that
Kilbritain Castle was lost by Lord Courcey to MacCarthy Reagh, who only
risked a white weasel or ferret.[431]
[Sidenote: Introduction of tobacco.]
Tobacco was still too dear to be generally used in Ireland, but English
officers could enjoy this consolation. We have seen that one was killed
in the retreat from the Blackwater while indulging in a pipe by the
roadside. Carew was a smoker, and both Raleigh and Cecil were among
those who kept him supplied with tobacco. Captain Bodley, to whom we
owe so many interesting details, is most eloquent on this subject, and
will not allow that the enemies of tobacco have any reason on their
side. 'Almost all,' he says, 'have but one argument, that would make a
dog laugh and a horse burst his halter, saying that neither our sires
or grandsires took tobacco, yet lived I know not how long. Indeed they
lived till they died without tobacco, but who knows whether they would
not have lived longer had they used it. And if a smoker now dies of any
disease, who knows if he might not have died sooner had he abstained
from it.'[432]
[Sidenote: Garrison life.]
Irish warfare was full of misery, but garrison life had its pleasures,
such as they were. Captain Bodley has left an account of a week's
visit paid in January 1603 to Sir Richard Moryson, the historian's
brother, who was in command at Downpatrick. At Newry they found only
lean beef, scarcely any mutton, very bad wine, and no bread; biscuit
being used even in the governor's house. Bodley, with Captains
Caulfield and Jephson, halted at Magennis's house at Castle Wellan,
which he calls an island. They were entertained by Lady Sara Magennis,
Tyrone's daughter, 'a very beautiful woman, and the three hours'
halt seemed to pass in one minute. We drank ale and whisky with our
hostess, and, having all kissed her in turn, took the road again.' At
Downpatrick the visitors were well treated, and their horses attended
to, but they all occupied one bed-room. They washed before dinner,
all in the same silver basin, and seemingly had but one towel, and
this was done in the dining-room. Healths were drunk from a glass
goblet of claret nearly a foot in circumference, which went from hand
to hand, and there was a good deal of conviviality, whisky flowing
freely as well as claret. The dishes mentioned are brawn, stuffed
geese, venison pasties, and game-pies, mince-pies, and tarts--that is
Bodley's word--made of beef, mutton, and veal. Besides drinking there
was smoking, dicing, and a kind of horseplay which has been called
cock-fighting in modern times. The Irish gentlemen who came in to
gamble, and lost their money, wore long shirts decked with ivy-leaves,
dog-skin masks, and paper noses, and tall paper caps with ivy wreaths.
In the morning, ale or beer, with spices or toast, was taken 'to allay
thirst, to steady the head, and to cool the liver,' and pipes were
smoked before breakfast. The life was rough enough, but Bodley wrote in
Latin, and shows a knowledge of Latin authors, and he and his friends
conversed learnedly about Roman history.[433]
[Sidenote: Spenser and his friends.]
[Sidenote: How Ireland affected Spenser's poetry.]
Constant warfare and the absence of a University hindered the growth of
a literary class in Ireland. Native chiefs were content to patronise
bards who sang their achievements, and annalists who recorded their
genealogies. But the English language was just attaining its full
stature, and men could not but feel a pleasure in writing it sometimes.
Of letters and treatises describing the state of Ireland there is
no lack, and many of them show considerable literary force. But the
cultivation of letters for their own sake was scarcely to be looked
for. Sir Geoffrey Fenton, who had translated many books from the
French, including the French version of Guicciardini, appears to have
given up such work after he became Secretary for Ireland. Nathaniel
Baxter, a long-forgotten poet, seems to have produced something while
teaching a school at Youghal. Ludovic Bryskett, born in Italy, or of
an Italian mother, translated Italian books directly, and not through
the French. Bryskett was an official, like most of the English then
in Ireland, and at his house near Dublin we find the first germ of
literary society. It was here that the 'Fairy Queen' was promised
by Spenser himself to a company consisting of Archbishop Long, and
of several lawyers and soldiers, among which Sir Thomas Norris was
perhaps the most distinguished. Raleigh, who visited Spenser at
Kilcolman in 1589, saw the early part of the poem before it appeared,
and he encouraged the poet. At court Spenser was befriended both by
Raleigh and Sidney, and the poet seems to have thought that such
kindness as he did receive from the Queen was owing to his intimacy
with the latter, whose influence long outlived him. But Spenser was
not a successful suitor, and he has left a bitter diatribe against the
courtier's profession. He learned to look upon Ireland as his home, and
to praise the country's natural beauties, while sighing for the peace
and refinement of England. No doubt the woods and glens, with their
wolves and robbers, furnished the poet with much of his imagery, if
they did not suggest his great work; but it must be remembered that he
was an undertaker and official as well as a writer. The lady whom he
made so famous by his pen, and whom he married at Cork, was Elizabeth
Boyle, Richard Boyle's cousin, and so connected with Secretary Fenton.
Raleigh and the rest of his friends were engaged in forming estates,
and his sympathies were necessarily with the settlers and not with the
natives. He tries to raise the Irish rivers to a level with those of
England:
Sith no less famous than the rest they be,
And join in neighbourhood of kingdom near,
Why should they not likewise in love agree?
But he can never forget that the woods upon their banks were haunted by
men who wished him only death and destruction. He felt the weakness of
his own position, and so was ready to praise Arthegal, or any other,
whose severity might make the land reasonably safe. If the readers of
Spenser's verses, and still more of his treatises, find fault with his
truculence, they should forget that he was a poet, and remember that he
was trying to improve forfeited lands.[434]
FOOTNOTES:
[422] There is a valuable paper on hawks and hounds in Ireland by Mr.
J. P. Prendergast in vol. ii. of the _Irish Arch. Journal_, p. 144.
Perrott to Walsingham, Oct. 25, 1585; Sir S. Bagenal to Cecil, MS.
_Hatfield_, Nov. 1, 1602. In the second edition (1888) of Dalziel's
_British Dogs_ there is a very full dissertation on the Irish
wolf-hound. In Payne's _Brief Description of Ireland_, 1590, we read
that a red-deer skinned could be had for 2_s._ 6_d._, twelve quails for
3_d._, twelve woodcocks for 4_d._, and all other fowl rateably. The
abundance of corncrakes is mentioned by both Moryson and Payne, and the
latter says grouse (heathcock) were plentiful. Sixteen landrails (or
corncrakes) were shot at Colebrooke in Fermanagh on one September day
in 1884.
[423] Fynes Moryson's _Itinerary_, part iii. book iii. chap. v. Sir N.
White to Burghley, July 22, 1580. For ploughing by the tail, &c. see
Dineley's _Tour_, p. 162. The Scotch Highlanders bled their cattle even
to the 19th century, see the Duke of Argyle's _Scotland as it was and
as it is_, vol. ii. p. 123. Cæsar says of the Britons: 'pecorum magnus
numerus.... Interiores plerique frumenta non serunt, sed lacte et carne
vivunt.' (_B.G._ lib. v. cap. 12-14.) Payne says a fat sheep could be
had in 1590 for 2_s._ 6_d._ and a fat beef for 13_s._ 4_d._ 'Filthy
butter,' says Moryson; 'hairy butter too loathsome to describe,' says
Andrew Trollope.
[424] Several notices are collected in _Ulster Journal of Archæology_,
iii. 186, 187. See Grose's _Antiquarian Repository_, iv. 627. The
_lax_-weir at Limerick preserves the Norse name for salmon.
[425] Moryson, III. iii. 5; Dymmok's _Treatise of Ireland_, about
1600; Petty's _Political Anatomy_, 1672; Sir T. Heneage to Carew, Dec.
22, 1590, in _Carew_. On July 19, 1602, the mayor of Waterford sent
Cecil 'a pair of bed coverings and two rendells of aqua-vitæ.'--MS.
_Hatfield_.
[426] _Irish Statutes_, 3 and 4 Ph. and Mary, cap. 7; Moryson, III.
iii. 5; Dymmok; Bodley's _Descriptio itineris in Lecaliam_, ann. 1602;
Barnaby Riche's Treatise delivered to Lord Salisbury 1610. After the
journey described further on, Captain Bodley and his friends warmed
themselves with sherry 'with burnt sugar, nutmeg, and ginger.'
[427] Dymmok and Moryson, _ut sup._; Andrew Trollope to Walsingham
(from Dublin), Sept. 12, 1581. Trollope had then been over two months
in Ireland. There are some curious details in the _Travels_ of Nicander
Nucius, a Corfiote, who visited England in Henry VIII.'s time, printed
(Greek text and translation) by the Camden Society.
[428] Fenton to Burghley, Aug. 26, 1595; Mayor of Chester's letter,
June 18, 1597; Sir John Dowdall to Burghley, March 9, 1596, and to
Cecil, Jan. 2, 1600; Proclamation by Tyrone, Feb. 2, 1601. The Irish
text of the latter, with a contemporary translation, is printed from
the Lambeth MSS. in _Ulster Arch. Journal_, vol. vi. p. 60. Mountjoy to
Cecil, Aug. 10, 1602, printed by Moryson.
[429] Fynes Moryson's _Itinerary_, part iii. book iv. chap. ii.;
Spenser's _State of Ireland_; Derrick's _Image of Ireland_, where the
description of the more uncivilised natives closely resembles those of
Moryson and Spenser. Articles with Tyrone, June 17, 1590, in _Carew_. A
paper dated 1599 by Carew (No. 319) proposes that every soldier should
have an Irish mantle, 'which costeth but 5_s._, to be his bed in the
night and a great comfort to him in sickness and health; for being
never so wet, it will with a little shaking and wringing be presently
dry.' Among the properties for a play on the state of Ireland by John
Heywood, performed before Edward VI. were 'three yards of grey kersey
for an Irishman's coat with great and long plyghts, four yards of
orange-coloured frisado at 4_s._ a yard, &c.'--Kempe's _Loseley MSS_.
[430] Von Raumer's _Sixteenth Century_, letter 60, where De Beaumont,
or his translator, writes Clancarty instead of Clanricarde;
Manningham's _Diary_, Oct. 1602 and April 1603; Chamberlain's
_Letters_, Oct. 2, 1602; Sir John Davis to Cecil, Dec. 8, 1604.
[431] Spenser; Campion; Bodley's Voyage to Lecale in the 2nd vol. of
the _Ulster Arch. Journal_, and articles by H. F. Hore in the same
journal; Morrin's _Patent Rolls_, 40 Eliz. No. 54; Derrick's _Image of
Ireland_; Smith's _Cork_, i. 249; and see above vol. ii. p. 65. The
'carrows' were not extinct in Charles II.'s time--see Dineley's _Tour_,
p. 19.
[432] Bodley's _Visit to Lecale_, 1603; Cecil to Carew. Dec. 15, 1600;
Sir John Stanhope to Carew, Jan. 26, 1601: both in _Carew_.
[433] 'Descriptio Itineris Capitanei Josiæ Bodlei in Lecaliam, 1602-3,'
_Ulster Arch. Journal_, ii. 73.
[434] The identification of Elizabeth Boyle is due to Mr. Grosart.
Bryskett's description of the party at his house has been reprinted by
several of Spenser's biographers. For topographical matters see a most
thorough article by Dr. P. W. Joyce in _Fraser's Magazine_ for March
1878, p. 315. Dr. Joyce hesitates to identify 'the stony Aubrion,' but
is it not the Burren in Carlow?