A GREAT IRISH LADY
WE are often told that the civilization of a people is marked by the
place of its women: a rule by which the Irish stand high. In the
fifteenth century, as at all times, their annals record many noble
ladies “distinguished for knowledge, hospitality, good sense and
piety”; “humane and charitable”; “a nurse to all guests and strangers,
and to all the learned men in Ireland.” Of these Margaret, daughter
of O’Carroll lord of Ely, wife of Calvagh O’Connor Faly lord of
Offaly (lands which lie across the boundaries of the modern King’s
and Queen’s Counties and Kildare), was the most illustrious. She came
of a learned race. The O’Carrolls, in the course of little more than
a century (1253-1373), held the See of Cashel for sixty years; and
O’Carroll had been Archbishop of Tuam; and Margaret’s father, lord
of Ely, was “the general patron of all the learned men of Ireland.”
“This Teige was deservedly a man of greate accompt and fame with the
professors of Poetrye and Musicke of Ireland and Scotland, for his
liberality extended towards them, and every of them in generalle.” So
highly was he esteemed among the chiefs that he was forbidden by the
Irish captains of east Munster to carry out his wish of resigning his
lordship of Ely (1396). He made a pilgrimage, however, that year to
the threshold of the apostles, with his companions O’Brien, Gerald,
and Thomas Calvagh MacMurchadh of the royal race of Leinster; and
coming back through England visited Richard II. at Westminster, who
received him graciously, and being then about to cross to Calais for
his marriage with Isabella of France, and the conclusion of a treaty of
peace with the French king, invited O’Carroll to accompany him in his
retinue. Ten years later he was slain by the English, the boy-prince
Thomas of Lancaster, son of Henry IV., being then Viceroy in Ireland,
and under him the Lord Deputy Scrope. The English army fell on him
unawares at Callan; for whose death indeed the sun stood still, said
their account, to light the Deputy and the fierce Prior of Kilmainham
in the evening surprise and the six miles’ ride of slaughter, where
eight hundred, or some said three thousand, of his people fell. Some
time after the massacre Margaret married the most successful leader in
his day of the Irish, Calvagh O’Connor Faly, son of Murchadh, the “Lord
of Offaly, of the cattle-abounding land,” descended from Conchobar of
the race of Cathair Mór, King of Leinster. Brought up amid the perils
and sorrows of constant war, her fortunes were now transferred to a
country where the conflict with the English knew no interlude. To
understand her story it is necessary to show very briefly the situation
of Offaly.
The land of the O’Connors adjoined that of the O’Carrolls under the
Slieve Bloom mountains. The old Offaly, from Sliabh-Bladhma, now Slieve
Bloom, to the hill of Alenn, and from Sliabh-Cualann in Wicklow to the
Great Heath, is a plain as level as a tranquil sea. On its western
side a long low ridge north of Slieve Bloom had given shelter to the
two St. Sinchealls; a church had risen by the holy well; and the
fair-town of Killeigh on “the field of the long ridge,” profiting by
the traffic from the Shannon to the Liffey. There Murchadh O’Connor
founded for the Franciscans a monastery (1393) said to be the third in
size and importance of the monasteries of Ireland, the burial place
of his race. In what was once the Abbey churchyard, tombstones of the
O’Doynes, deeply sculptured with their armorial bearings, recall a
great family of Offaly. On the eastern side of Offaly Norman settlers
had pushed back the boundary from the Dublin hills to Rathangan, where
a strong fort and church stood at the head of the plain through which
the Barrow and the Slaney flowed south to Waterford and Wexford; and
on that important trade route Thomas O’Connor Faly had founded a
Franciscan monastery (1302), under the walls of Hugh de Lacy’s fort
at Castledermot. To the north lay Meath--“cemetery of the valourous
Gael”--whose colonists had incessant war with Offaly. It was a land
over which the earliest Norman settlers had swept from de Lacy’s fort
of Castledermot to that of Durrow; a land which was again the chief
centre of struggle when the Irish attack drove the English power back
to the plains of Meath, and which in the renewed wars of the English
under the Tudors became the scene of ferocious reprisals and calculated
obliteration of its race and name. From Calvagh’s first battle all his
fighting was on the plains of Meath. Once he made a raid in the land
of the O’Mores; and when his sons grew up they had disputes with Irish
neighbours. But the only war of Calvagh from 1385 to 1458 was a war
against the English.
[Illustration: LADY CHAPEL OPENING FROM NORTH SIDE OF THE FRANCISCAN
ABBEY, CASTLEDERMOT.]
The family were bitter Irreconcilables; since the days of an older
Calvagh, the “Great Rebel,” who a hundred years before (1307), had been
invited with thirty of the Offaly chiefs to dine at Castle-Carberry on
Trinity Sunday with “the treacherous baron,” Sir Pierce Bermingham,
the “Hunter of the Irish”; and were deceitfully murdered, the Great
Rebel and all, as they rose from table. This new Calvagh fought the
invaders for over sixty years, from youth to old age, with scarcely a
pause--a man of humour as well as courage. Once when the English troops
with their Irish followers had ridden to the very borders of Killeigh
(1406)--the religious and business centre of Offaly--Calvagh with half
a dozen horsemen came upon a body of plundering kerns, one carrying
off on his back a great cauldron which Calvagh had lent his friend
MacMaoilcorra for brewing beer. “There is your caldron with the kerns,”
cried MacMaoilcorra helplessly, “take it and discharge me of my loan.”
“I accept of it where it is,” mocked Calvagh, and flung “the shot of a
stone” which hit the cauldron straight, at the great noise and report
whereof the plunderers cast away their spoil and fled in consternation.
In the great rout of the English that day the Irish won back from them
the chiefest relic of Connacht, the cap or mitre of S. Patrick stolen
from Elphin.
In Calvagh’s days the Irish revival had pushed back the rule of Dublin
Castle to a strip of coast land some twenty miles by thirty. There
flew a tale of panic (1385) that the Irish “were confederate with
Spain,” and that “at this next season, as is likely, there will be
made a conquest of the greater part of the land.” Revenue was falling,
English colonists were flying across the water, and prayers for help
were sent over to the English king. The king’s favourite De Vere,
appointed Marquis of Dublin and Duke of Ireland (1386), got no farther
than Wales, and English pretentions over the island under a confused
series of shifting rulers became the mock of Europe. Stung by the
taunt that he who desired to be made head of the Holy Roman Empire
could not even subdue Ireland, Richard II. made his fantastic journey
across the Irish Channel (1394), carrying a wardrobe of untold cost
in which one jewelled coat alone was worth thirty thousand marks, and
with a following of four thousand squires and thirty thousand archers,
a greater army, some said, than Edward III. commanded at Crecy. Thus
Calvagh had the rare opportunity of seeing the arrival in Ireland of
the only king of England who landed there in the five hundred years
between the coming of Henry II. and John (1171 and 1210), and that of
James II. (1689)--all four driven over by personal necessities, not
by any concern whatever for the Irish people or their well-being. The
English troops were flung back from the O’Connor land and from Ely of
the O’Carrolls, with many men slain and many horses captured, and fresh
supplies were sent for from England. But Richard, unlike any other
king that visited Ireland, was moved by the spirit of the country. The
temper he had shown thirteen years before in the Peasant Revolt--“I
am your King and Lord, good people; what will ye?”--manifested itself
again amid the troubles of his Irish lordship. To the Irish people
he showed the first signs of sympathy and respect. Laying aside the
hostile banners of England, he substituted the golden cross and silver
birds of his patron saint, Edward the Confessor--the only King of
England reported to have any connection with an Irish house, if as some
historians say (on what evidence I do not know) his Queen’s sister
Driella was wife of O’Brien, king of Munster. “To Us and our Council,”
he wrote to England, “it appears that the Irish rebels have rebelled
in consequence of the injustice and grievances practised towards them,
for which they have been afforded no redress.” Peace was made with “his
rebel MacMorrough”; and treaties signed with the chiefs, seventy-five
of them, were sent to England in two hampers, while Richard returned to
Westminster leaving Roger Mortimer, heir to the throne, as Viceroy. The
next year, as we have seen, he received O’Carroll of Ely at his palace
with especial honour.
With his disappearance the policy of peace and reform came to an end.
The meaning of Mortimer’s rule was clear to the Irish. He claimed by
inheritance of Lionel Duke of Clarence, son of Edward III., to be Earl
of Ulster, Lord of Connacht, Trim, Leix, and Ossory, thus threatening
the Ulster chiefs with a war of conquest, and the lord of Offaly and
the middle Irish with the complete encircling of their lands, their
isolation and destruction. Edmund Mortimer, son-in-law of Clarence, had
already appeared as Viceroy (1380-1381), carrying with him the sword
adorned with gold “which had belonged to the good king Edward” the
Confessor, and his great bed of black satin embroidered with the arms
of de Mortimer and Ulster: he sent much spoil and cattle to England,
and died in the midst of his warfare. His son Roger was appointed
Viceroy (1382-1383) a boy of ten; and orders were sent to arrest all
those who by land or water should send or sell horses, salt, armour,
iron, gold, silver, corn, or other provisions, to any of the Irish.
Once more this same Roger Mortimer was Viceroy in 1395, riding to war
for his inheritance in the dress and arms of an Irish chief. Calvagh
captured the earl of Kildare who was held to ransom by his father; and
the Carlow men routed and slew the young Mortimer himself (1398). On
which Richard sent over his half-brother, the Duke of Surrey (1398),
and already forgetful of his Irish compacts of three years before,
granted his favourite lands which by treaty belonged to MacMurchadh.
When war naturally followed the king proposed to subdue the Irish by a
new visit (1399), this time forsaking the tradition of the Confessor
for that of Henry II., and bearing the royal regalia of England and
the miraculous consecrated oil of St. Thomas of Canterbury used at
coronations. Chanting a last collect with the canons of St. George
he set sail for Waterford, bringing with him the Duke of Lancaster
(afterwards Henry V.) a boy of twelve years, to take his first lesson
in war. The army was set to fell MacMurchadh’s woods; a space was
cleared, villages and houses set on fire, and in that scene Richard
made the young Henry knight, even while the Duke of Lancaster was
landing in Yorkshire to seize the English crown. Before July closed
the betrayed king had hurried back to England, there to meet his death
of horror.
So ended the royal dream of chivalry in Ireland, as it had closed
before in England. Whatever imaginative feeling for the Irish, whatever
memories of their old tradition or visions of a reconciliation of the
two civilizations, had stirred Richard II., these disappeared under the
Lancastrian kings. Stern conquest was their creed, as soon as their
wars in England, Wales, Scotland, and France would allow it.
The comings and goings of English governors in Ireland during the
French wars read like the wanderings of the Wiking raiders, now on the
Irish side of the sea, now on the French, as the chances of campaign
might open the best prospects of adventure, plunder and ransom.
Viceroys, deputies, lords justices, of a summer or two, each with his
twelve months’ policy of extortion, slaughter, and vain treaties,
headed brief marches and skirmishes, campaigned on the plan that there
was never a battle to be opened on a Monday or after noonday, hunted
or purchased prisoners not for their defeat but for their ransom, and
in succession sailed away for the better ventures of the French war.
“The most cause of destruction,” the English colonists declared to the
king in 1435, arose because “during thirty years past the Lieutenants
and other Governors did not come here but for a sudden journey or
a hosting.” As their power shrank their salaries and armies were
increased. Governors no longer pretended to control the war, but
returning to the lawless practice of the first adventurers, ordered any
man who could to go out and fight however and wherever he pleased; and
the lords about Dublin, freed from all restraints of law, kept troops
of horse and foot against “Irish enemies,” “English rebels,” and their
own personal foes.
The Lieutenant sent by Henry IV. to rule Ireland (1401) was his son
Thomas of Lancaster twelve years old; and the first in a series of
changing deputies Sir Stephen Scrope, an old soldier trained in French
and Flemish wars, and as ready to serve Henry as Richard. He it was
who slew O’Carroll, Richard’s friend; and against him Murchadh and
Calvagh O’Connor warred victoriously in Meath (1406, 1408). The prior
of Kilmainham being deputy (who had also been on that ride of death
when the sun stood still), the O’Connors captured the sheriff of Meath
(1411) and took a great price for his ransom. The three months’ rule
of Sir John Stanley (1413) first governor of Henry V. was ended by his
death after the curse of the chief bard Niall O’Higgin whom he had
plundered at Usnach--“the second poetical miracle” of this famous bard.
In vain his successor Archbishop Cranley, whose eighty years alone
held him back from battle, gathered his clergy at Castledermot to pray
for English victory: O’Connor and MacGeoghagan routed the English, and
held to ransom prisoners for two thousand six hundred marks besides
other fines (1414). Sir John Talbot Lord Furnival followed (1414),
hovering between Ireland, England, and France--to the English “an
ancient fox and politique captain,” to the French “a very scourge
and daily terror,” to the Irish “a son of curses for his venom and a
devil for his evil.” He called out the troops to active war, slew many
rebels, and gave protection to neither saint nor sanctuary; it was his
policy to “oblige one Irish enemy to serve upon the other,” by forcing
defeated chiefs to swear that they would fight under him against their
countrymen. Still the O’Connors raided Meath for arms, horses, and
prisoners (1417). Calvagh was once treacherously captured by a Meath
lord, from whom Talbot in hope of a ransom purchased him; but the
prisoner escaped that same night. To Talbot succeeded (1420) James the
White Earl of Ormond, back from the French wars. Precepts drawn up to
guide his conduct declared that as “the Irish are false by kind, it
were expedient and a charity to execute upon them wilful and malicious
transgressors the king’s laws somewhat sharply.” He too had been at the
death of O’Carroll, and once again, it was said, the sun miraculously
stood still for three hours, and no pit or bog annoyed horse or man on
his part, while he slaughtered the Irish on “the red moor of Athy.”
Twice every week the clergy of Dublin went in solemn procession praying
for his good success against those disordered persons which now in
every quarter of Ireland had degenerated to their old trade of life,
and repined at the English. The colonists petitioned Henry V. that he
would induce the Pope to proclaim a holy crusade against the Irish,
“in perpetual destruction of those enemies.” It was in the bitterness
of this exasperated conflict that Murchadh O’Connor Faly won a last
victory (1421), before he laid down arms and entered his monastery of
Killeigh to die--“Murchadh of the defeats.”
For thirty-seven years Calvagh now led his people’s fight against
“the English manner of government,” in other words, the destruction
of the Irish. He seized more lords and officers, won more wealth, and
recovered more Irish territory than any lord in Leinster. At this time
the Desmonds, out of favour under Lancastrian kings, had withdrawn to
Munster to build up their dominion in the south, while the Ormonds
and their cousins and rivals the Talbots fought for power. Passing
strangers appeared in Dublin Castle; but with occasional interruptions
the actual authority swung back, now to Ormond and his half-brother
the prior of Kilmainham, now to Talbot and his brother the Archbishop
of Dublin, till each family had held the chief control many times.
The Talbots stood for pure English rule, and excelled in severity
alike towards colonists and natives. They used for their wars and
their rewards Irish taxes, coyn and livery; but at Westminster they
represented Ormond’s iniquity in levying the like taxes, and his faint
and wavering sympathies for his countrymen, as treason of the darkest
hue; his favouring his Irish friends, keeping Irish soldiers for his
following, letting lands slip into Irish hands, making Irishmen knights
of the shire; with a few additions thrown in of his sloth, violence,
and corruption--“courses ruinous and destructive” to the English. In
the midst of this discord Calvagh seems to have leaned to Ormond. His
wife, apparently by a friendly arrangement, was given tribute from an
Ormond lordship in Kildare. He himself held Talbot’s cousin Thomas to
ransom in his prison at Killeigh: he took “blackrent” or tribute from
the English of Meath.
Meanwhile both Ulster and Offaly were set aflame by the coming of a
new Mortimer Viceroy (1423) Edmund, son of Roger of the Irish dress.
When he landed with an English army O’Neill and O’Donnell had already
marched over Louth and Meath (1423), compelling the English to give
hostages and guarantees for their pledge that they would be under
tribute for ever. Edmund called O’Neill and some of the leaders to his
Trim Castle, and made arrangements with him; but they had scarcely left
when he died of plague (1424), and Talbot, then Lord Chief Justice,
pursued the chiefs and carried them prisoners to Dublin, demanding
hostages and ransom. Calvagh on his side raided Meath, where he seized
the Marshal of the English army, the Seneschal of the Viceroy’s manor,
and other squires. But it was now the turn of Ormond, who had lately
come to Ireland bringing a host of Saxons, and adding great strength
to the English wars; and Talbot made terms with Calvagh before the
appointment of the new viceroy. But the peace was brief. Calvagh
entered into alliance with the princes of Ulster. He married his
daughter Finola to O’Donnell, “harrasser and destroyer of the English.”
And when O’Neill with O’Donnell marched a great army to Mullingar
(1431), and on the Moat where O’Melaghlin had in old times ruled and
judged Leinster, gathered the chiefs to take his wages and acknowledge
him leader for the war, Calvagh joined his host in the ravaging of
Westmeath till the English paid a heavy price for the sparing of
their country. Later, when his son-in-law O’Donnell was captured and
imprisoned in Dublin Castle (1434), then sent to England (1435), and
finally to the Isle of Man (1439) to die there in prison, Calvagh
marched, year after year, through Meath to avenge his captivity. The
Justiciary or Deputy himself was taken prisoner by Calvagh’s son, and
kept some time till the English of Dublin ransomed him. In the feuds
of the barons he found allies. The son of MacFheorais, chief of the
Berminghams and heir of “the treacherous baron,” suffered “an abuse”
in the great court of Trim, the Governor’s castle. For as he entered
the court (1443) under the safeguard of Ormond, the son of Barnewell,
Treasurer of Meath, beat a _Caimin_--namely, a stroke of his finger on
the nose of Bermingham’s son. On which he stole out of the town, and
went towards O’Connor Faly, and they joined together, and it is hard
to know that ever was such abuse better revenged than the said Caimin.
They burned and preyed Meath and obtained their full demands--that
Calvagh should have his duties from the English during his life as
Lord of his territory, and that the Clan-Feorais should have all their
hostages freely restored; and not only that but they obtained in this
“war of Caimin” all conditions such as they demanded for holding
peaceable quiet with the English. Ever more formidable, Calvagh now
led his kerns to Moyclare beyond Maynooth and to Tara itself (1446).
Talbot, made Earl of Shrewsbury, was called back from the French wars.
He re-built Castle Carberry, the castle of the old massacre, to defend
Meath against Berminghams and O’Connors, caused Calvagh to make peace,
to ransom his son taken in the wars, and deliver many beeves for
the royal kitchen; and made a statute (1447) that English and Irish
should no more be confounded together by their dress, but that every
Englishman who did not shave in the English manner once at least in two
weeks, should be treated as an Irish enemy--a statute which survived
till the reign of Charles I. His last characteristic outrage was the
treacherous capture of Felim O’Reilly who had gone to Trim at his own
invitation, and the like deceitful seizing of the Savadges. Talbot
seems to have been distinguished for his violated pledges among the
crowd of English officials whose broken faith became a byword. “Thy
safe-guarding,” said the poet, “I confide to God; to Mary’s sweet and
only Son; that He may shelter thee from Anglo-word of Englishmen, and
from the gentiles’ act of violence.” The prisoners all died in Trim
Castle, disappointing the Viceroy of his ransom. After which Talbot
disappeared for the last time to France (1447), followed by the curses
of the Irish--“the learned say there came not from the time of Herod
anyone so wicked in evil deeds.” In his stead came Richard Plantagenet,
Duke of York, heir to the English crown, and to all the earldoms and
lordships of the Mortimers.
No doubt the race of O’Connor Faly was a family of irreconcilables;
men fighting honourably to defend their land and people, each leader
of them in his turn strong to obtain “great rewards from the English
for making peace with them, as had been usual with his predecessors.”
They were the sort of people for whom Dublin Castle for a hundred years
past, and many hundred years to come, had but one name, “the Irish
enemy,” ever bitterly complaining of the “mere Irish, men that are
truly beastly and ignorant,” living under “the wicked and damnable law
called Brehon Law,” “which by reason ought not to be named a law, but
an evil custom.”
There was a good deal however that Dublin Castle did not know or care
to know. In the midst of this desolating war the story of Margaret,
wife of O’Connor, gives us a glimpse into the life of the Irish clans
behind the fastnesses that screened them from English view. It might
seem that amid centuries of conflict, ever-present danger, preyings
and raidings, statutes to shut them out from learning, trade, or
advancement in their church, and torrents of slander to defile their
name, the Irish might in truth have fallen into the nomad barbarism
and the beastly ignorance of which they were accused by the English
from that time to this. In fact however the people, endowed with
an immense vitality, were busily occupied with commerce and with
learning. Irish princes were lively competitors with the English
merchants of the Pale. In all their territories the places of fairs
were thronged with dealers, English and Irish, who did business
together in peace and amity, while profits poured into Irish coffers.
English statutes forbade any Englishman to deal in an Irish market:
English merchants therefore put on Irish dress, rode on Irish saddles,
talked Irish, and went on trading as before. Towns and monasteries of
the colonists forced from the government charters allowing them to
traffic with Irish dealers. The O’Connors lay at the meeting point
of natural trade-routes, with their fair-town at Killeigh, and their
establishments at Rathangan and Castledermot; and Margaret was a patron
of commerce, as she was of learning and religion. “She was the only
woman,” the Annals tell us, “that has made the most of repairing the
highways and erecting bridges, churches, and Mass books, and of all
manner of things profitable to serve God and her soul, and while the
world stands her many gifts to the Irish and Scottish nations shall
never be numbered.”
[Illustration: WINDOW OF LADY CHAPEL, FRANCISCAN ABBEY, CASTLEDERMOT.
(From “Grose’s Antiquities,” 1792; destroyed 1799.)]
She was a patron too of the schools of the learned, which under
the Irish revival had sprung into new and vigorous life, training
students in every corner of Ireland, and sending out scholars to all
the universities of Europe. “The company that read all books, they of
the church and of the poets both: such of these as shall be perfect
in knowledge, forsake not thou their intimacy ever”--this, according
to an Irish poet, was the high duty of chiefs, of the noble and
wealthy; and Margaret was faithful to the tradition of her people. Her
friendship for the learned, the royal magnificence of her bounty was
long remembered in Ireland. The year 1433 was a year of trouble. Ormond
ravaged the land of Ely and destroyed the fortresses of the O’Carrolls.
Margaret’s daughter Finola--“the most beautiful and stately, the
most renowned and illustrious woman of her time, her own mother only
excepted,” blessed with “the blessing of guests and strangers, of poets
and philosophers”--only saved Tirconail from the enemies of O’Neill
and of MacDonnell and his Scots by herself going, after the fashion
of the strong-hearted and independent women of Ireland, to meet them
at Inishowen, and there “made peace without leave from O’Donnell.” It
was a year terribly named in Irish tradition, “‘the summer of slight
acquaintance,’ because no one used to recognise friend or relative,”
for the greatness of the famine that lay on the land. Such was the
time of Margaret’s great benevolence. “It is she that twice in one
year proclaimed to and commonly invited (_i.e._, in the dark days
of the year, to wit, on the feast day of Da Sinchell [26 March] in
Killachy), all persons, both Irish and Scottish, or rather Albaines,
to two general feasts of bestowing both meat and moneys, with all
manner of gifts, whereunto gathered to receive gifts the matter of two
thousand and seven hundred persons, besides gamesters and poor men,
as it was recorded in a Roll to that purpose, and that accompt was
made thus, _ut vidimus_--viz., the chief _kins_ of each family of the
learned Irish was by Gilla-na-naemh MacÆgan’s hand, the chief Judge to
O’Connor, written in the Roll, and his adherents and kinsmen, so that
the aforesaid number of 2,700 was listed in that Roll with the Arts of
_Dan_, or poetry, Music, and Antiquity. And Maelin O’Maelconry, one of
the chief learned of Connacht, was the first written in that Roll, and
first paid and dieted, or set to supper, and those of his name after
him, and so forth every one as he was paid he was written in that Roll,
for fear of mistake, and set down to eat afterwards. And Margaret on
the garrots of the great church of Da Sinchell clad in cloth of gold,
her dearest friends about her, her clergy and Judges too. Calvagh
himself on horseback by the church’s outward side, to the end that all
things might be done orderly, and each one served successively. And
first of all she gave two chalices of gold as offerings that day on the
Altar to God Almighty, and she also caused to nurse or foster too [two]
young orphans. But so it was, we never saw nor heard neither the like
of that day nor comparable to its glory and solace. And she gave the
second inviting proclamation (to every one that came not that day) on
the feast day of the Assumption of our Blessed Lady Mary in harvest, at
or in the Rath-Imayn, and so we have been informed that that second day
in Rath-Imayn was nothing inferior to the first day.”
We know something of the manner of these national festivals, for the
Irish were long practised in the organizing of general conventions,
and their poets have left us some curious details. One tells of a
company of the Tyrone poets gathered in 1577 at O’Neill’s house, where
the poets sat ranged along a hall hung with red on either side of the
chief, and standing up beside the host pledged him in ale quaffed from
golden goblets and beakers of horn; and having told their song or story
for a price, took their gifts of honour. Another describes a greater
company, such an assembly as that of Margaret, invited in 1351 to the
castle of William O’Kelly.
“The chroniclers of comely Ireland, it is a gathering of a mighty host,
the company is in the town; where is the street of the chroniclers?
“The fair, generous-hearted host have another spacious avenue of white
houses for the bardic companies and the jugglers.
* * * * *
“Such is the arrangement of them, ample roads between them; even as
letters in their lines.
“Each thread of road, bare, smooth, straight, firm, is contained within
two threads of smooth, conical roofed houses.
“The ridge of the bright-furrowed slope is a plain lined with houses,
behind the crowded plain is a fort, as it were a capital letter.”
The castle itself was worthy of one born into the Irish inheritance,
of the great lineage of their race: far off it is recognised, the
star-like mass of stone, its outer smoothness like vellum--a castle
which was the standard of a mighty chieftain; bright is the stone
thereof, ruddy its timber.
“Close is the joining of its timber and its lime-washed stone; there is
no gaping where they touch; the work is a triumph of art.
“There is much artistic ironwork upon the shining timber: on the smooth
part of each brown oaken beam workmen are carving animal figures.
“On the smooth wall of the warm mansion--amazing in its beauty--is the
track of a slender, pointed pen; light, fresh, narrow.
“The bardic companies of pleasant-meadowed Fóla, and those of
Scotland--a distant journey--will be acquainted with one another after
arriving in William’s lofty castle.
“Herein will come the seven grades who form the shape of genuine
poesy; the seven true orders of poets, their entrance is an omen of
expenditure.
“Many coming to the son of Donnchadh from the north, no less from the
south, an assembly of scholars: a billeting from west and east, a
company seeking for cattle.
“There will be jurists, of legal decisions; wizards, and good poets;
the authors of Ireland, those who compose the battle rolls, will be in
his dwelling.
“The musicians of Ireland--vast the flock--the followers of every craft
in general, the flood of companies, side by side--the tryst of all is
to one house.
“In preparation for those who come to the house there has been
built--it is just to boast of it--according to the desire of the master
of the place, a castle fit for apple-treed Emain.
“There are sleeping booths for the company, wrought of woven branches,
on the bright surface of the pleasant hills.
“The poets of the Irish land are prepared to seek O’Kelly. A mighty
company is approaching his house, an avenue of peaked hostels is in
readiness for them.
“Hard by that--pleasant is the aspect--a separate street has been
appointed by William for the musicians, that they may be ready to
perform before him.
“This lofty tower opposite to us is similar to the Tower of Breoghan,
from which the best of spears were cast; from which Ireland was
perceived from Spain.
“By which the mighty progeny of Mil of Spain--a contentious
undertaking--contested the land with sharp spear points, so that they
became men of Ireland.
* * * * *
“From Greece to fair Spain, from Spain to Ireland, such the wanderings
of the mighty progeny of Mil, the host of the seasoned, finely wrought
weapons.”
Such was the assembly, “the mound of grand convention,” to which
Margaret invited Irish scholars. In such national festivals the passion
of war was exchanged for a nobler pride of life. The chief recognised
his place in the wide commonwealth of the Gaelic people. Each one of
the company of scholars was reminded that whatever lord he served,
Ireland was his country and the fortunes of the race his care. And the
people themselves, sharing the festivities of those joyous assemblies,
and entertained by the best that Ireland could give of music and
literature, could still exult through their successive generations in
the kinship of the whole race, Irish and Scots. Irishmen to-day may
remember that the scholars gathered by Margaret’s munificence were
among those to whom we owe all that we now know of Irish history;
they were of the men who in the Irish revival of the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries spent their lives in searching out, preserving,
copying, the records, laws, and traditions of their people. They were
the lively translators of books from abroad, the students of the modern
sciences, the band of scholars whose powerful influence was drawing
the inhabitants of Ireland, English and Irish, into one culture. Their
spirit is shewn in many sayings of the time.
“If you praise one for nobility praise his father likewise. If you
praise one for his wealth, it is from the world it comes. If you praise
one for his strength, know that sickness will render him weak, and if
you praise a person for his fairness or the beauty of his body, know
that the bloom of youth endures but a short while, and that age will
take it away. But if you praise him for manners or learning, praise him
as much as you will ever praise anyone, for this is the thing which
comes not by heredity or through upbringing, but God bestowed it upon
him as a gift.”
“Wisdom is life and ignorance is death, for of God’s gifts upon earth
there is none which is higher and more comely and pure than wisdom, for
to him who possesses it, wisdom teaches the performance of good things.”
Such were the people whose culture had to be destroyed and their
energies broken in the name of civilization. Twelve years later
(1445) Margaret with a company of patriots--MacGeoghagans and
others--hardened by long fighting, went on pilgrimage to St. James of
Compostella, the shrine most dear to the Irish people, in the “fair
Spain” whence their race had come. These pilgrimages are interesting,
as showing the travel of Irishmen to Europe. In the _Cambridge Modern
History_ Ireland is described as “a mere _terra incognita_,” cut off
by its barbarism, and by its position from the larger influences of
Europe: “of one Irish chieftain it was placed on record that he had
accomplished the hazardous journey to Rome and back.” In this half
century alone (1396-1452) we read of two companies of chiefs and men
of the poorer sort journeying to Compostella (1445, 1452), and of two
companies who travelled to Rome (1396, 1444); and apparently of yet a
third company, who brought back to Ireland tales they had heard of the
French wars “from prisoners at Rome” (1451). By land and sea traders
and scholars were crossing and re-crossing to the Continent, not only
from one part of Ireland but from every province: “Do not repent,” men
said, “for going to acquire knowledge from a wise man, for merchants
fare over the sea to add to their wealth.”
Margaret returned to the distractions of a new conflict and the
treacheries of a false peace (1445). Calvagh and the Berminghams were
again making “a great war” with the English, cutting much corn and
taking many prisoners, “and they made peace afterwards;” on which
MacGeoghagan, just home from his pilgrimage, went with others under
protection of the Baron of Delvin “where the English were”--that is to
the Governor’s castle at Trim. “But the English not regarding any peace
took them all prisoners.” MacGeoghagan was after that set at liberty,
his son being given as hostage. “And Margaret, O’Carroll’s daughter,
went to Trim and gave all the English prisoners for MacGeoghagan’s
son and the son’s son of Art, and that unadvised to Calvagh, and she
brought them home.” It was an act as free and brave as that of her
daughter Finola, who had made peace for the O’Donnell land. Such women
of great soul stand out on the stage of Irish history, nobly praised by
the poets.
“She is sufficiently distinguished from every side
By her checking of plunder, her hatred of injustice,
By her serene countenance, which causes the trees
To bend with fruit; by her tranquil mind.”
The story of Margaret was closing in sorrow. Finola, “the fairest and
most famous woman in all Ireland beside her own mother,” after the
death of O’Donnell in the fifth year of his captivity in an English
prison, married Aedh Boy O’Neill, “who was thought to be King of
Ireland,” “the most renowned, hospitable, and valourous of the princes
in his time, and who had planted more of the lands of the English in
despite of them than any other man of his day;” he was wounded to death
on Spy-Wednesday (1444), “and we never heard since Christ was betrayed,
on such a day a better man.” A little later Finola, “renouncing all
worldly vanity betook herself into the austere devout life in the
monastery of Killeigh; and the blessing of guests and strangers, and
poor and rich, of both poet-philosophers and archi-poet-philosophers
be on her in that life” (1447). The next year Margaret’s son, Cathal,
was slain by the English of Leinster. Calvagh, leading the Irish of
Leinster in a great army, marched to Killculinn near the hill of Alenn
on the border of the old Offaly, and there, his leg broken, his sword
and helmet torn from him, the English horsemen were about to bring him
into Castlemartin when “Cathal’s son returned courageously and rescued
him forceably.” Another son Felim, heir to the lordship of Offaly, a
man of great fame and renown, lay dying of long decline, on the night
that Margaret herself passed away (1451). “A gracious year this year
was, though the glory and solace of the Irish was set, but the glory of
heaven was amplified and extolled therein.” “The best woman of her time
in Ireland”--such was the Irish record of that lofty and magnanimous
soul. “God’s blessing, the blessing of all saints, and every our
blessing from Jerusalem to Inis Gluair be on her going to Heaven, and
blessed be he that will read and hear this for blessing her soul.”
Margaret left her husband to the gallant and hopeless struggle for the
saving of Irish civilization. The next year he too made pilgrimage to
Compostella (1452). But disaster gathered round him. MacGeoghagan, the
most famous and renowned among the captains of Ireland, was slain, and
his head carried to Trim and Dublin. Two sons of Calvagh were killed
in war. His daughter Mòr, the wife of Clanricard, died of a fall from
her horse; with her ended the system of alliances by which Calvagh
had fortified himself west of the Shannon and in Ulster (1452). His
old enemy Ormond, the best captain of the English in Ireland, he for
whom the sun of old stood still, had come back to the Irish wars. He
had been called to London in 1447 on a charge of treason, for trial
by battle with his chief foe the Prior of Kilmainham--Ormond by the
King’s leave staying at Smithfield “for his breathing and more ease”
while he trained for the fight; the Prior learning “certain points
of arms” from a fishmonger paid by the King. But the royal favour
prevailed, Ormond made clear his desire to exterminate the Irish, and
without trial or battle was declared “whole and untainted in fame.”
He returned to ravage Kildare and Meath in war with the rival house
of the FitzGeralds, earls of Kildare, and to make a last triumphant
march round the bordering Irish tribes. Calvagh was forced to “come
into his house” and make terms of peace (1452). The peace was made
null by Ormond’s death a month later, and Calvagh “went out into the
wilderness of Kildare” where the new deputy with his cavalry surrounded
him unawares. Teige, his son, “most courageously worked to rescue his
father from the English horsemen; but O’Connor’s horse fell thrice
down to the ground, and Teige put him up twice, and O’Connor himself
would not give his consent the third time to go with him, so that
then O’Connor was taken prisoner.” The same year he was released. But
his wars were practically over. In 1458 he was buried by his father
Murchadh and his wife Margaret in Killeigh; defender of his country for
sixty years, and for thirty-seven years lord of Offaly. Last of all,
Finola, after forty-six years of the religious life (1493), rested also
in the splendid abbey of Killeigh.
Of the glories of that abbey, of its rich glass, its gold and silver
work, its sculptured tombs, its organs, nothing now remains but a bare
fragment of wall. In the year that Silken Thomas and his five uncles
were hanged at Tyburn (1537), Lord Leonard Grey wasted the land of
O’Connor Faly, who had married the sister of Earl Thomas; making him
“more like a beggar, than he that ever was a captain or ruler of a
country.” Vast quantities of corn stored up at Killeigh were carried to
the Pale; and from the ruined Abbey Grey furnished out the buildings of
Maynooth, which had been stormed and taken from Earl Thomas two years
before; carrying off from its sack a pair of organs and other necessary
things for the King’s College at Maynooth, and as much glass as was
needed to glaze the windows of the College and of His Grace’s Castle
there. The tombs of the great house of O’Connor Faly were utterly
destroyed so that no trace of them remains.
The destruction of the great abbey was the symbol to the Leinster Irish
of their final desolation, the ruin which submerged the whole people
of Ireland on the fall of the House of Kildare. Then began in the rich
plains of Leinster the ruthless policy of wholesale extirpation of the
Irish old inhabitants, to “plant” the country anew from across the
sea. The fruitful land became to Irish eyes a vast cemetery of their
dead. In their lamentation they remembered that Brian Boru’s grave was
there, and the grave of his son “that bore the brunt of weapon-fight”:
and still the graves were multiplied. “Great are the charges that all
others have against the land of Leinster”--a poet of the O’Byrnes
sang.... “Charges against her all Ireland’s nobles have: that beneath
the salmon-abounding Leinster country’s soil--region of shallow rivers
foamy-waved--there is many a grave of their kings and of their heirs
apparent.” “The red-handed Leinster province” holds the bones of the
long line of O’Connor Faly, men and women who adorned their country
with courage and piety, art and learning.
“They shall be remembered for ever,
They shall be speaking for ever,
The people shall hear them for ever.”