CHAPTER XL 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[Pg 553] 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.

[Pg 554]

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[Pg 555] 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[Pg 556] 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, ο?δε γαρ ο?ν λ?γεται, as is the[Pg 557] 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,[Pg 558] 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[Pg 559] 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.[Pg 560] 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[Pg 561] 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,[Pg 562] 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[Pg 563] 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."

[Pg 564]

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[Pg 565] 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[Pg 566] 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[Pg 567] 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[Pg 568] 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

[Pg 569]

    "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,[Pg 570] 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[Pg 571] 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[Pg 572] 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 pr?diti, non potuit hactenus obtineri unquam à pr?fectis Anglis ut in Hibernia Universitas studiorum erigeretur. Imò dum aliquando de ea re etiam, Catholico tempore, in Concilio Angli? 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 Catholic? Ecclesi? sed ut Senatorem regni Angli? sententiam istam in concilio protulisse, qua opus istud impediretur.

"Quod bene forte se haberet si in Concilio Dei et Sanctorum ejus quando de Episcopo severior daretur sententia, ab ea, pari posset acumine Senator liberari" ("De Hibernia Commentarius." Louvain, 1632).

[10] "Toties requisita studiorum Universitas ante annos aliquot erectum fuit decreto Regin? (tametsi sumptibus Indigenarum) juxta civitatem Dubliniensem, capacissimum et splendidissimum collegium, in quo ordinatum est ut disciplin? omnes liberales traderentur, sed ab h?reticis magistris, quales cùm Hibernia nequaquam subministraret ex Anglia submissi sunt. Qui pro sua etiam propaganda et confirmanda religione, insuper acceperunt, et munus pr?dicandi doctrinam suam Evangelicam in civitate Dublinensi et mandatum exigendi juramentum, suprem? potestatis Regin? 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 geathraigh 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 "Reliqui? Celtic?," 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.