The
Irish History
And
The Fighting Irish
And
The Fighting Irish
( Norman and Gael )
north-east of Connaught still elected its own sovereign as The O' Conor, and the Normans recognised
the O' Conors as Kings of Connaught. Surveying with not a little pride and much vainglory the results achieved by the invaders, Giraldus Cambrensis gave to his Latin story of the events the title " Hibernia Expugnata " - " Ireland fought to a finish. " But he did not understand, nor did his successors down the ages understand, the amazing vitality of the Gaels' power of recuperation, mental and physical. beaten they have been, time and again, but never
conquered. The spirit of exaltation of our manhood, the intense prayerfulness of our spiritual-minded, white souled
indomitable womankind, have mocked at despair, laughed in the face of Misfortune itself. And when the race was thought to have been prostrated forever, it arose and rang out its triumphant battle-cry !
Neither then, nor even after did the foreign invader come to understand Ireland's soul. Spenser, in Elizabeth's days vainly tried to solve the problem of the resurgent spirit of the Irish. Why did not the Gaels acknowledge defeat ?
" Yet surely, " he allows, " they are ver valiant and hardy, for the most part great endurers of cold, labour and of all hardiness, very active and strong of hand, very swift of foot, very vigilant and circumspect in their enterrprises, very present in perils, very great scorners of death. "
The resurrection of thirteenth century Ireland, and its subtle conquering of the conqueror, has been a source of wonder to English Irish historians, who have tried to explain it in many futile ways. The truth is that the free-hearted, culture-loving, gracious comity of the Gaels and of Gaelic civilisation irresistibly insinuated itself into the mind and soul of the Norman French - and won from them eager capitulation.
In their darkest hour of affliction the princes of the three greatest Gaelic Clans - almost all that possibly could assemble, met at Caol Uisage near Belleck on the River Erne ( in 1258 ) to knit the country into one body to withstand the foreigner. The men of Connaught, under Felim O' Conor and the warriors of Thomond under O' Brien cheerfully elected Brian O' Neill of Tir-Owen King of Ireland. This menace was met by the treacherous capture and poisoning of O' Neill by De Courcy, who defeated the combined forces at The Battle of Downpatrick (1260 ) The lesson of this disaster by which " Eire was left an orphan " was most fruitful. The Irish were " clad in fine linen garments, the foreigners in one mass of Iron " as the contemporary Garl narrates. Hence was seen the need of better means of defence against the common foe. The epochal advent of the " gall-oglach " ( gallowglass ) into Ireland's armies resulted. From the Western Isles of Scotland were invited the heavy armed, mail-clad, battle axe bearing gall-oglach to aid in the cause. Later the princes throughout Ireland raised and similarly equipped regular field troops. In fact Eire saw the form and spirit of her ancient Fianna, or national militia. come to life again. By this new factor the tide of foreign conquest was turned. No longer did the Norman cavaliers " in one mass of iron " inspire terror, no more were their castles regarded as impregnable fortresses. O'More of leix levelled eight such strongholds in one day. Sir Henry Savage, the Norman, expressed his views pithily on this altered condition of warfare. " Never shall I, by the grace of God, " he declared, " cumber myself with dead walls: my fort shall be where young bloods are stirring and where i have room to fight. Better is a castle of bones than a castle of stones. " The Norman policy of conquest by incastellation was defeated by the gall-oglach enterprise, so quickly adopted now by all the leading Irish chiefs.
To quicken the tide of liberation Donal O'Neill and the other Gaelic lords invited Edward Bruce, brother of the King of Scotland, to the throne of Ireland. The winning, in rapid succession of 18 victories, made the gallant Bruce reckless, so engaging a vastly superior force at Faughart, near Dundalk ( 1318 ) he was slain.
His Connaught allies, the O'Conors, were routed at Athenry. But after a temporary ebb, success after success again followed the banners of the intrepid Irish. Even the English rulers in Dublin were brought under subjection. MacMurrough Kavangh King of Leinster, became virtually King of Dublin, and received from the city an annual tribute. When Murrough O'Brien, King of Munster, burst upon the English assembled at Castle Dermot in Kildare they were so terrified that they would not fight; they gave him vast sums of money, war-horses and other equipment to buy peace. As the 14th century approached its end the English everywhere trembled.
To remedy this state of affairs, Richard II of England, landed in Ireland with an immense army and swore a mighty oath that he would not leave the country until he had taken Art MacMurrough alive or dead.
conquered. The spirit of exaltation of our manhood, the intense prayerfulness of our spiritual-minded, white souled
indomitable womankind, have mocked at despair, laughed in the face of Misfortune itself. And when the race was thought to have been prostrated forever, it arose and rang out its triumphant battle-cry !
Neither then, nor even after did the foreign invader come to understand Ireland's soul. Spenser, in Elizabeth's days vainly tried to solve the problem of the resurgent spirit of the Irish. Why did not the Gaels acknowledge defeat ?
" Yet surely, " he allows, " they are ver valiant and hardy, for the most part great endurers of cold, labour and of all hardiness, very active and strong of hand, very swift of foot, very vigilant and circumspect in their enterrprises, very present in perils, very great scorners of death. "
The resurrection of thirteenth century Ireland, and its subtle conquering of the conqueror, has been a source of wonder to English Irish historians, who have tried to explain it in many futile ways. The truth is that the free-hearted, culture-loving, gracious comity of the Gaels and of Gaelic civilisation irresistibly insinuated itself into the mind and soul of the Norman French - and won from them eager capitulation.
In their darkest hour of affliction the princes of the three greatest Gaelic Clans - almost all that possibly could assemble, met at Caol Uisage near Belleck on the River Erne ( in 1258 ) to knit the country into one body to withstand the foreigner. The men of Connaught, under Felim O' Conor and the warriors of Thomond under O' Brien cheerfully elected Brian O' Neill of Tir-Owen King of Ireland. This menace was met by the treacherous capture and poisoning of O' Neill by De Courcy, who defeated the combined forces at The Battle of Downpatrick (1260 ) The lesson of this disaster by which " Eire was left an orphan " was most fruitful. The Irish were " clad in fine linen garments, the foreigners in one mass of Iron " as the contemporary Garl narrates. Hence was seen the need of better means of defence against the common foe. The epochal advent of the " gall-oglach " ( gallowglass ) into Ireland's armies resulted. From the Western Isles of Scotland were invited the heavy armed, mail-clad, battle axe bearing gall-oglach to aid in the cause. Later the princes throughout Ireland raised and similarly equipped regular field troops. In fact Eire saw the form and spirit of her ancient Fianna, or national militia. come to life again. By this new factor the tide of foreign conquest was turned. No longer did the Norman cavaliers " in one mass of iron " inspire terror, no more were their castles regarded as impregnable fortresses. O'More of leix levelled eight such strongholds in one day. Sir Henry Savage, the Norman, expressed his views pithily on this altered condition of warfare. " Never shall I, by the grace of God, " he declared, " cumber myself with dead walls: my fort shall be where young bloods are stirring and where i have room to fight. Better is a castle of bones than a castle of stones. " The Norman policy of conquest by incastellation was defeated by the gall-oglach enterprise, so quickly adopted now by all the leading Irish chiefs.
To quicken the tide of liberation Donal O'Neill and the other Gaelic lords invited Edward Bruce, brother of the King of Scotland, to the throne of Ireland. The winning, in rapid succession of 18 victories, made the gallant Bruce reckless, so engaging a vastly superior force at Faughart, near Dundalk ( 1318 ) he was slain.
His Connaught allies, the O'Conors, were routed at Athenry. But after a temporary ebb, success after success again followed the banners of the intrepid Irish. Even the English rulers in Dublin were brought under subjection. MacMurrough Kavangh King of Leinster, became virtually King of Dublin, and received from the city an annual tribute. When Murrough O'Brien, King of Munster, burst upon the English assembled at Castle Dermot in Kildare they were so terrified that they would not fight; they gave him vast sums of money, war-horses and other equipment to buy peace. As the 14th century approached its end the English everywhere trembled.
To remedy this state of affairs, Richard II of England, landed in Ireland with an immense army and swore a mighty oath that he would not leave the country until he had taken Art MacMurrough alive or dead.
Richard II King of England
Art was a true Irish King. The ' chroniclers ' record that " he held in his fair hand the sovereignty and the charters of the province of Leinster. At his approach the whole ( of the English of ) Leinster trembled. " Again " he was replete with hospitality, knowlegde and chivalry; the prosperous and kingly enricher of churches and monasteries, with his alms and offerings. " Art barred Richard's way. Even his 30,000 men were no match for the Irish. The French author who has left us a record of this invasion declares that the Gaels were utterly fearless, were " as bold as lions. " In contest after contest the English were shattered. In this Frenchman's opinion the Irish could not be conquered " while the leaves were on the trees. " So with a heavy heart Richard returned home, a sad and broken man, to be deprived of his crown and kingdom by the Duke of Lancaster. He was the last English monarch until the 17th century who tried the impossible task of conquering Ireland. MacMurrough was poisoned by an agent of the English Government. The final result of the Irish rally was that English rule was cooped within the Pale. Before we venture any further let us look at the ' Pale '
the pale
The
Pale ( An Phail in Irish ) or the English Pale ( An Phail Sasanach ) was the English controlled part
of Ireland that had reduced by the late 1400s to an area along the east coast stretching from Dalkey, south of Dublin, to the garrison town of Dundalk, north of Drogheda. The inland boundary went to Leixlip around the Earldom of Kildare, toward Trim and north towards Kells.
In 1171 the Norman conquest of Ireland assumed the sovereignty of the plantagent dynsaty over Ireland. From the
13th century onwards, the Hiberno-Norman invasion in the rest of Ireland at first faltered then waned. Across most of Ireland the Norman knights and their servants who were mostly from Wales and Cornwall, increasingly assimilated to Irish culture after 1300. A series of alliances with their neighbouring autonomous Gaelic Chieftains developed. The Norman lords in the provinces behaved as kings in their own right in their own areas, as the Gaelic Chieftains had previously. The remaining Lordship that gave direct allegiance to the English King shrank accordingly, and as parts of its perimeter in counties Meath and Kildare were fenced or ditched, it became known as the Pale, deriving from the Latin word ' pallium ' a fence. The military power of the crown itself was geatly weakened by the Hundred Years War ( 1337-1453 ) and the War of the Roses ( 1455-85 ) A parliament was created which mostly sat in Drogheda, until the Tudors took greater interest in Irish affairs from 1485 and moved it back to Dublin. The Pale generally consisted of fertile lowlands, which were easier for the garrison to defend from ambush, than hilly or wooded ground.
In 1366, in order for the English Crown to assert its authority over settlers, a parliament was assembled in Kilkenny and the Statute of Kilkenny was enacted. The statute decreed that inter-marriage between English settlers and Irish natives was forbidden. It also forbade the settlers using the Irish language and adopting Irish modes of dress or other customs; such practices were alreadt common. In particular the adoption of Gaelic Brehon property laws undermined the feudal nature of the Lordship. The act could never be implemented successfully, even in the Pale itself, as the first expansion of Dublin was an area known as " Irishtown "
By the late 15th century the Pale became the only part of Ireland that remained subject to the English King, with most of the island paying only a token recognition of the overlordship of the English Crown . .
In 1171 the Norman conquest of Ireland assumed the sovereignty of the plantagent dynsaty over Ireland. From the
13th century onwards, the Hiberno-Norman invasion in the rest of Ireland at first faltered then waned. Across most of Ireland the Norman knights and their servants who were mostly from Wales and Cornwall, increasingly assimilated to Irish culture after 1300. A series of alliances with their neighbouring autonomous Gaelic Chieftains developed. The Norman lords in the provinces behaved as kings in their own right in their own areas, as the Gaelic Chieftains had previously. The remaining Lordship that gave direct allegiance to the English King shrank accordingly, and as parts of its perimeter in counties Meath and Kildare were fenced or ditched, it became known as the Pale, deriving from the Latin word ' pallium ' a fence. The military power of the crown itself was geatly weakened by the Hundred Years War ( 1337-1453 ) and the War of the Roses ( 1455-85 ) A parliament was created which mostly sat in Drogheda, until the Tudors took greater interest in Irish affairs from 1485 and moved it back to Dublin. The Pale generally consisted of fertile lowlands, which were easier for the garrison to defend from ambush, than hilly or wooded ground.
In 1366, in order for the English Crown to assert its authority over settlers, a parliament was assembled in Kilkenny and the Statute of Kilkenny was enacted. The statute decreed that inter-marriage between English settlers and Irish natives was forbidden. It also forbade the settlers using the Irish language and adopting Irish modes of dress or other customs; such practices were alreadt common. In particular the adoption of Gaelic Brehon property laws undermined the feudal nature of the Lordship. The act could never be implemented successfully, even in the Pale itself, as the first expansion of Dublin was an area known as " Irishtown "
By the late 15th century the Pale became the only part of Ireland that remained subject to the English King, with most of the island paying only a token recognition of the overlordship of the English Crown . .
