Ireland’s Adventure in Spain

John Minahane
May 2017

Surviving Kinsale: Irish emigration and identity formation in early modern Spain,
1601-40, by Ciaran O’Scea, Manchester University Press, 280 pp, £70, ISBN: 978-
0719088582

During the first few years of the seventeenth century there was a remarkable Irish
migration to Spain. The migrants came principally from southwest Cork and south
Kerry. Both sexes were well-represented, and all ages, rich and poor, higher
classes and low – possibly ten thousand people, by Ciaran O’Scea’s estimate. Their
migration was centred on the port town of La Coruña in Galicia, in the far
northwest of Spain. A significant Irish community was established in La Coruña,
with smaller communities elsewhere in northern Spain and in Madrid.

Furthermore, the emigrant Irish leaders soon got involved in Spanish court
politics. In a difficult situation they acquitted themselves remarkably well.
Within a generation, when times became more favourable because of Spain’s pressing
need for troops, the Irish even managed to break into the top echelon of Spanish
society, becoming a recognised part of the high nobility.

This is the core of the story that O’Scea sets out to tell, drawing on the Spanish
state papers. He has turned up many fascinating details and I am grateful to him
for that, though I cannot agree with his interpretations. Developments which he
sees as implying degeneration and weakness in the exile community, to my mind
indicate an uncommon cultural strength. A key argument in his book, that the
Spanish identified the Irish immigrants with the Moriscos of the south of Spain,
seems to me to have no foundation. Finally, something essential is missed in how
the migrants thought of themselves (and how their leaders energetically acted).

To begin at the beginning: why did this mass migration occur? How could it happen
that whole communities, in effect, uprooted themselves and sought to be
transplanted in a strange land across the sea?

Most obviously it’s a story of war, religion and famine. The migration happened at
the end of the devastating Nine Years War (1594-1603). The migrants were Catholics
and mostly Gaels, with some “Gaelicised” Hiberno-English also. They were going to a
country which had involved itself on the Catholic Irish side against Protestant
England in the later stages of the war. In parts of their region the Spanish had
asserted what amounted to sovereignty, taking over castles which they afterwards
surrendered to the English by treaty.

Philip O’Sullivan Beare gives a succinct explanation:

By the time that war was over, Ireland was almost completely devastated and
ruined. An immense hunger and famine beset everyone; many were compelled to eat
dogs or cats, and many who could not subsist even by such means perished. Famine
overtook not only the human beings but even the brute beasts …On account of that
slaughter, which was almost universal in Ireland, many of the Irish dispersed among
foreign peoples. A huge crowd flooded to France, and in far greater numbers to
Spain. The exiles were given a kind and comradely reception, in the cause of the
Faith, by Catholics abroad.

What O’Scea has to add to this is something which, I assume, was so obvious to
O’Sullivan Beare that it didn’t occur to him to mention it. The mass migration was
following in the path of exiled lords – principally the O’Driscolls of Castlehaven
and Baltimore, the O’Sullivans of Beara and south Kerry, the MacCarthys of south
Kerry, Muskerry and Carbery – who were already settled in Spain. And evidently the
migrants hoped that those leaders, even in exile, would be able to offer them
protection.

Galicia was a poor region and the port on which the Irish migration was focused, La
Coruña, probably had little more than two thousand inhabitants. La Coruña could not
possibly cope with the hundreds of Irish who were continually landing there or
nearby or coming overland from elsewhere. Considerable numbers were going first to
Valladolid, where the Spanish court then was, but soon they were being redirected
to La Coruña, increasing the pressure there.

The Spanish were indeed, to begin with, kind and comradely. Galicia’s governor, the
Count of Caracena, was consistently supportive. But there were limits. After the
arrival of the key figure of the migration, Donal Cam O’Sullivan Beare, in
September 1604, matters quickly came to a crisis. “Everybody seeks him out,”
Caracena told King Philip III, “and he welcomes everyone.”

What was to be done? One key move that could relieve the pressure would be to
establish a Flanders-based Irish regiment, as the exiled lords were urging. The
able-bodied men would then go off to Flanders (which was then a Spanish territory),
taking with them their relatives and dependents. But King Philip was dragging his
heels on this for reasons of high politics. Only a year or two previously Spain had
made peace with England, and Philip was loath to send signals which the English
might interpret as preparations for renewed war. There was, however, another
important factor to be taken into account. The proportion of so-called “useless
people”, meaning women, children and old men, was exceptionally high among the
migrants. It was far higher than in the ongoing, smaller-scale military migrations
from Ireland to Flanders.

Inevitably, the idea of forced repatriation was raised in the Spanish court. That
was certainly a possible solution. The problem for the Spanish was that it might
well be seen as Spain reneging on those who had fought in its cause. If large
numbers of Catholics were forcibly returned to Ireland, where an anti-Catholic
persecution was known to be in progress, the Spanish monarchy might suffer a
dangerous loss of prestige at home and abroad.

Of course, some excuse might be found for the measure if the exiled lords approved
it. Caracena was ordered to meet them and propose repatriation. In due course
O’Sullivan Beare and others sent a declaration to Philip III, saying: “It seems
profitable to us to send back to Ireland all the people who want to go there from
among the useless people such as women, children, old and principally single women,
who have not sufficient means to remain, notwithstanding the persecution that we
have seen in our time.”

O’Scea comments as follows: “In effect, the Irish nobility and religious abandoned
the poorer elements of Gaelic society to their fate, and eased the royal conscience
should Philip III decide to proceed with the repatriation.” But this is an unfair
and unreasonable judgment. The fuller documentation he himself has provided in
another book makes that abundantly clear. O’Sullivan Beare, etc, date their
declaration December 30th, 1605. And on that very same day Caracena sent a letter
to Philip III also agreeing to voluntary repatriations, but spelling out plainly
that “the people that are to be sent are women, children and poor and that these
must be people who wish to willingly return without compelling anyone in any case”.

What this indicates is that the Gaelic lords were working in tandem with Caracena
to ward off the threat of forced repatriation. By agreeing to voluntary
repatriation, if with some marked reluctance (“notwithstanding the persecution that
we have seen in our time”) they were showing goodwill and acknowledging the Spanish
monarch’s difficulty. But on the issue of principle – no forced repatriation – they
were standing firm.

King Philip did eventually take extraordinary financial measures and establish the
regiment in Flanders. The “useless people” were distributed more widely in northern
Spain, with the local Catholic prelates being responsible for their upkeep. Some
people also returned to Ireland, voluntarily. There was no forced repatriation.

The Gaelic lords deserve their due measure of credit for this constructive solution
to the crisis. O’Scea’s comment to the contrary exemplifies the major fault of his
book: an animus against Gaelic Ireland, leading him to make unreasonable judgments
based not on evidence but on preconceived theory.

FROM 1609 the exiled Irish faced serious political problems. Maintaining the peace
with England, King Philip III now made peace with another long-time enemy, Holland.
The Spanish had run out of European Christian enemies, and so there was less need
for troops and therefore less need for Irishmen. This was the moment when the Duke
of Lerma, the immensely powerful court favourite of Philip III, became hostile. He
had previously supported the Irish, but henceforward he was their opponent.

But the Gaelic Irish nobility and clergy at the court of Spain began playing their
own hand in the game of Spanish court politics. In 1610 the key Irish court
politician, O’Sullivan Beare, went over to the anti-Lerma opposition. And as this
opposition gained in strength, so on the whole did the Gaelic Irish court faction.
Caracena, reappearing in a powerful position at court, helped his old friends. A
major breakthrough came in 1617, when O’Sullivan Beare was received into Spain’s
high nobility. He had never been an earl in Ireland, but now a completely new title
was created for him: he became Conde de Biraben, the Count or Earl of Beara.

Lerma, of course, hit back hard. Under his influence the official who was called
the Protector of the Irish became a terroriser of the Irish around the court. Many
of them were arrested without substantial reason and banished from Madrid. Lerma
also showed that, if the Irish were going to play Spanish court politics, then he
would have a hand in the rivalries of the Irish. He began supporting the Old
English court faction of the Irish Catholics, who included the Irish Jesuits,
against the rest. The Old English had prejudices against the supposedly
“uncivilised” Gaels, and the Irish Jesuits were systematically excluding Gaelic
applicants from the colleges in Spain which they controlled.

With Lerma’s support, the Old English scored some successes. But the Count of
Berehaven proved a match for them. He took on the Irish Jesuits and defeated them
politically. His campaign against the policy of debarring Gaels from the Irish
Colleges was spectacularly successful. Rubbing salt in the wound, even the
Castilian Province of the Jesuit Order took O’Sullivan Beare’s side.

It would seem that this came as a mighty shock to the Old English. Some of them,
for example the Jesuit Richard Conway, who was probably the author of the Brief
Relation of the Present Persecution in Ireland which appeared in 1619 in Seville,
may have examined and overcome their anti-Gaelic prejudices. The Brief Relation
emphasises the long history of civilisation and learning in Ireland, going back at
least to Roman times. Words very similar to those used by Hugh O’Neill in his last
letters from Rome are employed to denounce the Ulster Plantation (which the Old
English Catholic representatives had voted for in the Dublin Parliament of 1615).
There was not much in the Brief Relation that the Gaels could have faulted.

However, some others of the Old English may have felt that the only adequate
response to O’Sullivan Beare’s achievement was murder. He was fatally stabbed in
Madrid in the summer of 1618 by John Bath, a rather talented and able double agent
of the English administration of James I.
This was one of two heavy blows to the Gaels in Spain. Shortly before losing their
aristocratic champion they had seen their strategist, Archbishop Flaithrí Ó
Maolchonaire, distanced from the court. That was because of his dogged opposition
to the so-called Spanish Match, the proposal that Philip III’s daughter would marry
one of James I’s sons. The idea was that this marriage alliance would consolidate
the peace between Spain and England – in the archbishop’s eyes, a most undesirable
prospect. His position at court became untenable and he had to move for some years
to Flanders. But the Gaelic Irish exile interest survived all this, and after the
collapse of the Spanish Match it bounced back with renewed vigour.

What is still more remarkable is that throughout this period, roughly from 1610 to
1625, there was a many-sided adaptation of the Gaelic exile community to Spanish
norms. O’Scea gives numerous examples of what this involved. Literacy levels went
up dramatically, especially among women. People made wills. Birth registrations
almost doubled. An awareness spread, particularly in the leading families, that the
Spanish loved documentation and so one must start keeping papers – even if
sometimes one had to explain that in Ireland there were poets to confirm one’s
pedigree and actually one had never had a family tree on a scroll.

The exiled Irish became more conspicuously religious. They joined confraternities;
they had themselves buried in monastic habits. The most distinctive Gaelic names
for male children went out of fashion and parents chose more Spanish and
recognisably saintly names. Fathers tried to find convents for younger daughters.

A feature of the Irish-Iberian community in its second decade was the relative
prominence of women. Sometimes this meant trouble: there were complaints about
Irish prostitutes near the Spanish court, and some clergymen thundered that “these
Irish women commit many offences against God”. (But not everyone disliked seeing
Irish girls of the less affluent sort going around Madrid. The poet Quevedo, for
one, found them charming and praised them warmly, according to Micheline Kerney
Walsh.)

On the other hand, some Irish women in La Coruña made a determined attempt to
acquire, not precisely respectability, but what one might call a footing on the
lower levels of Spanish religious politics. They set up a house of “Beatas” or lay
nuns, affiliated with the Dominican order. The members of this group, or some of
them anyhow, were literate and had mastered Spanish.

Beatas were theoretically under the direction of a confessor, but they were known
for being independent and often troublesome. As lay Dominicans they could claim
some sort of right to act as religious police. And it may well be that the
principal task of a Gaelic Beata was to hassle members of the Irish community in La
Coruña, to press them to adapt and blend in better with the irritable Spanish. Or
is this to distort their message? Was it more positively framed? Leonor O’Sullivan
Beare (who was a serial godmother), Elena MacMahon: what did they actually have to
say?

Overall, one would take this to be a story of purposeful, resourceful adaptation –

a story of cultural strength. But O’Scea cannot see it like that. His view is that
Gaelic society was totally dominated by its agnatic (strictly patrilineal) kinship
system. In Madrid or La Coruña, without lands or independent control of resources,
the old Gaelic ways could not be kept up. Besides, Spanish law was giving
unaccustomed power in the form of money (dead husbands’ military pensions and back
pay) to many of the exiled women and thus further undermining the male-centred
Gaelic structures. In his concluding chapter, where he goes for broke, O’Scea tells
us that “Gaelic Irish kinship structures collapsed … the effects on the Gaelic
Irish were catastrophic.” But this catastrophe is what enabled their rapid
acculturation.
To me this is incredible. I think that a process of rapid degeneration, amounting
in the end to catastrophic breakdown, in a community situated as the exiled Gaelic
Irish were, would be more likely to produce ongoing decay, failure and despair.
There must have been some other cultural process at work which was not
degenerative, which sustained them and spurred them to resourceful and successful
efforts.

WHAT was happening in the minds of the exiled Gaels? In an attempt to divert
attention from this question, or so it seems to me, O’Scea introduces an optical
illusion: the supposed likeness of the Gaels, in Spanish eyes, to the Morisco
community of the south of Spain.

The Moriscos were the formally Christian, but allegedly still in large measure
Islamic, descendants of the Moors of Granada. Some hundreds of thousands of them
were expelled from Spain between 1609 and 1614. To be identified with such people
would be an uncomfortable experience indeed. In a variety of formulations O’Scea
refers to the “identification of the Irish with the Moriscos by the Spaniards”
(cited here from his conclusion). He labours to suggest and imply this as well as
asserting it, and he even argues that the wish to cast off the Morisco-type label
was the principal motivating factor for the changed practices in the Irish
community between 1610 and about 1625. But where is the evidence? In my view, he
gives no substantial grounds for believing that the Spanish ever made any such
association.

The Moriscos had been forced to turn Christian (in breach of an undertaking in the
terms of surrender accepted by the last king of Granada in 1492, that Muslims would
not have to change their religion). Afterwards they lived a peculiar double life.
Officially they were Christians; privately (as the Spanish elite insisted, and as
Julio Caro Baroja largely agrees) on the whole they maintained their Islamic
traditions. In countless ways their public existence seemed to reveal their private
alienation. They looked, sounded and acted strangely.

Caro Baroja distinguishes four ways in which they were different:

1. Religion, the most important. Since they were baptised Christians, if they
practiced Islam the Moriscos were regarded as apostates and renegades. For
persistent offenders the punishment could be death.

2. Language. They spoke Arabic and had a distinctive accent when speaking Spanish.

3. Customs. Their women dressed differently; their food and drink was different (no
wine, no pork; halal killing). They made much use of public baths. They had
different ways of solemnising births, marriages and deaths, and different working
practices.

4. Physical and temperamental features.

If we omit religion, on all other points the Irish too were different. They spoke
Irish and would have had distinctive accents when speaking Spanish. They dressed
distinctively: the Irish mantle was very striking. Irish musical instruments or an
Irish wake might not have been to every Spaniard’s taste. Or indeed, Irish red
hair.

In fact, though, everything revolved around religion. That was why Morisco
difference so inflamed feeling. It may well be that the ordinary Spaniard, as Caro
Baroja says, would have disliked hearing non-Spanish languages, whether they were
Arabic, Basque, or Irish. But what gave Arabic its peculiar charge was the
Christian elite’s belief that it both concealed and promoted Islamic practice. The
sense that, in how they looked, sounded and acted, the Moriscos were giving an
unending demonstration of their private disloyalty: this was what drove the Spanish
Christian elite to paranoia and made many of them feel that the problem could have
no constructive solution. After the conquest of Granada, Jaime Bleda says, there
were perpetually two opinions in Spain: “that this enemy nation should be preserved
in its ancestral places, or completely expelled from the land”.

In the 1520s a law was passed which forbade the use of Arabic and outlawed the
whole range of potentially removable Morisco differences. But the abstemious, hard-
working and thrifty Moriscos had plenty of money (“they work and they don’t eat; if
a sixpence comes into their power they condemn it to perpetual prison and eternal
darkness,” one of Cervantes’s characters says), and the Emperor Charles V was needy
and they managed to buy him off.

But it was not so easy to buy off Philip II. In 1566, under intense pressure from
the Catholic hierarchy, a new conformity law was enacted. Arabic was to be phased
out completely within three years. Books in Arabic were to be surrendered and
contracts in Arabic annulled. The Moriscos must dress like Castilian Spaniards,
stop using their musical instruments, not celebrate Friday and not have Moorish
names. They must desist from the use of public baths, and their women must not use
henna.

Francisco Nuñez Muley, representing the Moriscos, put forward a case that these
cultural differences had no essential connection with Islam and that it was
counterproductive to try to suppress them. His argument was presented extremely
well. There were many differences of dress, he said, in the different Christian
lands, and indeed among Spain’s own regions; in certain countries there were
Christian women who dressed like Morisco women. Arabic too was a language that
could perfectly well be used by Christians, and indeed it was spoken by Christians
in Malta and in the Holy Land. To prohibit the normal language of business in much
of the south of Spain, and to annul solemnly concluded contracts, would cause chaos
in ordinary working and trading. As for their use of baths, the Moriscos had sound
hygienic and health reasons for that, and so on.

Nothing could be more reasonable than the way Muley argues his case. And yet Caro
Baroja says that he’s not convincing. The Christian elite understood that Morisco
difference remained rooted in a vast international culture which was not theirs.
Muley’s appeal was dismissed, the conformity law came into force, and it
precipitated a major Morisco rebellion which went on for nearly two and a half
years.

Afterwards the Moriscos of Granada, or some of them, were expelled, but only to
other regions of Spain. The essential problem remained unresolved. By the early
1600s there were fears that the Moriscos were planning a new rebellion, this time
in conjunction with an invasion by the Ottoman Turks and the militant Muslim rulers
of north Africa. The two points of view described by Jaime Bleda, pro-assimilation
and pro-expulsion, were in sharper conflict. In 1609 there was a landslide shift of
opinion in favour of expulsion, which was undertaken. Bernard Vincent says that
about 90 per cent of the Moriscos, roughly a quarter of a million people, were
expelled in the course of a year, 1609-10. During the following four years the
expulsion continued, but more slowly.

I have barely glanced at the huge books which were published between 1612 and 1618,
by Pedro Aznar Cardona, Marcos de Guadalajara and Jaime Bleda, justifying the
expulsion. But even a glance is sufficient to show that for these writers the
Morisco issue carries a massive historical charge. Bound up with it is the history
of Christian Spain, from the time of the first Muslim invasions in the early eighth
century. That original Muslim irruption is seen as a moment of catastrophe, and
there are fears that nine centuries later, because of the sheer power of the Turks,
a new catastrophe could soon occur. There is also intense bitterness at what is
seen as the Moriscos’ betrayal of Christianity. A hundred years had passed, after
all,

since God did them the honour of calling them to the bosom of his Church … and
when they were expected to bear fruit worthy of servants of God, these tributaries
of Hell appeared with a thousand apostasies, infidelities, sorceries, betrayals,
conspiracies, capital offences, and a whole variety of atrocious crimes against the
King of Heaven and against our Catholic King Philip, on account of which he has
cast them out and expelled them from his kingdoms (Aznar Cardona).

If the Gaelic Irish were identified with people so described, it is hard to see why
they too were not briskly rounded up and put on boats.

O’Scea tries to strengthen his argument by suggesting that the Gaels were at odds
with orthodox Catholicism. On several occasions he refers to them as “heterodox”.
Here he is being more inquisitorial than the Inquisition, which never said any such
thing.

If one is looking for Gaelic religious culture at its most eccentric, the
devotional poems composed roughly from 1200 to 1600 would probably qualify. A long
time ago Fr Lambert McKenna SJ, set out to study them, with a firm resolution of
judging them by his own Jesuit standards. He found that, “while not implying un-
Catholic doctrine”, they betrayed a very artificial religious mentality (Dán Dé,
introduction). They were not heterodox, in other words, but they were
unsatisfactory, being too superficially religious. The Spanish critics of the 1600s
seem to be no harsher than that, and no less discriminating.

The Inquisition, of course, took an interest in the exiled Irish. Anyone who was
different was of interest to the Inquisition, which was anxious to establish how
far the difference went and what it might imply. But evidently the Irish gave
little cause for concern, or O’Scea would be able to find more cases, and more
serious ones. Of the few he cites, some are not nationally specific or indeed very
heretical: if a priest or a layman says that it isn’t a sin for him to have sex
with other men’s wives, the primary motive is not likely to be doctrinal. On the
other hand, the Irish were said not to keep the Lenten fast very well. That might
well be thought serious if there were no improvement. But the mastermind himself,
Archbishop Ó Maolchonaire, gave this matter his attention, and since it is not a
continually recurring complaint, presumably in the general adaptation of Irish
behaviour there was an improvement in this respect also.

In the concluding chapter we are told that the Gaelic Irish, desperate to escape
the tainted association, even tried to pin the Morisco label on others, such as the
Old English. Hence there was an

adoption of the political language of the Old Christian-New Christian divide by

Gaelic Irish writers and its application to the Gaelic Irish-Old English struggle
in order to denigrate the Old English and keep them away from access to royal
patronage. This first made its appearance in the struggle over the Irish college in
Santiago in 1613.

But that is a misinterpretation. Benjamin Hazard has shown that the essential
criticism of the Old English, as Catholics who were compromised by their long-
standing attachment to the English crown, was expounded by Flaithrí Ó Maolchonaire
at least as early as 1605.

The criticism did become sharper after 1615, when the Old English representatives
at the Dublin Parliament voted for the confiscation of O’Neill and O’Donnell’s
estates, an issue which is emphasised in Philip O’Sullivan Beare’s History.
“Denigration” is not an appropriate term to describe a political case which
O’Sullivan Beare and Ó Maolchonaire make with reasoned argument. And the Moriscos
have nothing to do with it.

If it really were true that the Gaelic Irish were identified with the Moriscos, one
would expect to find this linkage made explicit by members of the Spanish elite.
They were articulate men. But in the only instances which I have been able to find
where Moriscos and Irish are mentioned in the same breath, far from being
identified they are treated as polar opposites.

One of these was published by Kerney Walsh in her admirable Destruction by Peace.
The author was Andrés Velázquez, member of the Council of State and head of the
Spanish Secret Service, writing to the Duke of Lerma on June 28th, 1615. “The
Catholics of [Ireland] fear it is intended to expel them, following the example of
what was done with the Moriscos in Spain, for the Irish are no less suspect to the
king of England than the Moors were to His Majesty; this is a sign that our
decision was good, since it is not only envied but imitated by the enemies.”

The second is by Jaime Bleda, historian and defender of the policy of expulsion. He
says that the Moorish invasion in the early eighth century caused many Spanish
Christians to flee abroad – to Greece, Germany, France, even to England.

Venerable Bede, seeing the affliction and misery of those who had gone to
England and were going about there, lost, with their wives and children, as the
poor Irish go about today in Madrid, – Bede wrote, as has been said, exhorting many
Christian princes to war against the Moors of Spain: but no one believed him, nor
will anyone help the poor English now. In Ireland to the present day many names
have survived of Spaniards who fled from this disaster – not from the great Spanish
drought, as some think, even if there actually was one, but from their destruction,
in the year seven hundred and fourteen or fifteen and afterwards, which were the
most terrible and frightful years that Spain experienced since the time of its
great drought, if it really happened.

Plainly, for Bleda and Velázquez there can be no question of identifying the Irish
with the Moriscos. If Velázquez does see a parallel, it is with the Irish vis-à-vis
anti-Catholic England, not Catholic Spain. In both Spain and England the king is
concerned about a disloyal and dangerous population within his realm. Possibly the
king of England might copy Spanish measures, since they are seen to be effective,
in dealing with his internal enemies (who are, however, Spain’s friends: Velázquez
is urging Lerma to give serious thought to the option of military aid). As for
Bleda, he identifies the poor Irish around Madrid with the Spanish Catholic exiles
who fled from the Moriscos’ forbears.

The Moriscos were different, the Gaelic Irish were different, but more than that
was required for identification! The Spanish elite was capable of distinguishing
one set of different people from another.

SO let’s return to the real issue, the Gaelic Irish. O’Scea, it seems fair to say,
detests them. When referring to them and their ways his language often becomes
pejorative. His bitterest scorn is reserved for the Gaelic learned class:
“apologists for the ruling elite”, “the practitioners of pedigree-making or
faking”. This is the language of polemic, which is not applied to other cultural
powers or ruling orders. (One would like to give his due to the nineteenth century
man who said that the ruling ideas in every age were the ideas of the ruling class.
But his insight was not meant to be applied exclusively to strange non-capitalist
societies. It’s supposed to raise some questions about the thoughts that we’re
thinking ourselves …)

As an illustration, from the horse’s mouth, of the typical Gaelic way of ruling,
O’Scea cites “the reputed words of the Donegal chieftain, Niall Garbh Ó Domhnaill:
‘I care not let 1,000 die, I pass not of a pin; and for the people, they are my
subjects. I will punish, exact, cut and hang, if I see occasion, where and
whensoever I list’.” (He has omitted to quote an even finer piece of bombast which
immediately precedes this: “Were there but one cow in the country, that cow would I
take and use as mine own.”)

O’Scea does not tell us who reported these “reputed words”. They were related
during the Nine Years War, about 1600. The source was a representative of the power
which, beyond all reasonable doubt, was responsible for the deaths of most of the
many thousands of poor Irish who died during those years, partly by indiscriminate
massacres (boasted of in the state papers) but mainly by its policies of engineered
famine: the English government. Captain Dowcra, commander of the English garrison
in Derry, was writing a report which was meant to justify his own proceedings and
secure himself politically.

Dowcra was at liberty to put words in Ó Domhnaill’s mouth – there would hardly be
any comeback if he did. Or Ó Domhnaill may actually have said those words. In
Dowcra’s account there is a moment of moral confrontation between the two men,
diamond-cut-diamond, when the Irish lord may have felt obliged to come out with
some forceful bluster. What is certain is that, if this bluster fairly depicted the
Gaelic way of ruling, the English would have found the Nine Years War an easier
enterprise than it actually was.

And then there’s the migration. Those who departed for Spain were not only members
of the ruling families and their branches, which we know were multitudinous – by
O’Scea’s estimate those accounted only for about 25 per cent of the whole. Now,
famine or no famine, for whole communities to uproot themselves from their
traditional places so as once again, in a strange country, to be subordinated to
lords who had done nothing but bleed them white, who didn’t give a hoot about them,
who would cheerfully see thousands of them die if only they themselves were rich –
that takes a bit of believing. The migration, in fact, presupposed a powerful sense
of community of wellbeing with the lords on the part of those who migrated.

Our author might have learned a few things from the poets, but he knows already
what they are and has better things to do than read their apologies for the elite.
“A high proportion of the praise poems begin with a long list of the glorious deeds
of the chieftain’s ancestors before relating those of the living lord,” he informs
us. And in a footnote to this he advises: “See, for example, the fourteenth century
poem of sixty stanzas to Diarmaid na gCaisleán Ó Briain, of which the first forty
seven stanzas are devoted to the deeds of his ancestors.”

But this is the reverse of the truth, as he would know if he had read the poem with
a little attention. The poet, Gofraidh Fionn Ó Dálaigh, gives the first thirty-
seven verses strictly to Diarmaid na gCaisleán. Next there are ten verses on his
ancestors, from Brian Ború onwards, but in each verse some particular virtue of the
given ancestor is said to be embodied in Diarmaid. And then Gofraidh Fionn says, in
effect: enough of genealogy, it’s boring! The ancestors have had their day.

Taobh re huaisle gach fola ó dtá

na tabhradh sé;
’s é an neach féin uaislighios a ghnaoi
uaislighios é.

Let no man depend on the noble blood whence he springs; ’tis the man himself
who creates the glory which exalts him. (Fr McKenna’s translation).

There are five things that a prince needs, Gofraidh Fionn goes on to say: strength,
liberality, good sense, kindred, blood. The order is meant to be noted. And this is
not an exceptional attitude for Gofraidh Fionn. In the poem which begins Fa
ngníomhradh measdar meic ríogh, “Princes are judged by their deeds”, he is even
more emphatic.

What the poets say about Gaelic nobility is complex and context-specific. It’s
unwise to dogmatise about it on the basis of simple schemas, as O’Scea does. He has
only two boxes, it seems, to put Gaelic nobility in, uaisle and onóir, but he might
have found a few others, for example gnaoi, featured in Gofraidh Fionn’s verse
above, or oirbheart (in the older language airbert). This latter word has a wide
range of meaning, but as used about 1600 it often seems to mean a combination of
strength and good sense, coping with whatever confronts one, competence, facing the
situation and mastering it. As employed by some of the poets in A Bardic Miscellany
it doesn’t seem all that far from what Machiavelli meant by virtù.

Similarly, it’s unwise to judge Gaelic society by extrapolating what one takes to
be the meaning of the ancient, enigmatic books of law. O’Scea is firmly convinced
that women were peculiarly subjugated in Gaelic Ireland and that they were very
much freer in Spain. In exile “the average Gaelic Irish woman at least would have
had significantly greater inheritance rights than she would have had in Ireland, a
fact that should have helped increase her marital bargaining power, strengthened
her position within the family, and maybe made her more reluctant to return to
Ireland”. But this is pure theory, which apparently he cannot illustrate.

And here one might mention the extraordinary story of Elena MacCarthy, a
challenging subject for a novel if ever there was one. Elena was the only
legitimate child of the late sixteenth century MacCarthy Mór, an earl who was also
a gifted poet. It had been arranged with her father that she would marry Nicholas
Browne, one of the Munster planters, so that the huge lordship of MacCarthy Mór
would pass into English hands. But Elena – with the connivance, it was said, of her
mother, and just maybe a wink from her father – eloped with Florence MacCarthy
Reagh, the leading MacCarthy of Carbery. (He in turn had been engaged to the
daughter of O’Sullivan Beare. The jilted Browne promptly married the jilted
O’Sullivan and seemingly lived happily ever after. Though he was on the opposite
side in the Nine Years War, he is warmly spoken of by Philip O’Sullivan Beare.)

The idea of the huge MacCarthy territories of Carbery and South Kerry being united
was an appalling prospect for the English. And this in 1589, the very year after
the Armada – and Florence was a man who was known to have mastered the Spanish
language. The English authorities promptly kidnapped him and brought him to London,
where he was held for years. But then, in the latter stages of the Nine Years War,
he was reintroduced to West Cork, where it was hoped that he would act as a pro-
English counterweight to Hugh O’Neill.

Florence temporised, disappointing both sides. It may well be that he was waiting
for a Spanish landing before committing himself fully to O’Neill’s side. Unwilling
to give him so much time, the English seized him again (typically, breaking a safe-
conduct ) and brought him back to London, where he was held for the next forty
years until his death.

Afterwards, presenting her case to the English, Elena claimed she was alienated
from her husband and that she had given information to the English authorities
about his activities in West Cork in 1600. One suspects that she probably did
engage in some such communications, and one also suspects that she was a double
agent. The local English authorities seem to have concluded as much, because they
put her in prison in Cork. But she managed to escape and made her way to London,
where she put in a claim – not, of course, for her husband’s lands in Carbery, but
for the MacCarthy Mór estates, as the late earl’s only legitimate child. Naturally
this was not granted, but she did manage to secure a small pension.
Dissatisfied with this, she decided to try for better in the Spanish territories.
She turned up in Flanders in 1613, and Micheline Kerney Walsh has traced some of
her story thereafter. Inquiries were made about her; the Spanish ambassador
reported from London that her husband, Florence, was displeased with her and wanted
her put in a Flemish convent.

But she managed to escape this fate. By the following year she had settled in
Madrid and was complaining that her allowance was insufficient for her to live as
the grand lady that she was. She made her point, it would seem, because three years
later there was a very striking testimony to her rank and importance: she was one
of the sponsors of Donal Cam O’Sullivan Beare for admission to the Order of
Santiago. Irish and Spanish alike accepted her as a countess, a rank which strictly
speaking was self-conferred. Obviously she had won the trust of the Irish
community’s leaders. She had also mastered Spanish, since she did not require the
services of an interpreter.

In short, this was a woman who had shown ability in complex and difficult dealings
in three countries – and in three different language communities, come to that. But
it is clear that her capacities were developed within Gaelic Ireland. Sociological
theory may say, if it likes, that she cannot have been what she was. Maybe, just
maybe, the real social relations in Gaelic Ireland were looser, and had a wider
range of possibilities, than theory presupposes?

It is understandable, I grant, that one mightn’t have time for Gofraidh Fionn Ó
Dálaigh. But if one wants to engage with Gaelic Ireland about the year 1600, then
one ought to have time for Breandán Ó Buachalla. Ó Buachalla’s work, and especially
Aisling Ghéar, is the great gaping hole in O’Scea’s bibliography and text. I have
disagreements with Aisling Ghéar, but I would never recommend anyone not to read
it.

When Nicholas Canny produced Making Ireland British about fifteen years ago, he
tried to take Aisling Ghéar on board. I think he felt that if he didn’t, he might
be suspected of not having the tools for the job. In his introduction, Canny
claimed to have given “bardic poetry” an equivalent status to the state papers. He
did not really do so, but he felt obliged to pay this much tribute to the virtue of
attending, when writing about the country, to the country’s principal language. But
in academic writing of late one observes a policy of sustained silence about
Aisling Ghéar, quietly burying the bulky long book. It makes things a lot easier.

In Aisling Ghéar, however, one might make acquaintance with Eoghan Ruadh Mac an
Bhaird, the trusted secretary of Hugh O’Neill and the matchless poet of the exiled
O’Neills and O’Donnells. Some ideas which had obvious importance in the exile
culture (and turn up also in exile writings in Spanish, Latin and Irish prose) are
vividly expressed in his poems. The Irish are seen, like the Hebrews of the Bible,
to have had some responsibility for their own misfortunes. A moral reform is
required. One needs to take a more earnest attitude to life, and to the Irish
politico-military enterprise above all:

Glacuidh croidhe nuaidhe a-nois,

leaguidh síos seol an díomais;
ná codlaigh ar cneidh mBanbha,
gaibh obair fa th’athardha.
Furtacht Teamhra, má tá a-ndán,
do réir fáistine Ulltán,
muna thairbhire Dia dheit,
don tairrngeire cia creidmid?

Receive a new heart now,

take down the sail of arrogance;
 do not sleep on Ireland’s wound,
take up the work of the fatherland.
To rescue Tara, if it’s destined,
as Ulltán foretold –
If God does not grant you that,
who can believe in prophecy?

Ó Buachalla has written well about the importance of prophecy, which was not
confined to the culture of Ireland. (Here, in fact, there’s a likeness to the
Moriscos. “For over a hundred years the Moriscos, like many other persecuted
communities, lived from the illusion that prophecies could supply,” is how Julio
Caro Baroja puts it. However, while the persecuted communities gave most prominence
to the culture of prophecy, they had no monopoly.)

Furthermore, Aisling Ghéar might save one from the temptation to make reckless
statements about the exiles’ identity. Our author cites a petition by Captain
Richard de Burg, addressed to Philip III in 1619 and complaining bitterly of
neglect:

No one could return to his already lost country. Those who having become old
serving your Majesty [and thus] not suitable to serve another Prince, have died of
hunger. Those who had the intelligence to travel the world had not the wherewithal
because they had not been paid their backpay in months and so remained expecting
the compassion of Your Majesty’s which never arrived [so that] in the end when they
consumed little by little what was owed to them, the desperate ones, most of whom
died of hunger and ill luck, cursing too late their madness and credulity, should
have left wherever fortune led them.

O’Scea’s comment on this is:

Clearly, then, for the rank and file, it would be mistaken to speak of any form
of identity other than that related to economic survival. At most they possessed a
family, community, or ethnic language identity, though owing to their position as
foreigners they may have acquired a burgeoning Irish identity, based on country of
origin.

The second of these sentences flatly, and repeatedly, contradicts the first. But
what is striking is how the first sentence contradicts the opening statement by
Captain Richard de Burg: “No one could return to his already lost country”. – !!
Supposing someone has lost his country (which is to say, there was a time when he
had a country to lose), isn’t it a little rash to assume he no longer has any
identity except that of the economically surviving creature – for whom apparently,
as for Mrs Thatcher, there is no such thing as society?

Isin bhFraingc im dhúsgadh damh,

i n-Éirinn Chuinn im chodladh;
beag ar ngrádh uaidh don fhaire,
do thál suan ar síorfhaire.

When I wake I am in France,

but I’m in Ireland when I sleep.
Little I love being open-eyed,
ever on watch for what sleep brings.

This quatrain, composed in France in the early 1630s, seems to distil a

generation’s experience. How many Irish exiles felt like that, at least some of the
time? Could Richard de Burg have been one? I would bet that he was, though of
course he had no reason to reveal such thoughts in a petition to the King of Spain.
But here one comes to the most extraordinary thematic omission in O’Scea’s book,
the great fact which he cannot avoid bumping into now and then but never actually
highlights: the migrants didn’t want to stay in Spain forever. They wanted to go
home with honour. Spain with its great military power was to be the agent of their
restoration, and thereafter Philip III would be their benevolent and protecting
High King. Hugh O’Neill, writing to Lerma in May 1615, put it succinctly: “the
liberation of Ireland and its happy union to the crown of Spain”. King Philip would
acquire that right of high kingship which the English kings had never truly
possessed and could not acquire because of continual Irish resistance and their own
bad behaviour, as explained by Philip O’Sullivan Beare in his Compendium of the
History of Catholic Ireland (1621) and later by Conor O’Mahony in his Argument
Defending the Right of the Kingdom of Ireland (1645) .

To the end of his life Hugh O’Neill was continually campaigning for a Spanish
expedition to support a new Irish uprising, sending memorials to Philip III,
pressuring Lerma, Velázquez, or whoever else might have influence. And so was
O’Sullivan Beare, as Kerney Walsh has demonstrated. At the time of his death an
agent of his was in Ireland, sounding out prospects for a rising. This man,
identified as Fr Tadeo Huolano (Tadhg Ó hÓláin?), made his dangerous journeys both
in Munster and in Connacht. Everywhere he found goodwill, “but none of them will
stir until they see yourself in person or your letters, but above all they expect
yourself with good succour” (thus the priest reported in a letter, not knowing that
the intended recipient was dead).

O’Sullivan Beare, the key figure in the migration, wanted a future in Ireland. And
without clear evidence to the contrary one should assume that the vast majority of
the migrants, including the vast majority of women, wanted the same thing. (It is
notable that for generations those who had had lands in Ireland formally bequeathed
them by will to their heirs, though the lands had long been confiscated.
Furthermore, they showed no inclination to acquire lands in Spain, though for
people with even a claim to minor nobility this was not impossible – some Scottish
Catholic lords became Spanish landholders, for example.)

The continuing contacts O’Sullivan Beare had with his homeland are of great
interest. One important, even though enigmatic source is the elegy composed for him
in 1618, at some time after his murder in July. The poet, Domhnall Mac Eoghain Uí
Dhálaigh, was certainly resident in Ireland and probably lived near Dunboy.

His elegy is less passionate than, say, Eoghan Ruadh Mac an Bhaird’s for Ruaidhrí Ó
Domhnaill, composed a decade previously. That is to be expected: the poet in this
instance would not have been a close companion. Nonetheless he produced a fine
piece of work, and it was included in one of the most important poetic manuscripts
of the seventeenth century, compiled less than forty years later in the
Netherlands. His opening line frames the event: San Sbáinn do toirneadh Teamhair,
“Tara has been laid low in Spain,” that is to say, Ireland has been overthrown. The
murder has occurred in distant Spain, but it is a disaster of all-Irish
significance.

Uí Dhálaigh will be the despair of information-gatherers, since it isn’t his

purpose to supply their needs or indeed to show how much he knows. But obviously he
does know a good deal. He knows that O’Sullivan Beare now has the rank of Conde,
iarla, and is proud of that. When he calls him aoincheann uidhe na n-aoighidh, “the
journey’s end for every guest”, that would seem to be a poetic way of saying what
the governor of Galicia said: “Everybody seeks him out and he welcomes everyone.”
And he knows that O’Sullivan Beare was murdered in Madrid by a single foul blow.

Ní caoine mar caoine cháigh

do-niad uime san Easbáin;
ní hí an Mhumha a gcló chaoine,
 mó cumha na Casdaoile.
Riú bheanas an teidhm tinn-si
cinn ghaisgidh na Gaillinsi;
seal caoine ar mhnáibh san Mhumhain,
dáibh ní saoire a Saghsanaibh.

It is no common mourning
that they make for him in Spain:
they do not copy Munster’s grief,
greater is the sorrow of Castile.
This sore affliction strikes
the commanders of Galicia;
Munsterwomen will weep for quite a while:
they’ll have no freedom from the Englishmen.

The poet, then, is aware of Galicia both as a centre of the Irish-Iberian community
and as the starting-point of any Spanish military expedition to Ireland. He is also
aware of O’Sullivan Beare’s stature at the court of Castile. (The editor of the
published version of this poem, RB Breatnach, unfortunately committed a key blunder
which made the poet seem confused and silly. He took the word Gaillinsi as Gaill-
inse, “foreign island” – to mean England. Accordingly, Uí Dhálaigh was saying that
the heads of the English armed forces were mourning O’Sullivan Beare! Breatnach
observed that this contradicted statements in some later verses, where it is said
that the English are now full of confidence and see their way to complete control
of Ireland. He then compounded confusion with a learned explanation of the
contradiction. If he had checked Dinneen’s dictionary he would have found the true
meaning of Gaillinse: “Galicia (in Spain)”.)

The poet elegantly compares O’Sullivan Beare to Hector, who defended Troy against
the Greeks for as long as he lived, but with his death – similarly, from a single
blow – the city’s downfall was imminent.

Re Galluibh go nuaidhe a-niogh

aoinfhear do ghasruidh Ghaoidhiol
a gcaoi imreasuin ní fhuil
fá fhinnleasuibh Chraoi Cobhthuigh.
In all Ireland’s fine dwellings
there’s no man of the Gaels
fit to renew the contest
with the English today.

Last year, the poet says, it was a different story. And he follows with the
intriguing lines: “Seóid riamh dhá dtigeadh tar tuinn, / ní thigid ar ndul
Domhnuill.” Breatnach translates: “The gifts that ever used to come over the sea do
not come now that Domhnall is dead”. The gifts … or maybe, the treasures … Or is
there some other meaning? At any rate, this couplet surely must refer to a web of
real and expected communication between O’Sullivan Beare abroad and his followers
at home. Kerney Walsh has found valuable evidence of this. It would be good to have
more, because O’Sullivan Beare is a fascinating character. Will a biography worthy
of him ever be written? O’Scea, I assume, has encountered this poem but considers
it beneath his notice: I find no reference to it in his text or bibliography.

Though he provides much interesting information, O’Scea’s work falls short of the
standards set by Kerney Walsh and Hazard. Unlike those writers, he seems to be less
interested in the story than in the theory that can be imposed on the story. There
are moments in his later chapters (before his doctrinaire conclusion) when it seems
that his rich material may be about to sweep him away – that he might fly the coop
of theory. It’s a pity that he didn’t take the risk.
Note on sources
In the first two sections information is taken mainly from O’Scea and from Benjamin
Hazard, Faith and Patronage. The Political Career of Flaithrí Ó Maolchonaire, c.
1560-1629 (Dublin 2010); in the third section I depend mainly on Julio Caro Baroja,
Los moriscos del reino de Granada (Madrid 1957).

“By the time that war…”: Philip O’Sullivan Beare, Compendium Historiae Catholicae
Hiberniae (Dublin 1850), pp. 261-2. ‒ “Everybody seeks him out…”: Surviving, p. 44.
‒ “It seems profitable…”: Ciaran O’Scea, ‘Irish emigration to Castile in the
opening years of the seventeenth century’. In: To and from Ireland: Planned
Migration Schemes c. 1600-2000, ed. PJ Duffy and G Moran (Dublin 2004), p. 34; also
Surviving, p. 48. ‒ “In effect, the Irish nobility…”: Surviving, p. 48. ‒ “The
people that are to be sent…”: O’Scea, ‘Irish emigration’, p. 35.

Brief Relation: Breve relación de la presente persecucción en Irlanda (Seville

1619); on Irish civilisation and learning, pp. 5-8; on Ulster Plantation, p. 36. ‒
Gaelic strategist Ó Maolchonaire: Benjamin Hazard, op. cit. ‒ “These Irish women
commit…”: Surviving, p. 165. ‒ Quevedo on Irish girls: Micheline Kerney Walsh,
‘Some Notes towards a History of the Womenfolk of the Wild Geese’, The Irish Sword
1961-2, p. 102. ‒ “Gaelic Irish kinship structures… ”: Surviving, p. 241.

“Identification of the Irish…”: ibid., p. 233. ‒ Moriscos’ four differences: Julio

Caro Baroja, op. cit., p. 18. ‒ “That this enemy nation…”: Jaime Bleda, Coronica de
los Moros en España (Valencia 1618), p. 869. ‒ “They work and they don’t eat…”:
cited Caro Baroja, p. 221. ‒ Nuñez Muley’s arguments: Francisco Nuñez Muley, A
Memorandum for the President of the Royal Audiencia and the Chancery Court of the
City and Kingdom of Granada, tr. Vincent Barletta (Chicago 2007). ‒ Muley not
convincing: Caro Baroja, pp. 108-9. ‒ Moriscos expelled 1609-10: The Expulsion of
the Moriscos from Spain: A Mediterranean Diaspora ed. M. García-Arenal and G.
Wieger (Brill 2014), pp. 27-28. (Bernard Vincent)

Cardona, Guadalajara, Bleda: Pedro Aznar Cardona, Expulsión iustificada de los

moriscos españoles (Huesca 1612); Fray Marcos de Guadalajara, Memorable expulsión y
iustissimo destierro de los Moriscos de España (Pamplona 1613); Jaime Bleda, op.
cit. (all three are now on the internet). ‒ “…since God did them the honour”: Aznar
Cardona, op. cit., End of First Part, pp. 202r – 202v. ‒ ‘Heterodox’ Gaelic Irish:
e.g. Surviving, pp. 110, 217. ‒ “… adoption of the political language”: Surviving,
p. 235. ‒ Ó Maolchonaire on Old English, 1605: Hazard, op. cit., pp. 51-2. ‒
O’Sullivan Beare on confiscation vote: See my edition of Conor O’Mahony, An
Argument Defending the Right of the Kingdom of Ireland (Aubane 2010), pp. 31-4. ‒
“The Catholics of that kingdom…” Micheline Kerney Walsh, “Destruction by Peace”.
Hugh O’Neill After Kinsale (Ard Mhacha 2015), p. 352. ‒ “Venerable Bede…”: Jaime
Bleda, op. cit., p. 170.

“apologists to the ruling elite”: Surviving, p. 24. ‒ “the practitioners of

pedigree…”: ibid. ‒ “the reputed words…”: ibid., p. 22. ‒ “Were there but one
cow…”: See the fuller version in Katharine Simms, From Kings to Warlords
(Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2000), p. 146.

Indiscriminate massacres… engineered famine: See my article, ‘The English in

Ireland and the Practice of Massacre’, published in Church and State No 110, online
at Peter Brooke’s ‘British values website’: http://www.british-values.com/index-to-
articles/massacre/

“A high proportion of the praisepoems…”:Surviving, p. 143. ‒ “See, for example, the

14th century…”: ibid., p. 157, fn. 13. ‒ Taobh re huaisle…: ‘A Poem by Gofraidh
Fionn Ó Dálaigh’, Ériu 16 (1952), p. 134 (v. 50). ‒ Five princely qualities: ibid.,
v. 55. ‒ “the average Gaelic Irish woman…”: Surviving, p. 81. ‒ Elena MacCarthy:
cf. Kerney Walsh, ‘Some Notes’, op. cit.; Surviving, pp. 93, 148; and Daniel
MacCarthy, Life and Letters of Florence MacCarthy Reagh (London 1867).

Glacuidh croidhe…: Duanta Eoghain Ruaidh Mhic an Bhaird eag. Tomás Ó Raghallaigh
(Gaillimh 1930), p. 216. ‒ “For over a hundred years…”: Caro Baroja, p. 114. ‒ “No
one could return…”: Surviving, p. 240. ‒ “Clearly then, for the rank and file…”:
ibid., p. 241. ‒ Isin bhFraingc…: Filíocht Phádraigín Haicéad, eag. Máire Ní
Cheallacháin (Baile Átha Cliath 2003), p. 10. ‒ “the liberation of Ireland…”:
Destruction by Peace, p. 350.

O’Sullivan Beare’s plans: Micheline Kerney Walsh ed., ‘O’Sullivan Beare in Spain:
some unpublished documents’, Archivium Hibernicum 45 (1990). ‒ “but none of them
will stir…”: Destruction by Peace, p. 114. ‒ San Sbáinn ..: ‘Elegy on Donal
O’Sullivan Beare (†1618)’, ed. R. B. Breatnach, Éigse 7 (1954), p. 166 (v. I). ‒
aoincheann uidhe ..: ibid., p. 176 (v. XXXIX). ‒ Ní caoine…: ibid., p. 170 (vv.
XVII-XVIII). ‒ Re Gallaibh…: ibid., p. 174 (v. XXXI). ‒ Seóid riamh…: ibid., p. 178
(v. XLV).

1/5/2017

John Minahane has produced translations of literature in Irish and essays on Irish
history and literature. His books include The Christian Druids: on the filidh or
philosopher-poets of Ireland (repr. Howth Free Press, Dublin 2008); (ed. and tr.)
The poems of Geoffrey O’Donoghue / Dánta Shéafraidh Uí Dhonnchadha an Ghleanna
(Aubane Historical Society, Aubane 2008); and (t.) Conor O’Mahony, An Argument
Defending the Right of the Kingdom of Ireland (Aubane Historical Society, Aubane
2010).