Maelcho: a sixteenth-century narrative

Front matter

MAELCHO VOL. I. By the same Author HURRISH : a Study IRELAND (Story of the Nations Series) .MAJOR LAWRENCE, F.L.S. PLAIN FRANCES MOWBRAY &c. AVITH ESSEX IN IRELAND GRANIA MAELCHO A SIXTEENTH -CENTURY NARRATIVE r.v HON. EMILY LAWLESS AUTHOR OF 'WITH ESSEX IN IRELAND ' ETC. IN TWO VOLUMES -VOL. I. LONDON SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE 1894 [AU rights reserved] Dedication TO M. C. BISHOP You will hardly believe that the following pages can be really finished at last, having known many of them for a long time in the condition of a bundle of loose scraps at the bottom of a very hospitable bureau. If unavoidable in this case, it is not a fashion of production to be generally recommended, at least if uni formity isa merit. Moods change, spectacles grow dim, perhaps even, if the interval is a very long one, get exchanged for a more or less different pair.

Begun as an adventure book pure and simple, this story has grown grimmer somehow, and more lugubrious, as it went on. Ireland is in this respect a very misleading individual to follow. You imagine that you are hand in hand with an inconsequent, but at any rate a very lively, companion, and, having gone some little way under this delu sion, you find, when 3-011 least expect it, that you have linked yourself to a Sibyl or a Niobe. To be lugubrious is in fiction, we all protest, to be unendurable, and unendurableuess is not qne of those failings for which an unlucky author can very suitably apologise. There is only one thing that I know of to be done under the circumstances, and that is to promise to offend no more — at any rate in the same direction ! Yours alwavs affectionatelv. E. L Mahktimo, Blackrock October CONTENTS 01' THE FIRST VOLUME

Part I Of The Ways And Customs Of The Ancient Tribe Of

THE O'FLAHERTIES OF WEST CONNA UGHT CHAFTF.lt I'AGE I. TELLS HOW HUGH GAYNARD WAS MADE HOMELESS, AND FELL AMONGST ENEMIES .... 3 II. TELLS HOW HUGH GAYNARD SPENT HIS FIRST NIGHT AMONGST THE O'FLAHERTIES . . . 31 III. TELLS WHAT FURTHER BEFEL THAT NIGHT IN GLEN CORRIL 51 IV. TELLS HOW MUREDAGH THE SON OF CORMAC CAS CAME TO GLEN CORRIL 61 V. TELLS OF THE GREATNESS AND GLORY OF CORMAC CAS 71 VI. TELLS HOW HUGH GAYNARD GOT A TASTE OF THE BITTERNESS OF DEATH . . . . 89 vol. i. a MAELCHO CHAPTEK PACE VII. TELLS HOW HUGH GAYNARD AGAINST HIS WILL BECAME AN O'FLAHERTY 100 VIII. TELLS HOW THE STORMY PETRELS CAME TO IAR CONNAUGHT 112 IX. TELLS HOW THE O'FLAHERTIES STARTED FOR KERRY, AND HOW HUGH GAYNARD ESCAPED FROM THEM 135

Part II Of The Landing Of Sir James Fitz- Maurice Of Desmond

AND HIS ALLIES UPON THE IRISH COAST; HIS DEATH, AND OTHER MISFORTUNES I. TELLS OF HUGH GAYNARD'S NIGHT WANDERINGS, AND OF THE BIG MAN IN THE GREEN CLOAK . 157 II. TELLS WHAT HUGH GAYNARD SAW AT SMERWICK, AND ABOUT THE TWO CHILDREN BURIED IN THE SAND 166 III. TELLS OF WHAT PASSED BETWEEN SIR JAMES FITZMAURICE AND THE LEGATE OF THE POPE . 186 IV. TELLS HOW MAELCHO THE SENACHIE DISCOVERED THE HUT UPON THE CLIFF, AND OF THE COMING TROUBLE WHICH HE FORESAW IN THE SKY 203 V. TELLS SOMETHING NOVEL ABOUT GHOSTS, ALSO ABOUT HOW THE QUEEN'S COMMISSIONER AND THE PROVOST MARSHAL OF MUNSTER VISITED THE CAMP AT SMERWICK CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME IX I'AQE 233

CHAPTER VI. TELLS ABOUT FAIRY TALES, ALSO ABOUT HOW THE QUEEN'S COMMISSIONER

AND THE PROVOST MARSHAL OF MUNSTER AVERE SLAIN TOGETHER AT TRALEE VII. TELLS OF THE GREAT AND UNDENIABLE ADVAN- TAGES OF COMMON SENSE .... 247 VIII. TELLS HOW SIR JAMES FITZMAURICE RODE FORTH ONE MORNING TO CONQUER ALL IRELAND . . 256 IX. TELLS OF WHAT HAPPENED NEAR THE FORD OF CLONKEEN

PART I OF THE AVAYS AND CUSTOMS OF THE ANCIENT TRIBE OF

THE O'FLAHERTIES OF AVEST CONNAUGHT VOL. I. B

Chapter I Tells How Hugh Gaynard Was Made Home- Less, And Fell

AMONGST ENEMIES It was nearly six o'clock upon a July after noon in the year of grace 1577, and Hugh had been Avalking all day — in fact, ever since the middle of the night before. Ahead of him, serpentining through the hungry waste like some black, half-con gealed river system, lay the bogs, more bogs, always bogs, their squelching surface starred with grim little pools, now and then widening into loughs. Right and left and on every side, the wolfish mountains of lar Connaught rose, shutting out the prospect, shutting in despair upon the soul of the Avayfarer, Avho, Avithout a guide, Avithout a compass, Avithout an idea where he Avas going, with evening coming on, and B MAELCHO nothing to eat but a handful of bilberries, toiled along, his legs coated with peat slime, his clothes bedabbled with scraps of Sphag num ; weary to death, and more than half tempted to throw himself doAvn upon the first moderately dry spot he came to, and try for a while to forget his troubles in sleep.

Hugh Fitzwilliam Gaynard was a stout, well-grown lad, still he was only fifteen, and his plight Avas really a very deplorable one. The night before he had gone to bed in his uncle's castle of Cargin, upon the other side of Lough Corrib — Lough Orbsen it was then called — and had fallen asleep on his heather crib in the topmost turret, with the moon shining in on him through the glassless window. He had slept soundly at first, but had been disturbed towards morning by unpleasant dreams. He had dreamt that he was out hunting badgers with Christy Culkeen, the under-huntsman, in the big fir wood, when all at once an immense beast, twenty times the size of a badger, with a huge red mouth, and black bushy tail, had MAELCHO flown at him, roaring hideously. Its poison ous breath was full upon his face, and he Avas upon the point of being devoured, when he Avas suddenly shaken aAvake by old Morogh, his uncle's seneschal, avIio pulled him out of bed, and dragged him, half clothed and stupefied, down the winding stone stairs o the bottom of the castle.

Hugh thought that he must certainly be still asleep, for nothing Avas as it had been Avhen he had gone to bed. Doors were broken down, there were red lights everywhere, ex cited tongues of flame were darting here and there into the rafters, and catching at the bundles of dry rushes ; the stairs felt slip pery under his feet with a revolting slipperi ness; there was a stinging smell of gun powder in the air, and prostrate figures — in attitudes that did not look at all like sleep — lay about at every angle of the stairs. All of a sudden the moon, which had been shining in through the slit-like Avindows, dipped and Avent out behind clouds. It seemed as if something had met its vieAv too ugly for it to go on looking at it a moment longer. MAELCHO One glimpse Hugh had caught, and only one. It was a glimpse which he felt quite sure no rubbing Avould ever get off his brain again.

The great door, studded with iron nails, lead ing into the hall Avas half open as he passed it, and instinctively he had glanced in. It Avas full of armed men, all wearing the short brown leather coats and red badges of the De Burghs. There Avere dead bodies about the floor, the bodies of his uncle's serving-men, lying doubled up in every attitude, and nearest to the door lay poor, good-natured, red headed Christy Culkeen, Avhom he had been dreaming about, his honest mouth wide open, his innocent, sheepish face white and distorted, his eyes turned hideously back in the agony of his last glance ; while at the upper end, just where he was in the habit of sitting, tied to one of his own stone pillars by the arms and legs, Avith a rope round his neck, his fore head streaming with blood from a cut which nearly divided it in two, Hugh saw his uncle, Sir Meredith.

Young Hubert de Burgh, the youngest of the Earl's two sons — the Mac-an- MAELCHO Iarlas as they were called — was standing right in front of him with a look of satisfaction upon his handsome, girlish face, stroking doAvn a dainty moustache with one finger, and smiling pleasantly as he eyed his prisoner. For this Avas a grudge of many years' standing. Had not Sir Meredith been invited to Connaught by the De Burghs themselves, who had given him this castle of theirs of Cargin to keep ? and had he not in spite of this dared to oppose, and even, on more than one occasion of late, to defeat them ? Verily, it was a piece of pre sumption for which he was about to reap a hot and a bloody return. It was only a glimpse Hugh caught, for old Morogh held him in a grip of iron, and, though he kicked and struggled as hard as he could, pulled him doAvn the stairs, putting a hand over his mouth at the same time to hinder him from crying out.

Only one glimpse, but it Avas one that lasted him all his hfe long. He had not loved his uncle Meredith particularly, not having had any special reason to love him, still — to see him so ! The shame was stinging ; the rage stifling ! Again MAELCHO and again he tugged at Morogh to get free, but the old fellow's grip was like a steel vice, and, before he fully realised what was happening, he found himself huddled doAvn the steps into a boat. Morogh had pushed it through the sedges, which gave way with a crisp, rustling noise, had clambered in behind him, taken up the oars, and was roAving rapidly out across the lake. Hugh kept pinching himself to see Avhether he was not asleep. Should he not Avake up presently, he wondered, and see Christy Cul keen polishing his uncle's armour, or cleaning the perches of the hawks in the court below ?

Old Morogh was always a surly animal, and now he kept muttering and cursing in an undertone in Irish, throwing his head back now and then towards the shore they were leaving, and, each time that the flames spurted into the air, a grimace of satisfaction crossed his wrinkled face, and he chuckled audibly as he plied his oars. Hugh Avas a shreAvd boy, old for his age, and practical to a fault, and it crossed his mind even then in the Avild confusion of MAELCHO the moment whether old Morogh could have had anything to say to letting the De Burghs into the castle. Hoav else had they got in, without even the dogs giving notice ? Hoav had they contrived to open the small postern door in the outer Avail, which was always locked at night, and the key kept under his uncle's hand? Only Morogh could have got at that key, and without it the Mac-an-Iarlas might have battered their ugly heads against the Avails all night and never got in.

Could it have any thing to say to the death of young Brian, Morogh's grandson, Avho had been killed a feAv months before through Sir Meredith flinging a silver flagon at him while he Avas waiting at supper in the great hall ? The accident had troubled Hugh himself at the time, for the boy had been his only playmate. No one else had taken any notice of it. and no inquiries naturally had been made into the matter. The boy's grandfather had looked a trifle sulky for a while, and had cast ugly glances at Sir Meredith under his brows Avhen that knight's back Avas turned, MAELCHO but it had never occurred to anyone — least of all to Sir Meredith himself — that any in convenient results could follow from so trivial, if regrettable, an act of petulance. It was a long row across the lake for one pair of arms, and those old ones.

The moon had come out again, and Avas fitfully lighting up the grey shores and upjutting points of rock, which showed here and there like bits of undissolved metal above a half molten surface. Then it vanished suddenly, leaving the rower to find his way as best he could through the glimmering darkness. At last they reached the further or lar Connaught side of the lake. No sooner had they done so than Morogh, who had not uttered a word all the time he had been rowing, motioned the boy to get out. Hugh obeyed, but his foot had barely touched the shore, when, without a syllable of warn ing, the old fellow turned the boat suddenly round, and shot into deep water, took to his oars again, and slowly rowed away, leaving Hugh standing there staring after him, the MAELCHO only living thing upon all that solitary shore.

Blankly staring, he watched the boat as it sloAviy disappeared, the white gleam of light upon the wet oars twinkling and twink ling, groAving fainter, and at last going out. Then he turned and stared down the long Avinding stretch of lake, wasting aAvay south- Avard into a mist of dimness. Lough Orbsen might that night have been some great un travelled ocean, where never sail had flut tered, never boatman plied an oar. The shadowy shore upon which he stood seemed to stretch aAvay to all infinity, lost, formless, void. Scrolls of grey mist were travelling across from the side from which he had come, hanging lazily here and there in limp folds upon the surface. Were they only mists, Hugh Avondered, or were they part of the smoke which rolled from his uncle's castle? Mechanically he turned and walked on a little way.

The ground here became part of the lake in flood time, and was very rough, and studded with big tussocks, from the tops of which Avaved tall tufts of reddish grass. MAELCHO Suddenly he stopped short. It had all come over him Avith a rush. He realised iioav that he was alone, absoluteljalone in all this cold grey world ; absolutely alone under that remote, indifferent-looking moon ! Alone in a savage country ; without a roof to cover him, or a friend to bid him God-speed ; Avith out kith or kin, Avithout food, resting-place, or money ; his life saved, but himself turned adrift — flung off like a useless servitor or a masterless dog. With a cry of despair he tossed himself doAvn upon the ground. What did it mean ? and why should it have happened to him — him, Hugh Gaynard, of all people? With a curse, which ended in a sob, he clenched his hands.

Why had he runaway? he asked himself furiously. Why had he not at least struck and stayed one good blow before he left against the fell De Burghs ? How long he lay there he could not have told, but at last he lifted his head and looked about him. He had only been to this side of the lake twice before in his life, both times for short excursions, and with his uncle's MAELCHO men. Once at his entreaty they had taken him with them, when, in revenge for certain cattle that had been stolen, they had gone to destroy some villages lying a few miles from the edge of the lake. The men of the villages, as it chanced, had been away, but the villages had been burnt all the same, and the women and children scattered or killed. On their Avay back they had been met by two or three dozen of the fighting men of the tribe, half naked, rug-headed felloAvs, Avith matted hair tied with thongs over their eyes, and spears and skeans in their hands.

There had been a fight, and his uncle's men had won, and had killed half a dozen or more of the savages, and promptly cut off their heads — for the heads of such two-legged wolves were worth money in those clays — and had tied them to their saddles ; ghastly trophies, which swung to and fro, Hugh remembered, and shed gory drops upon the ground and upon the horses' flanks all the time they were riding home. What lay upon the other side of those hills he saw before him he had not a notion. It might have been peopled by goblins, or ogres, MAELCHO or men Avith eyes in the middle of their fore heads, for anything he kneAv to the contrary. It Avas not De Burgh land, or the land of any one civilised or even half civilised. It belonged, he believed, to the 'Ferocious O'Flaherties,' the terror of the rest of Connaught, for the destruction of whom hourly prayers were offered by all pious people upon the eastern bank ; against whom the burghers of Galway had set up a graven petition over their western gate ; scourges of the human race ; possibly cannibals ; at all events pagans ; given over to heathen practices ; believers in the powers of earth and air ; a terror even to the Avandering friars, the only deni zens of the outside Avorld Avho ever volun tarily set foot amongst them.

Perceiving that he could not lie where he was for ever, Hugh at last got up with a groan and started off to walk — he did not in the least know where. The moon was beginning now to slide behind the hill-tops tOAvards the horizon, and a sickly greenish light Avas beginning to dawn. Gradually as he walked the day grew light about him ; MAELCHO curleAvs and plover started with shrill cries out of the heather ; small Avhite moths un curled their rolled-up wings and rose in clouds from the stones. The sun even presented itself for a while, but, feeling apparently that it had made a mistake, presently retired behind a wall of cloud, now and then opening a AvindoAv, as it were, for inspection, but as rapidly closing it again and disappearing. All that clay Hugh walked, he did not knoAv Avhere, he did not knoAV why, except that the further he got from the Mac-an-Iarlas the better he supposed it would be for him.

It was getting tOAvards the end of the summer, and the bilberries, or fraechogs as Christy Culkeen had taught him to call them, Avere ripe. He gathered handfuls of them from time to time and ate them as he Avent ; but a man, and still less a growing boy, cannot exist comfortably for long upon fraechogs only, and so his stomach soon began to inform him. The Avalking, too, Avas bad. The bogs Avere a mere jelly in some places, in others broken into lumps as big as small haycocks, with black squelching depths between them. To- MAELCHO wards the afternoon, weary to death of strug gling through this lower ground, he deter mined to make a push for the hills, so climbed along a sort of ridge or ' esker,' which brought him to the foot of one of the mountains at a place where a narrow pass opened suddenly above him.

Here he stopped and looked up. Over his head in all directions he could see more masses of stone, all loose, and all more or less Aveather-worn and scratched. They had come over the ridge of the moun tain opposite and had collected there probably in the days when the great Megaceros wandered at large across the mountains, his huge horns reflecting themselves in every lough he passed. It looked a grim place in Hugh's eyes, like some ogre's den, strewn with the bones of dead men, only that the bones were all of stone. They Avere ranged in long rows upon either side, some of them grey, some of a pale reddish colour, with crystals of felspar standing out hke broken teeth over their surfaces. There was something extremely daunting in the look of MAELCHO that fierce little mountain glen. It looked like a place that would harbour wild beasts, or worse things even than wild beasts.

Pre sently Hugh reached a sort of col of rock from which another lateral valley branched, and up this too he clambered till he reached the sum mit. Here he paused, and looked about him He was iioav on the top of a pass, cut like a sword-gash through the middle of the range, and between the jagged edges of this gash he could see a neAv valley over the shoulder of the next hill, Avith more bogs, and more loughs, and more streams connecting these loughs, and more mountains, rising one behind the other ; but of houses, or even cabins, of any tokens of habitation, he could see no sign at all. The sun, which had been hardly visible all clay, Avas now getting Ioav. And as he stood there, lo ! a strange sight became visible across the mountains. It was only a sunset, but then it was a sunset such as occurs not once in a year, often not once in many years, a sunset which turned every mountain top to pale crimson, and every little vol. I. c MAELCHO lough to a lake of pure opal.

Overhead, too, were more lakes — lakes of rose madder, and lakes of amber, and saffron, shores of pearl or snoAv white, and ridges of shining gold running out for the saints to Avalk upon ; and in the very heart of all there Avas a small green bit, which was like the Spirit of Peace, looking doAvn upon so sadly troubled a world. It was a sunset to make mean things noble, and costly things ridiculous, a sunset that seemed to humble a man down to the very dust, and yet to lift him clean off his feet with excitement and exultation. Even Hugh Gaynard — sick, cold, hungry as he wasy" least imaginative, too, of mortal boys as he was — even he opened his mouth in astonishment, Avondering what it meant, and if the end of the world had come. When, hoAvever, the sIioav was over, and the mountains had faded to a blackish grey ; when the sky itself had grown discoloured, and all the bars of gold had become common lead, then he flung himself down disconsolately upon a stone, feeling as if he had lost another friend, and as though Fortune the jade had played MAELCHO him yet another of her ugly venomous tricks.

Suddenly as he lay there a sound came to his ears. It Avas not the distant running of water, or the shrill cries of birds overhead, for those he had been hearing all clay. This Avas quite a neAV sound, a faint but distinct ' Ba-aa, ba-aa, ba-aa-aa,' coming over the rocks. He started up. Just above where he had been lying there was an opening in one part of the mountain Avail, which he had not observed before. It might be only a crack ; it might be the mouth of a new valley. He got up, and moved towards it. To his surprise he found it to be a regular staircase, so narrow at the mouth that it was invisible until he was quite close to it, cut seemingly out of the living rock and nearly perpendicular. He hesitated a moment, and then began to climb it. It opened out after a while, shoAving ledges above and on either side deep in grass.

Upon this grass a num ber of goats were feeding, which all stopped doing so at his approach, and looked suspici ously at him, wondering no doubt if he had c MAELCHO any connection with a wolf, for the thoughts of all sheep and goats ran eternally in those days upon Avolves. Apparently they con cluded that he had not, for they quietly resumed their browsing, all save one big old he-goat with an enormously long white beard, avIio Avalked sloAvly tOAvards the top of the staircase, and remained there, stamping with one foot upon the ground as if for a signal. 'Where there are goats,' thought Hugh sagaciously, ' there are men ; ' and he pushed on accordingly with a little better heart. For about a quarter of an hour he went climbing on and on, wondering Avhat he was coming to next. The staircase narrowed and then widened, and then narrowed again, and pre sently he did come to something — something that made his heart leap into his very mouth.

It was an extremely odd place in Avhich he stood. He Avas looking through the hole of a trapdoor, or rather of a trap Avithout any door. For some little distance beyond the mouth of this trap the ground was deep in loose stones, Avhile upon either side of him the cliff Avails MAELCHO rose so close that by stretching out a hand he might have touched them, and so steep that nothing wTas able to find root-hold on them, save here and there a patch of bed straw, or a stray tuft of yellow saxifrage, where a little soil had lodged. Over his head more loose rocks stood perched upon ledges, seemingly in the act of toppling over. It Avas about as wicked and unpleasant-looking a place as could well be imagined, suggestive of nothing so much as a trap, laid out by nature and assisted by art, a place into which if a man once stumbled he was not at all likely ever to emerge ali\Te.

Nor was this all Hugh saAv. For before him he perceived that the glen suddenly opened into a long narrow trough or valley, looking like a green saucer in the middle of the mountains, a saucer full of rich grass, upon which not only goats, but also cattle and sheep, were feeding. More than this, he saw a long line of black wattle huts, a regular village of them, stretching down on either side of the valley, with a wide trampled space between them ansAvering to a village MAELCHO street. Beyond these again, at the end of the valley, rose what at the first glance he took to be a castle, or a big fortified house at any rate. Looking closer, he perceived that it was only a rock. It was a very curious looking rock though, quite unlike any rock he had ever seen before. To begin Avith, it Avas enormously big, towering at least thirty feet in air, and probably three or four times that size round the widest part of the base.

It stood up quite loose from the rest of the ground, and was only partially supported underneath by another and a smaller rock, Avhich was of a different colour, being greyish or bluish, whereas the upper one was of a bright pinky red, and shining. An altogether peculiar rock Hugh per ceived it was. The strangest point of all about it was that the upper part was C0ATered with a pattern of white scraAvling tracery, which ran up and down exactly like some sort of cabalistic handwriting, while below, striking obliquely across the lower part from about ten feet or so above the ground, there swept a broad, startlingly MAELCHO blood-red stain. Both these marks Avere in reality only the handiwork of a perfectly harmless lichen, but to Hugh Gaynard, as to everyone else who looked at them in those days, they appeared to be plainly the record of some bygone tragedy, some vast act of vengeance perpetrated in unknown times and by unknown men, possibly not by men at all, but by demons or giants, who had made a stronghold for themselves and hidden it away here in the very heart of lar Connaught.

As he looked at it Hugh dimly remembered that he had heard tales amongst his uncle's men of some place amid the mountains to which the O'Flaherties were said to resort when hard pressed, and which was supposed to be guarded for them by enchantment. He had no time to think about that or anything else however then, for almost before he had begun to consider what to do next, there came a sudden descent of wild beasts, or what seemed to him to be wild beasts. A dozen enormous dogs, long-backed, of a brindled-grey colour, wiry haired, and wolfish looking, came rushing MAELCHO upon him, with their mouths open, not barking honestly, but yelping in a Ioav, blood-curdling fashion. Hugh dreAV his dagger, Avhich had been sticking in the belt which he had caught up Avhen Morogh dragged him out of bed, and stood upon the defensive.

What could one dagger do, though, against a dozen wolfish beasts ? He Avas giving himself up for lost, and in another few minutes would doubtless have been pulled down, and in all probability eaten up and his bones picked clean, when a woman suddenly appeared upon a knoll a little in advance of the double line of huts, who, seeing Avhat was afoot, shouted to the clogs, brandishing at the same time a long stick which she held in her hands. The pack obeyed her, retreating, hoAvever, only a little way, and remaining in a semi circle across the path, licking their lips and growling suggestively, their very coats stand ing erect wuth anger and suspended longing. Hugh looked at his deliverer, and Avhen he saw her he Avondered afresh, not knowing what manner of Avoman she was. Evidently she MAELCHO Avas a ' savage ' — that is to say, a native — but she Avas quite a different variety of savage from any he Avas acquainted with — quite different, for instance, from the wives and daughters of his uncle's ' churles ' or ' bodachs,' who lived huddled outside the castle courtyard.