The Flight of the Eagle

Front matter

LY STANDISH CvpKADY AUTHOR OF " ULRICK THE READY " AND "THE BOG OF STARS," EDITOR OF "PACATA HIBERNIA " LONDON LAWRENCE AND BULLEN, Ltd. 16, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, "W.C. 1897 [.ill rights reserved] Richard Clay & Sons, Lijiitec, London & B uso ay. PEEFACE This tale, in spite of its title, is not a romance, but an actual historic episode, told with hardly a freer use of the historical imagination than is employed by the more popu lar and picturesque of our professed historians. There is, however, this difference between my method and theirs, viz. that while they write directly, I aim at a similar result indirectly through a certain dramatization. The same method has been adopted, I think very effectively, by Carlyle, at times, in his history of Frederick the Great. There is probably an Art as well as a Science of history.

If that be so, the present work may be regarded as an experiment in that kind of composition, a kind which demands the employment of more than one or two mental faculties on the part both of the reader and of the writer. The authorities for the story are the "Annals of the Four Masters " ; Philip 0' Sullivan's charmingly Herodotean narrative, in Latin, entitled Historia Hiberniœ ; O'Clery's "Bardic Life of Hugh Eoe" ; and the "Calendar of State Papers, Ireland," from 1587 forward. The colouring, the visualization and dramatization, are, however, derived from a wider circle of contemporary literature. I may add that the book contains almost nothing for which there is not direct or indirect historical justification. Standish O'Grady. CONTENTS CUAr. PAGE I. SIR JOHN PERROTT ... ... ... ... 1 II.

THE BOYS ON THE BATTLEMENTS ... ... 12 III. THE VICEROY AND THE DARK-DAUGHTER ... 17 IV. WINES WHITE AND RED ... ... ... 25 V. RED HUGH AND HIS TUTOR RIDE A-COSHERING 31 VI. TRAPPED ... ... ... ... ... 36 VII. NO SUBSTITUTE FOR RED HUGH ... ... 43 VIII. THE SHIPLESS CHIEFTAIN ... ... ... 46 IX. UNCLE SORLEY'S HIGH PERCH ... ... 54 X. HUGH ROE NOT TO BE RELEASED ... ... 61 XI. FITZWILLIAM VISITS THE DARK-DAUGHTER ... 70 XII. WHAT HUGH SAW FROM HIS BOWER ... 77 XIII. PERROTT THE OVERBOLD ... ... ... 91 XIV. EMERGENCE OF THE NOSELESS ONE... ... 102 XV. O'ROUANE, THE JACKAL, AND THE LORD DEPUTY ... ... ... ... ... 109 XVI. DESCENT FROM THE TURRETS ... ... 120 XVII. ART KAVANAGH GUARDS THEIR FLIGHT ... 124 XVIII. FEAGH MAC HUGH ... ... ... ... 128 XIX. PURSUERS AND PURSUED ... ... ... 131 XX. A WET BIVOUAC ... ... ... ... 133 XXI.

Chapter I Sir John Perrott

The age of oratory had not yet arrived, and the man was no orator, yet his speech was a great one the like of which had never before been heard in Ireland. It was proud, arrogant, and boastful, but it was true. On this occasion Brag was a good dog, and hard to beat. The orator had reached the culminating point of a matchless career, and Nature and Man seemed to have conspired to invest it with the utmost possible splendour. It was midsummer — the forenoon of one of those gorgeous days which seem to be without beginning or end — when sunset is not followed by night, but through the brief twilight hours the world is ever cheered with the bright presence of the journeying dawn. Sunshine slept on the grey walls, the buttresses and pinnacles of a great antique church quivered in the shaken silver of poplars, and flashed again from the halbert points and helmets of a ranked soldiery, steel-clad to tke knee.

B Many civilians were here too, in their plumed hats, copious white collars, and flowing capes. All the pre cincts were alive with colour — the glitter of brass and steel — the glare of cloth of gold — the glow of richly dyed mantles and short cloaks. Above the quiet dead was poured to-day a most brilliant tide of Use. Yew-trees planted here by the generation which suc ceeded St. Patrick protested in vain with their monitions of the tears of things, and the eternal tragic, against all that glitter and bravery. To-day none regarded their mementote mori ; the tide of life was too full. Beyond the church precincts a vast multitude thronged all approaches save one, which armed men kept free. Eager faces crowded in the windows of the adjacent houses, which were of timber, tall and gabled, with deep, shadow-casting eaves.

Towards the east rose the turrets of a great Norman keep. The church was Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, built long since by Sitric the Dane, upon some ancient Celtic foundation, and the time — the gilded iron age of great Eliza, or to be more precise, the 10th day of June, 1588, the year ofthe Armada. Within, the great church was full of voices. Here sounded the high, clear, level tones of crying heralds, the manlier accents of speaking men, the murmur and hum of a vast auditory. Here a great state function was in progress, for a Government was going out and a Government was coming in. It was a splendid and solemn, almost religious ceremony, celebrated with antique rites. A screen of rich and richly-coloured drapery divided the nave from the chancel. In the midst of the screen, serene and pale, shone the countenance of the virgin Queen.

It was a full-length portrait, elaborately SIR JOHN PERROTT 3 painted down to the shining shoes of her imperial feet. Repentant rebel lords have kissed those feet, and be moaned before them their transgressions and back slidings. The cult of that great lady was almost the only religion owned by many here. Hard by in a clear space the chief actors of the stately drama played their parts. The rest of the building was thronged with men who more or less silently assisted. Few of them had ever witnessed any ceremony resembling this. At a certain point in the grandly unfolding solem nity, a man of huge stature, nearly seven feet high, gorgeously attired, and of a port and presence which caused him to seem even greater than he was, rose and delivered proudly a most proud speech. The gigantic orator was Sir John Perrott, outgoing Viceroy ; the person formally addressed — for his words were intended for the ears of the empire — was Sir William Fitzwilliam, the new Lord Deputy.

By direction of the Queen, Fitzwilliam was about to undertake the government of the most turbulent and unbridled aristocracy in Europe. They were present during the Christ Church ceremony, having come together for that purpose, as with one consent, from the ends of the island. They were all clothed in irreproachable English costume, and yet a nice ob server would have perceived that this costume had been adopted for the nonce. There was, indeed, nothing Irish to catch the eye ; but when they mur mured together during the ceremony, a listener might have detected the deeper accents of the Gael. One of them, Turlough Lynagh, known in the North as O'Neill, and Captain of Ulster, and at Court as Sir Turlough, and Earl of Clan-Connell, bore the Sword Perrott's high-vaunting words were true. From the centre to the sea all Ireland was Perrott-land.

Perrott's strong words and resonant accents rang through the building, re-echoed with "True, your honour " and " Ta se go deimin " by his flock of tamed nobles, who gazed upon their idol with looks of fear, admiration, and love — of sorrow, too, for he was being borne away from them, and sinister rumours were abroad as to the probable nature of his reception in England. Perrott having ceased speaking the new Viceroy mildly responded. He was an old man and an invalid. He was sick on his way from London, and sick after his arrival in St. Sepulchre's, the Archbishop's palace, whence he wrote to Burleigh complaining of his health and complaining of Perrott. Fitzwilliam had a great experience in Irish affairs, and was in this respect a contrast to Perrott, who had scarcely any. He had served under Sussex, and Sidney, and Lord Grey de Wilton, and had been him self in the government of the realm.

So Fitzwilliam was a man of experience. He was also what we now term a safe man. But his royal mistress had yet to learn that safe men are sometimes dangerous, and that great experience will not always make great rulers. He now, with a face and voice anything but suggest ive of the man-ruler, replied that " all was well, and that he wished he might leave the kingdom no worse than his lordship had done." " After this they parted," continues the chronicler, "and the new Lord Deputy went to his house, but most of the nobihty and gentry stayed to attend upon Sir John Perrott, who that day was invited to dine with the Mayor of Dublin. When he returned to his lodging they all went to take their leave of him. As he came from his lodging to the SIR JOHN PERROTT quay of Dublin to take boat, the throng of people coming to salute him, some with cries of applause and some with tears bemoaning his departure, was so great that he was almost two hours before he could pass the streets, and was forced twice or thrice to take house to avoid the press." .

Turlough Lynagh, writes an eye-witness, accompanied him to the boat, and, standing on the river's side while he saw the ship under sail, with many tears lamented his departure. And the City of Dublin, as a testimony of their love and affection for him, sent some of their young men with shot, who waited on him as his guard till he arrived at his seat, called Carew Castle, in Pembrokeshire. Fifteen years before, his departure from Munster, of which he had been President, is thus chronicled by the " Four Masters " :— " 1573 — The President of the two Provinces of Munster went to England in the beginning of the ensuing harvest, after having pacified and subdued the country, leaving officers, councillors, and captains of his own to rule and preside over it, in accordance with his own wishes. The departure of the President was lamented by the poor, the widows, and the weak and helpless of the land."

And now the second departure of Perrott from Ireland drew forth upon an infinitely greater scale (including all classes) the love and regret of the Irish nation. Slowly, with difficulty, and many delays, the horsemen of the guard cleared a way through the thronging multitude, as the great Englishman and the attendant nobles and the "young men with shot" moved down to the quay. It seemed as if destiny in sport had given distracted Ireland at last a ruler who could rule, full master of men's hearts as well as of their persons, only to mock her with his speedy withdrawal. As the ship which bore Perrott dropped down the Liffey, Turlough Lynagh, the O'Neill, stood weeping on the river side. Weeping, says the chronicler, but recalling the Homeric simplicity of the age, its unre strained passion, and its naturalness, as well as certain characteristics of the modern peasantry, whose manners were formed by the chiefs, certain we may be that the O'Neill and Perrott's other Irish friends cried out, lifting up their voices, and that their lamentation was loud as well as deep.

Nor did lamentation suffice old Turlough Lynagh. As the boat which bore Perrott put away from the wharf, the passionate old chieftain rushed breast-deep into the Liffey to wring once more in love the hand which had conquered him in war. Nor did Perrott witness this scene dry-eyed, having himself passions by no means under control. Indeed he was not at all such a self-restraining, divinely tranquil man as Plato would have selected to be presi dent of his ideal republic. Once at the Council Board in Dubhn Castle he struck in the face Sir Nicholas Bagenal, Marshal of Ireland, and gave him the lie direct — a man nearly as passionate and headstrong as himself. His own council he used to storm at as "traitors, curs, and dung-hill beggars." When Presi dent of Munster, he sent a challenge of single combat to Sir James Fitzgerald, captain of the rebel Geraldines.

He is the wdd bastard of the Fairy Queen, Sir Satyrane, the salvage youth who tamed tigers and loved Una. In his "towering tempers" he did not spare the Queen's majesty, even to her face. Such a man, so headstrong and passionate, surely felt to the SIR JOHN PERROTT 7 quick the extraordinary emotion which his departure called forth. So down the Liffey, past Dunleary and the Hill of Howth, Ireland's one sovereign lord and master sailed away to meet his doom — arraignment, false witness, a mock trial, the Tower, and murder in the Tower. His sails sank below the waves of the Irish Sea, and the most singular of Viceroyalties burned down like a blaze. The great bastard had gone out, and the man of much experience had come in, and Ireland, too, like Perrott, went on to meet her doom. Perrott's weeping friends returned to their " lodgings " in those quaint Dublin streets, revolving many things, of the past and of the future, of imperial, jieerless Perrott, whom all Ireland feared and loved, and of the extraordinary being whom, with the Spaniard on the sea, the Queen and Council had sent to be their ruler, a gouty old gentleman and " of a moist habit," known to hate the flashing of stript steel, and to love craftiness and double-dealing, a Lord Deputy who could not even ride, " such were his impediments," and who was extremely partial to — gifts. Perrott's chieftains knew a man when they saw him. Of Tudor state-craft they were very ignorant.

Chapter II The Boys On The Battlements

That departure of Perrott was indeed very grand and affecting, the surging crowds repelled by halberdiers and horsemen, the brilliant procession to the wharf, Perrott riding there in the midst of the earls and barons, and, what was far more significant, of the untitled chieftainry of the realm, the weeping on the shore, and the Captain of Ulster, the O'Neill, dashing out into the stream to take a last farewell of the Deputy. Yet, in human life as in nature, it is surfaces only that glitter ; tapestry the most gorgeous has its seamy side. The Devd and his angels were as busy then as they are now. Of Perrott's moral obliquities, of the seamy side of his splendid Viceroyalty, we shall see something as the tale runs on. Here just now it must double back and linger a while in the midst of that triumphant and gloriously unfolding drama of which Perrott was the chief actor.

Not a hundred yards from the wharf rose Dublin Castle, a great rectangular construction rising into towers. One of these was named after a Viceroy of the Plantagenet period called De Birmingham. On \-2 THE BOYS ON THE BATTLEMENTS the battlements of Birmingham Tower stood three lads watching the departure of Perrott, and as they watched they cursed the out-going Viceroy. Near them stood men in armour, with calivers on their shoulders and faintly smoking matches, with swords and daggers at their sides, and huge pistols stuck in their girdles. The boys wore copious white frills and red capes, hats of the broad-leaved Spanish type, and velvet jerkins. For their dress, they might be sons of State officials, who, by official favour, had secured this fine point of vantage from which to observe all the moving pageantry of the Viceroy's out-going.

Yet they were far, indeed, from being such. Their speech, when they murmured together, was pure Gaelic, and their hearts had nothing in common with the life which went on around. The State had set its mark on the exterior of these boys, enclosing their small bodies with all the outward signs and tokens of " loyalty and civility " ; but their minds were their own, and had no relation with the new epoch. Of the three, one taller than the others stood in the middle. His companions leaned towards him, talking Gaelic in low voices. He stood straight as a rod. His complexion was white and ruddy, brilliantly so; his eyes grey and bright, with a most keen outlook, ex pressing a tameless energy. His long hair, a glowing auburn, rolled upon his shoulders. He was sixteen years of age, yet his countenance already bore signs of a mind beyond his years.

Such was his bearing, that in any company a stranger would quickly observe him, and inquire with interest concerning a youth so re markable for his beauty and proud air of self-possession and self-control. This boy was the famous Red Hugh O'Donnell. He was here against his will, a hostage with the State for the fidelity of his clan in the approaching Spanish crisis; a clan which was one of the greatest of the unsubdued nations of Ireland, the Clan Donnell of the north-west. Of that nation his father was prince, and he himself rigdamna, or princcps designatus. He was a captive, and yet a potential political, and military force in the island. A near ancestor of this boy had made war against the State, with half of Ireland following his banners. No soldier of the Crown had yet set hostde foot within the borders of O'Donnell land.

Yet the lad is here in Dublin Castle, a hostage, guarded by armed men, in a close imprisonment, which for just one day has been relaxed by order of the Deputy, partly as a compliment to his rank, chiefly in order that the power, glory, and prosperity of the State as to-day exhibited might make a salutary impression on his young mind. From some of the staffs rising from the tower gay bunting ripples and floats. Others are surmounted by round black balls. They are the tarred heads of men, great men who had rebelled against the State, and ended so. For it was Eliza bethan Ireland, and the times, with all their splendour and suggestions of chivalry, never failed to suggest also an age of terror. Beneath the emblazoned banners and the heads the three boys looked at Perrott. When the huge crowd on the wharfs began to dwindle, a fussy, short-breathed old gentleman climbed from the interior on to the parapets, and, with a rasp ing, ungracious voice, bad the soldiers take the boys again to " the Grate."

The old gentleman was Mr. Maplesdeane, new Constable of the Castle vice Mr. THE BOYS ON THE BATTLEMENTS 11 Seagrave, just retired. It was Mr. Maplesdeane's special function to watch over and safeguard the hostages, of whom, besides this lad and his companions, there were many in Dublin Castle. The watching and safe-guarding of the hostages of Ireland was now more than ever necessary, for the Spanish Armada was about to sail, if indeed it was not already upon the sea. That slender boy, the leader of the three, turned quickly at the sound of those brusque, abrupt tones, and looked at the speaker. His eyelids just trembled as he bent his bright, grey eyes on the speaker, other wise his face was impassive, and his aspect calm. He bowed gravely as if in acknowledgment of a courtesy, a little to the surprise of Mr. Maplesdeane, and descended the stone stairs into the interior of the tower, followed by his two companions.

How did the Government get this young Eagle of the unsubdued North into their stone cage ? Thereby hangs a tale — a tale which, rightly told, will illustrate for us a good deal of this strange and obscure time— a famous tale, one of the most famous in our history, intrinsically dramatic, and possessing incidentally a large historical significance, for the boy with whom it is concerned was reserved by Fate for a wonderful career. This red-haired stripling, whom to-night Mr. Maples deane drives into " the Grate " like a sheep, will be known far and wide; he will waste many lands, win many battles, storm castles innumerable, and even walled cities. His name will one day strike fear into the hearts of viceroys, here where he is now a mere captive and prisoner, driven hither and thither by old Mr. Maplesdeane.

Ireland will yet quake to this boy's tread. To understand how the Government secured this paragon of hostages we must travel some twelve months backwards, and into the heart of Perrott's viceroyalty.

Chapter III The Viceroy And The Dark-daughter

In the spring of 1587 Perrott was exceedingly active and anxious. The noise of the making of the Armada was ever in his ears. He feared lest Ireland should be its destination. The Catholic party in Eng land was strong ; but Ireland was all Catholic — there was hardly a Protestant in the whole island. Moreover, a rhymed couplet was much in vogue at this time, the burden of which was not reassuring to an Irish viceroy — " He who would England win Must with Ireland begin." Ireland was, indeed, loyal to the Queen, and animated with a passionate feeling of strong personal regard for Sir John Perrott. But Perrott had no army. In any emergency he could only rely upon the feudal levy, that is to say, upon the chieftainry themselves, and the forces which by law they were bound to bring to his aid. The fidelity of the chieftains was to him, therefore, a vital necessity of the situation.

All were, indeed, obedient to the Queen and friendly tohimself, but he could not count on the continuance of those feelings should a powerful Spanish army land in the island. Accordingly, he determined to make assurance doubly 17 c sure, and bind the chieftains to the State by all means in his power. Upon doubtful men within his reach he laid sudden hands, and confined them in the Castle. All the rest he bade send in hostages for their fidelity during the Spanish crisis. All, or almost all, obeyed, and the sons and foster-brothers of the chieftains wended towards Dublin, or other strong places within the realm. Perrott's call for hostages was felt to be reasonable, and was promptly responded to. One powerful family disobeyed, from whose disobedience sprang the tragical and romantic tale with which we have now to deal.

Sir Hugh O'Donnell, who ruled over the north-west of Ireland, the country which we now call the County of Donegal, but wdiich was then known as Tir-Connall, would send in no hostages. Had he been his own master he would have done so ; but he was not. Once he was a great warrior, and a staunch ally of the Queen during the Shane O'Neill wars. He overthrew Shane in battle in 15G7, after which Shane the Proud tumbled headlong to ruin. But Sir Hugh was now old and broken ; his eyes, dim with age, were turning, in true mediæval fashion, towards the cloister, whither, indeed, not Ions: after this he finally retired. But not old or broken was his spouse. She was in the prime of life. The chieftainess, not the chieftain, governed, these years, the north-west of Ireland, and Lady O'Donnell, for reasons of her own, would not send, or suffer her lord to send, any of their children as hostages to Perrott.

She was not Irish but Scotch, scion of one of the greatest Highland families, the MacDonalds, Lords of the Isles. This lady was the mother of Red Hugh, the slender, grey-eyed, red-haired boy, whom we have just seen bowinw gravely, perhaps ironically, to fussy old Mr. Maples- THE VICEROY AND THE DARK-DAUGHTER 15 deane, on the battlements of Birmingham Tower in Dublin Castle. Her name is peculiar. She was the Ineen-Du MacDonald, that is to say, Dark-Daughter Macdonald. She possessed great estates, as well as great interest and influence in the west of Scotland, and, though wife of the O'Donnell, and residing with him at Donegal House, kept in her pay and under her own command an army of Scotch mercenaries. Nor was this remark able woman a termagant in the vulgar sense of the word, for we are informed by the bardic historian, that she "excelled in feminine accomplishments."

Her mother, the Lady Agnes Campbell, is described by Sir Henry Sidney, father of Sir Philip, as a wise and civil woman, speaking French and Italian, and as well mannered as any lady he had ever met. Hence we may fairly presume that the bardic historian has not exaggerated in the high character which he gives to her daughter. Circumstances, however, chiefly the weakness and decrepitude of her lord, compelled her to play a masculine part. The grand aim of her life was to secure the reversion of the O'Donnell chieftainship for her eldest son, an object not easily to be secured in those days of elective chiefs and succession by tanistry, which was but an Irish name for force. Pursuing this end, she brought in and kept in her pay a reliable Scotch army to hold in check and overawe the various competitors for the O'Donnell-ship.

In the end she actually took the field at the head of her Scotch guards, and fought and won battles ; for though she " excelled in feminine accomplishments," yet, as we are informed by the same authority, " she had the heart of a hero and the soul of a champion, and was chief counsellor and adviser of the men of Tir-Connall in her time." The Dark-Daughter was no favourite with the Govern ment. Her lightest movements were regularly entered in the State Papers with suspicious comments. In fact, she was a known and proved enemy to the State. State policy had clipped away the hegemony exercised by the O'Donnells of old time over Connaught. Lady O'Donnell once made a desperate effort to restore that hegemony. On the night of the battle of Zutphen, when Sir Philip Sydney lay dying, the President of Connaught fought and beat a great army of Mac- Donalds and Campbells who had invaded his presidency.

In the Scotch camp was discovered a letter from Lady O'Donnell to the chiefs of the invading army. " Be of good cheer, I have this day landed in the Foyle with fifteen hundred men to support your inva sion. Through whatever country you pass cause O'Donnell's rent to be paid." Surely this was a stirring daughter of the Isles, and not without reason was she jealously regarded by the Government. In the State Papers she is sometimes called " Lady O'Donnell," more usually " the Scotch woman," or " the Scotch wife of Sir Hugh O'Donnell," and described as " a great bringer in of Scots " — " Red Shanks," as they were termed in the official jargon of the day. How to wring hostages from a lady of this temper and this strength was a nice problem which presented itself to Sir John Perrott in the year 1587, when from all the Irish territories hostages were meekly riding in to his strong places.

When, in that year, Perrott demanded her children as hostages, the Dark-Daughter refused to send them doubled her army of Hebridean bowmen and gallowglasses, and defied the Viceroy. She had not " a Spanish heart," or any leaning whatsoever to the THE VICEROY AND THE DARK-DAUGHTER 17 Spaniard ; but she believed, and with good reason too, that the Government, once in possession of her children, would not restore them, save on conditions highly against their and her interest. Yet to Perrott, his ears filled with the noise of the making of the Armada, Tir-Connall's hostages were an imperative necessity of the State. By force or fraud he would have them; and in this mood wrote the following letter to the Queen and the Lords of the Council — "For O'Donnell, if it would please her Majesty to appoint me to go thither, I will make him and his MacSweenies deliver in what pledges L list.

Otherwise, if it please her Majesty, I could take himself, his wife, who is a great bringer in of Scots, and perhaps his son, Hugh Boe (Bed Hugh), by sending them a boat ivith wines." May 2, 1587. This "boat with wines" was not only the source of all Red Hugh's sorrows, but will be found to have been a grand determining factor in the history of the huge convulsion known as the Nine Years' War. A great deal of Anglo-Irish history came out of that boat. Observe, Perrott does not write simply of putting compulsion upon O'Donnell, but upon him and his MacSweenies. In all Elizabethan maps of the island are depicted, in the north-west — O'Donnell's country — three formidable figures, clad in mail, straddling over much ground and with uplifted battle-axe, as if about to cleave the head of some unseen foe.

These are the three MacSweenies, captains of their several nations, and lords of territories, but subjects, too, vassals to their over-lord, or king, O'Donnell, Prince of Tir- Connall. All three stand in the maps as battle-axe men ; but one only was surnamed from the weapon, viz. he whose territory was in the north of the county looking out towards Tory Island and Scotland. His titular bardic sobriquet was Battle-axe MacS weeny, or MacSweeny Doe.1 The headship of all the Mac- Sweenies was with him. The others were MacSweeny Fanat, straddling on the western shores of Lough Swilly, lord of many fertile valleys and picturesque highlands there, and MacSweeny Banat, ruling over much barren land westward, where Tir-Connall hardens itself against the Atlantic. The map-makers and those for whom they made maps, regarded those chiefs with superstitious awe.

Froude tells us that the English vulgar believed them to be giants. They were, at all events, very strong chieftains, and the main arm of O'Donnell's military strength. So when Perrott offered to coerce O'Donnell, and compel him to give hostages, he did not forget the formidable battle-axe figures who were the mainstay of O'Donnell's power in those parts. But there was another and a nearer reason why, at this juncture, the Viceroy should make special mention of the MacSweenies. The most desirable hostage in these regions was Red Hugh, eldest son of the Prince by "the Scotch woman," and Red Hugh was at this time under the protection of the MacSweeny nation. Owen Ogue MacSweeny, of the Battle-axes, had the boy in fosterage, a circumstance well known to Perrott. Red Hugh's mother had made a wise selection of a tutor and guardian for her first-born.