youths in all the land, the heir of Tir-Conaill and the son of Shane." Art passed away. Red Hugh revived, spoke, asked for his dying friend. Passionately he wept when, all saving efforts failing, Art died. He refused to eat or drink; he himself, famishing, cold, just snatched from Death. For a time the men respected his grief, then removed Art's body from his sight, persuaded him with kindly insistence to eat and drink a little. They wrapped him in their cloaks, made a litter of their spears, and bore him "within the rim of the broad shield extended over that region"-the shield of Feach-his feet swollen within the horse-boy's shoes, and brought him to Feach's house; Feach, of whom Spenser wrote that he "overcrowded high mountains and dictated terms of peace to mighty potentates."

Red Hugh's escape sent a thrill through Ireland. Messengers rode north and south and east and west with the joyous word.

After hairbreadth escapes the boy eventually reached the North. On a grey of speed and endurance Red Hugh rode with yellowhaired Turlough Boy O'Hagan into Dungannon-to Hugh O'Neill, "Earl" of Tir-Owen. An alliance was made between him and the earl, he, the boy of eighteen, who had been so deeply injured, and the grave sagacious man, who foresaw that the English State was working secretly for his overthrow; to whom the time must come when he would have to defend his life, his territory, his people. That alliance buried forever clan-diplomacies and feuds between the two great houses.

O'Neill sent him on to the Lord of Fermanagh, Hugh Maguire, a very tall, handsome, gay-spirited young man, valiant in arms, who when a lord Deputy proposed to send a sheriff into Fermanagh, suggested to the Viceroy that he had better let him know the price of the sheriff's head first. Accompanied by a fleet of boats, Red Hugh was carried in Maguire's state barge in triumphal processsion down the Erne to a point on the western shore. There gentlemen of TirConaill met him, and he went to his own castle of Ballyshannon. There was joy in its hall; feasting, the music of war-pipes; vows to follow him; men's courage renewed. He was laid on a "bed of healing," with swollen feet-one permanently lamed by those nights in the snow. But not long did he lie there. Bingham's captain was besieging Donegal castle. Within it his brave mother, Inghín Dubh, waited for succour. The captain had gathered much spoil, intending, the castle taken, to bring those beeves to Connacht and Bingham. Red Hugh rose, laughed at his surgeons, called out his men, and marched to Donegal. He recovered the spoil, freed the

2

2 Literally Dark Daughter.

castle and the Dark Daughter, and drove the captain and his soldiers out of Tir-Conaill. What a meeting then between him and his dauntless mother. For the four years of his captivity, aided faithfully by MacSwiney of the Battle Axes, she had never ceased to try to obtain his release and keep the chieftaincy for him.

On a May day the lad was made The O'Donnell. Sir Hugh, his father, gladly gave place to a son so fit to rule. A weak, hesitating man, he had let his wife, the Dark Daughter, strike the blows for her stolen son. Now a mild old man, tired of a vexatious world where treachery and dark ways prevailed, he was about to seek the goal of old war-worn Irish princes, the rest and shelter of a monastery.

Therefore on that May day, young, valiant, beautiful, but lame in one foot-the mark of his captivity-the boy with gifts of mind and body that had made men look to him as the hope of Ireland, stood on the Rock of Doone, the immemorial throne of the O'Donnells, the white wand in his hand, symbol of Authority and of what his rule must be, white and straight; and turning thrice from left to right, and thrice from right to left, in honour of the Holy Trinity, he viewed from every point his territory. Then as he stood still, erect and kingly, the inaugurator called "O'Donnell !" giving him a title higher than any the foreigners could give, the ancient title of his ancestors, the princes of Tir-Conaill. And each man among the high officials, according to rank, cried out "O'Donnell!" and the voices of hundreds of clansmen carried "O'Donnell!" far into the distance. Thus Red Hugh's star rose and shone high in the north over Ireland; and still shines in the dark sky of her history.

The Nine Years' War had begun. A spear darted through TirConaill. The invader was driven out; chiefs who had given their allegiance to the foreigner were taught that the O'Donnell was their chief and prince. He swept through Ulster, and drove out the English sheriffs. He entered Connacht and hurled Bingham's forces before him. Hugh O'Neill watched events; waited, held his hand, still uncertain; could he and those like him live under English rule or not? He visited London, answered to the queen the charges made against him and won her favour for the time. But his destruction was decided upon. He was to be inveigled to Dublin to explain certain fresh charges, a safe conduct being given him. Then, by Elizabeth's order, he was to be seized. It was feared he might not But he came, walking into the Council Chamber as a man who had nothing to dread. He would have been arrested had not the Black Earl of Ormond declared that he "would not use treachery

come.

to any man." Later he warned O'Neill to leave Dublin that night as the Deputy was preparing to prevent his getting away from the city.

So the issue of an independent Ireland or a conquered country was now to be put to the sword. Almost for the first time since the invasion Ireland had a statesman who saw the root of her weakness, and who placed the politics of the nation before the politics of the clan.

CHAPTER XLV

THE NINE YEARS' WAR

THE war was not only one of independence but a religious war as well. Men looked to Spain, the great Catholic country; would she help? Messengers crossed and re-crossed the seas. On one side was the entire power of England aided by her Irish auxiliaries. That fact, the Irish auxiliaries, had kept the English forces from being driven out of Ireland. Another, the Irish during the centuries had not realised (maintaining as so many of them did their own independence) that the invasion, and the subsequent colonies, were calculated and unswerving attempts to shatter the whole fabric of Irish civilisation, and supplant it by an alien one. In the sixteenth century the mass of the people had not fully realised it yet. They were but beginning to do so.

And those auxiliaries-Irishmen ranked with Henry's or Elizabeth's troops, winning victories over their countrymen, let the fact explain itself. I think it explains itself primarily by clan-politics, which had so often guided the actions of the chiefs. The policy of centralisation, attempted by one or two of the Irish kings, had never developed. "Despotism tends to centralisation, freedom of the people to decentralise," says Eoin MacNeill. And he says, "among the Celts as among the Greeks of antiquity and the Italians of the Middle Ages, the instinct of local freedom usually prevailed over the policy of centralisation, and what we may call neighbourhoods, in which the people knew all about each other, so to speak, formed themselves into states for the regulation of their own affairs. The principle was the same as that which measures the areas of local district councils in our time, but the district council of antiquity had all but sovereign powers."

The instinct of local freedom had gathered round the Norman houses in Ireland during the centuries. Thus Irish soldiers, always true to their leaders, marched with the Earl of Ormond, or the Earl of Kildare, or other Norman lord who paid allegiance to England; or followed the "queen's" O'Reilly, or "queen's" MacMahon, or other chief, as affection, or the love of warfare. or the

pay of the mercenary, induced them. But local freedom was only the skin of the nation. The heart was true to nationality. The bards voiced its beat. They wrote not only in praise of their own tuath and chief, of Offaly, or Thomond, or Tir-Owen, or other portions of Ireland, but of Ireland as a whole, as a national unit.1

O'Neill cast off the title of Earl, and was proclaimed The O'Neill. Ulster was already organised; a Northern Confederacy was formed. His weapon was ready. Those companies whom he had trained were keen steel fit for use. Seven miles from his castle a fortress was held by the English. It stood by the AbhainnMor. The great river, Ulster called it; the Blackwater, the English. Men said they gave it that name, not because of its turgid waters but because they had so often met disaster and defeat on its banks. O'Neill's men stormed the fortress, drove out the English garrison, levelled the fort, and burnt the bridge. The queen's forces held Monaghan. He marched thither; gave battle to Norris, the English general, who was advancing to its relief, and defeated him. Hugh Maguire, finest horseman in Ireland, twice rode down with his cavalry on the English musketeers, and twice broke them. Monaghan fell; the English commander was allowed to go free.

England proclaimed O'Neill an enemy and a traitor. Armies were sent against him. He evaded or defeated the armies. He showed generalship of a high order. She recalled her best soldiers from the Spanish war in Belgium, and flung them into Ireland. She sent skilful commanders against him, Norris and Russell and Bagenal. Generals and soldiers failed to break his power. Then Elizabeth opened negotiations, offering fair and honourable terms. O'Neill knew how to meet them; how much to trust. A message came from Spain: Fight on! Spanish soldiers are coming. O'Neill broke off the negotiations and the war was renewed. Sligo had fallen, taken by Red Hugh; Bingham's army was in retreat followed by O'Donnell who "harried it with missiles." Norris and his veterans marched out of Athlone to meet and crush Red Hugh.

Here are moving pictures, snatched out of the Nine Years' War. A river in Mayo, a village; on the south bank an army of ten thousand horse and foot; men in scarlet or buff, tunics, with puffed sleeves, and iron breast-plates and backs; forests of weapons; bright pennants, and the banner of Saint George. A great and well ordered army. The general in shining steel, wide ruff, and

1 "The names of Erin, Banba, Fodhla, the Land of Cona, are in their mouths every moment, and to the last they persisted in their efforts to combine the Gael against the Gall." Literary History of Ireland. Hyde.

For this reason Spenser hated them. "They are tending for the most part to hurt the English, for the maintenance of their own lewde libertie," he say