Gaelic Ulster in the Middle Ages: History, culture and society (Trinity Medieval Ireland Series) [None ed.] 9781846827938, 9781846829895, 1846827930

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Other volumes in this series: The Geraldines and medieval Ireland: the making of a myth Peter Crooks & Seán DuΩy, editors The Irish church, its reform and the English invasion

Government, war and society in medieval Ireland: essays by Edmund Curtis, A.J. Otway-Ruthven and James Lydon Peter Crooks, editor

N

o w a d a y s , medieval Gaelic Ulster is virtually invisible. Physical evidence from the four centuries stretching between the invasion of the Anglo-Norman baron John de Courcy and the Plantation is rare. Although it left little physical trace, Gaelic Ulster was once a vigorous, confident society, whose members fought and feasted, sang and prayed. It maintained schools of poets, physicians, historians and lawyers, whose studies were conducted largely in their own Gaelic (Early Modern Irish) language, rather than in the dead Latin of medieval schools elsewhere in Europe. This monumental book explores the neglected history of Gaelic Ulster between the eleventh and early sixteenth centuries, and sheds further light on its unique society. The first section, ‘Political History’, provides the reader with a chronological narrative, showing the influence of internal and external political change on the Ulster chieftains, while also illustrating how this northern province related to the rest of Ireland. The second section, ‘Culture and Society’, aims to depict the world of Ulster during the Middle Ages. It delves into the ‘plain living and high thinking’ of its somewhat enigmatic society, operating largely independently of towns or coinage, describing in turn its chieftains, churchmen, scholars, warriors, court ladies and other women, and the amusements and everyday life of the people. Here Katharine Simms illuminates the hidden world of medieval Gaelic Ulster and its denizens. Above all one receives a lasting impression of the people’s resilience in this war-torn society, their ability to make best use of the natural resources around them, not merely to survive, and even enjoy themselves.

FOUR COURTS PRESS

The jacket, by Anú Design, incorporates a detail from an engraving by Wenceslaus Hollar (c.1644?), An Irishwoman in her national costume of a shaggy frieze cloak. Image from Thomas Fisher Rare Books Library, University of Toronto.

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TRINIT Y MEDIEVAL IREL AND SERIES: 4

Medieval Gaelic sources Katharine Simms The world of the galloglass: kings, warlords and warriors in Ireland and Scotland, 1200–1600

Katharine Simms

Katharine Simms lectured in medieval history at Trinity College Dublin until 2010. She has written From kings to warlords: the changing political structure of Gaelic Ireland in the later Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 1987), Medieval Gaelic sources (Dublin, 2009), and many articles on Gaelic Ireland.

Also from Four Courts Press

Seán Duffy, editor

Gaelic Ulster in the Middle Ages

Donnchadh Ó Corráin

Katharine Simms

The kings of Aileach and the Vikings, ad 800–1060 Darren McGettigan The making of medieval Derry Ciarán J. Devlin Life and death in medieval Gaelic Ireland: the skeletons from Ballyhanna, Co. Donegal  Catriona J. McKenzie & Eileen M. Murphy Princes, prelates and poets in medieval Ireland: essays in honour of Katharine Simms Seán Duffy, editor

Gaelic Ulster in the Middle Ages History, culture and society TRINIT Y MEDIEVAL IREL AND SERIES: 4

Ireland under the Normans, 1169–1333 Goddard Henry Orpen

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Gaelic Ulster in the Middle Ages

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Gaelic Ulster in the Middle Ages H I S T O RY, C U LT U R E A N D S O C I E T Y

Katharine Simms

Trinity Medieval Ireland Series: 4

F O U R C O U RT S P R E S S

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Set in EhrhardtMTPro 10.5pt on 12.5pt by Carrigboy Typesetting Services for F O U R C O U RT S P R E S S LT D

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c/o IPG, 814 N Franklin St, Chicago, IL 60610.

© Katharine Simms and Four Courts Press 2020

A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-1-84682-793-8 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-84682-989-5 (ebook)

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and publisher of this book.

SPECIAL ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This publication has been generously supported by the Trinity College Dublin Association and Trust.

Printed in England by CPI Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wilts.

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Contents

L I S T O F I L LU S T R AT I O N S AC K N OW L E D G M E N T S N O T E O N I R I S H P L AC E A N D P E R S O N A L N A M E S L I S T O F A B B R E V I AT I O N S

8 10 12 13

S E C T I O N O N E : P O L I T I C A L H I S T O RY

Introduction 21 Why focus on Ulster? 21 How archaic was Gaelic society? Kingship, law and the learned classes 24 1 Early background: Ulster’s central role in Irish history Medieval Ulster’s heritage from the Iron Age The rise of the Uí Néill and the high-kingship of Tara The primacy of the church of Armagh over the rest of Ireland The creation of a secular literature for Ireland

33 33 43 55 60

2 Eleventh to twelfth centuries: Ulster’s growing isolation Replacement of the O’Neill provincial kings by the MacLaughlin dynasty Career of Domnall MacLaughlin Succession disputes and rebellion: an end to hereditary coarbs in Armagh The reign of the high-king Muirchertach MacLaughlin MacLaughlin–O’Neill rivalry

69

3 The Ulster earldom to the late thirteenth century: co-existence and Anglicization The conquest of the Ulaid by John de Courcy The creation of the earldom of Ulster under Hugh de Lacy the younger The reign of Áed Méith O’Neill MacLaughlin revival ‘High-kingship’ of Brian O’Neill De Burgh–O’Neill cooperation

5

70 72 75 77 81

84 84 89 90 94 98 100

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Contents 4 The fourteenth century: absenteeism and Gaelic recovery The Bruce invasion The de Mandeville revolt and murder of Earl William de Burgh Provincial kingship of the Great O’Neill of Tír Eógain The expeditions of King Richard II

110 110 115 118 139

5 The fifteenth century: ‘a balance of power’? – Gaelic and Anglo-Irish paramount lordships Revolt in east Ulster The O’Neill succession struggle and rise of Niall Garb O’Donnell The influence of the 4th earl of Ormond

148 148 153 172

6 The Ulster chiefs and the Geraldine chief governors The earldom of Ulster becomes vested in the English crown The Geraldine hegemony under the Yorkists Ulster and the Geraldines under Lancastrian rule The fall of the House of Kildare

186 186 192 202 216

S E C T I O N T W O : C U LT U R E A N D S O C I E T Y

7 Kings and kingship Succession to kingship Kingship and landownership The hierarchy of authority: clientship and political submission Administration and control The ideology of kingship: king versus kin-head

233 234 237 239 244 249

8 The church in medieval Ulster The power of the pre-reform church in Ulster The structures of the pre-reform church Consequences of church reform and the Anglo-Norman invasion Resistance to reform Armagh and the primacy of Nicholas Mac Máel Ísa The English archbishops The fifteenth century: the Observant movement, lay piety and pilgrimage Popular beliefs and superstitions

268 268 269 280 290 301 306

9 Ulster poets Early poets and the supernatural Poets and the pre-reform church schools

335 335 338

318 328

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Contents The impact of church reform: the rise of the bardic schools Poets and patrons in Ulster

7 342 361

10 Other Ulster ‘men of art/learning’ (áes eladan) Lands endowing the ‘men of art’ Senchaidi (historians) Brethemain (judges) Lega (physicians) Lucht ciúil (musicians) Ceird (craftsmen)

377 377 384 391 394 396 400

11 Warriors and warfare Warrior-bands (fíana) in prehistoric and early medieval Ireland Viking influence: the rise of mercenary soldiers Impact of the Anglo-Norman incursion and settlement The advent of the Scottish galloglass: the composition and use of later medieval armies The self-image of aristocratic warriors

404 404 410 416 419 426

12 Court ladies and the place of women in Gaelic society Women’s place in Brehon and canon law The role of queens Court ladies Women in general

435 435 441 450 456

13 The life of the people: popular assemblies, farming, houses, clothing and food The dispersed pattern of settlement Assemblies Everyday living conditions

459 459 463 472

14 Epilogue

495

BIBLIOGRAPHY

502

INDEX

543

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Illustrations 1 2 3 4 5 6

Map of modern barony boundaries in the north of Ireland 29 Map showing remains of Black Pig’s Dyke 34 Map of ‘The Ulster of the Tales’ 35 Map of Ulster in sixth century 40 Map of some early monastic foundations and battle sites 45 Genealogy illustrating the alternation of the high-kingship between the Northern and Southern Uí Néill, and doubtful lineal descent of the Mac Lochlainn dynasty 47 7 Genealogical background of de Courcy’s wife 87 8 Map showing the medieval administrative divisions of the earldom of Ulster 90 9 Castle of Carrickfergus 91 10 Genealogy illustrating the succession of the O’Neills of Tír Eógain (Tyrone) and the O’Neills of Clandeboy (south Antrim and north Down) from the late twelfth to early sixteenth centuries 96 11 Genealogy illustrating O’Donnell succession, thirteenth to sixteenth centuries 97 12 The castle of Northburgh, now Greencastle, Inishowen 107 13 Galloglass bodyguard surrounding O’Cahan tomb, Dungiven, Co. Derry 108 14 Genealogy illustrating succession to the earldom of Ulster 117 15 The seal of Áed O’Neill 125 16 Genealogy of the MacMahon kings of Airgialla, fourteenth to early fifteenth centuries, illustrating relations with the Clann Alexander MacDonald galloglasses 129 17 Harry Avery’s Castle 133 18 Some familial connections in the Savage family 151 19 Genealogy of the White family, fourteenth–fifteenth centuries 151 20 Selective genealogy of Magennis kings of Uí Echach, fourteenth– fifteenth centuries, with some indications of their alliances 152 21 & 22 Marginal illustrations from Giraldus Cambrensis, Topographia Hibernica, showing inauguration scenes 292–3 23 Base of the shrine of the Cathach, showing inscription asking prayer for Cathbarr O’Donnell 294 24 Diagram of distribution of Ulster poems by subject 349 25 Diagram of distribution of all Ireland poems by subject 350

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Illustrations

26 Distribution of authors’ surnames for poems to Ulster patrons or by Ulster poets, twelfth to fifteenth centuries 351 27 High cross, Devenish Island, county Fermanagh 402 28 Dunvegan Cup 403 29 The Rhynie Man 405 30 White Island, Fermanagh, figure of ‘David’ 405 31 MacSweeney galloglass figures from 1567 map 420 32 Cattle-raid, from John Derricke’s Image of Irelande 422 33 Horse warriors from the base of the Market Cross, Kells 423 34 Irish horsemen in retreat, from John Derricke’s Image of Irelande 425 35 MacSweeney’s feast, from John Derricke’s Image of Irelande 447 36 Strawboy costume 473 37 & 38 The Irish frieze cloak on an Irishwoman and woman of Dieppe in Normandy, from engravings by Hollar 476–7 39 The Maguire’s castle at Enniskillen 486 40 O’Hagan’s house in Tullyhogue fort, from Bartlett’s Map III 487 41 Houses in Armagh city from Bartlett’s Map V 488 42 Construction of wickerwork coracle 493 P L AT E S

appear between pages 224 and 225 I Aerial view of Navan Ring (Emain Macha) II View of Tara showing the Mound of the Hostages III Map of northern kingdoms in the mid-twelfth century as approximately reflected in modern diocesan boundaries IV Aerial view of Tullyhogue Fort V Greenan Fort, Inishowen, county Donegal VI The shrine of St Patrick’s Bell VII Map of the north of Ireland in 1333 VIII Meeting between Art MacMurrough and the earl of Nottingham, from Jean Creton’s Chronicle 1399 IX Map of the north of Ireland at time of submission to Richard II X Map of the north of Ireland c.AD1449 XI Map of the north of Ireland in the 1460s XII Portrait of Gerald FitzGerald, 9th earl of Kildare XIII The inauguration of O’Neill on the mound at Tullyhogue. XIV Petrie’s drawing of diagram of the banqueting hall at Tara in the Book of Leinster XV Petrie’s drawing of diagram of the banqueting hall at Tara in the Yellow Book of Lecan XVI Lucas de Heere, ‘Irlandois et Irlandoise comme ils alloyent accoustres etans au seruice de feu Roy Henry’

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Acknowledgments This book has been an exceptionally long time in gestation, beginning with my BA dissertation in 1969 on ‘The O’Neills in the later Middle Ages’, followed by a PhD thesis (Dublin, 1976) on ‘Gaelic lordships in Ulster in the later Middle Ages’, so my first acknowledgments must go to my late supervisor, James Lydon, who inspired and encouraged me in what was then a relatively unusual field of enquiry. The two pioneering scholars who were ahead of me in the area of later medieval Gaelic Ireland, Kenneth Nicholls and the late Gearóid Mac Niocaill, were also extraordinarily generous and helpful. Concentrating as I did on Gaelic literary sources, and the registers of the medieval archbishops of Armagh, I owe a great debt of gratitude to my many colleagues researching Anglo-Irish history who not only drew my attention to relevant documents in the English and Anglo-Irish administrative records but often gave me their transcripts, in particular the late A.J. Otway-Ruthven, the late Phil Connolly, Robin Frame, Dorothy Johnson, Nicholas Canny, Seán Duffy and Brendan Smith among others, as also to the work of many research students under my supervision, named with acknowledgment in the relevant footnotes. I also owe much thanks to the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, School of Celtic Studies for six years of financial support, first as a scholar and then a Junior Research Fellow, where I benefited greatly from the classes and discussions with staff and scholars. More recently, I am most grateful to Susan Reynolds, who read an early draft of my chapter on kingship, to Luke McInerney who read a draft of my chapter on the church, to Mícheál Hoyne, for reading my chapters on the church and the learned classes, and to Peter Crooks for reading the whole book in draft, though I am of course responsible for any remaining errors. I owe an especial debt to the then Director during my time at DIAS, the late Brian Ó Cuív, for many patient hours attempting to equip me to read bardic poetry in the original, and for his facilitating my commencement of an electronic descriptive catalogue of as many bardic poems as I could identify in manuscripts and printed editions (https://bardic.celt.dias.ie/). In the continuation of this catalogue over many years of teaching in the Medieval History Department at Trinity College Dublin, I gained immeasurably from the cooperation of the Irish Department, especially Damian McManus, and his research team on the Trinity Bardic Poetry project. A grant from the the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS) of a Senior Research Fellowship in

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Acknowledgments

2007–8 gave me the leisure from my teaching schedule to write up not only Medieval Gaelic sources in the series Maynooth Research Guides for Irish Local History (Dublin, 2009), but the first drafts of chapters 8–10 in the present work, dealing with the church and the learned classes. I owe my family a more practical debt than is usual in these cases, firstly for the academic assistance given by my husband Kim McCone, and last but by no means least, my daughter and son, Brigit and John, for reading through draft chapters and giving valuable editorial advice. * * * In relation to the illustrations for this book I owe much to the kindness of many people and institutions, for reproductions of material both in and out of copyright. For Figs. 2 and 3 I am indebted to James Mallory, editor of Emania, and the authors of the respective articles in Emania 3 and 14, Aidan Walsh (map with ‘Government permit no. 4832’) and Kay Muhr. For Fig. 8 I am grateful to Salters Sterling, trustee for the intellectual property of Prof. A.J. OtwayRuthven. From the photographic archives of TRIARC (Trinity Irish Art Research Centre) came both Fig. 13 (TCD Edwin Rae collection ©), and, with kind permission of Professor Stalley, Figs. 9, 12, 27 and 33 (TCD Roger Stalley collection ©). I owe Fig. 17 to the generosity of Frank McGettigan, and the kind mediation of Darren McGettigan. Figs 21, 22 and 40, 41 were obtained courtesy of the National Library of Ireland. Fig. 29 comes courtesy of the Aberdeenshire Council Archaeology Service ©. The Fermanagh County Museum and Helen Lanigan Wood kindly supplied me with an electronic image for Fig. 30 from the Welch collection in the National Museum of Northern Ireland. Fig. 31 came from National Archives, London (MPF 1/68). The Royal Irish Academy helped me with reproductions for Figs. 32, 34, 35 and Plates XIV and XV. Figs. 36, 42 and Plate VI are reproduced with kind permission of The National Museum of Ireland. Figs 37, 38 come from the Thomas Fisher Rare Books Library, University of Toronto. Permission to reproduce Plate I came from the Historic Environment Record of Northern Ireland (HERoNI), © Crown DfC Historic Environment Division. Plates II and V are © National Monuments Service, Department of Culture, Heritage, and the Gaeltacht. Plate IV came courtesy of the Centre for Archaeological Fieldwork, QUB, and Irish Sights. Plate VIII is ©British Library Board, Harley MS 1319, fo. 9. Plate XII has kind permission from the Duke of Leinster. Plate XIII comes courtesy of the Maritime Museum, Greenwich. Plate XVI is from Ghent University Library, BHSL.HS.2466. In conclusion, I owe particular thanks to Professor Elizabeth FitzPatrick, NUI Galway, who helped me to source a number of the illustrations.

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Note on Irish place and personal names A word should be said at the outset concerning the treatment of Irish spelling and Irish personal and place-names. Medieval scribes were very inconsistent in spelling until the literary reforms of the sixteenth century, so I have followed Martin Freeman’s practice when he translated the Annals of Connacht, of adopting a form of Old Irish spelling where lenition is only shown in the case of the letters ‘c’, ‘f ’, ‘p’, ‘t’ and ‘s’, but without applying the nasalization that would have followed the, by then, obsolete neuter gender. This is also the format used in the New History of Ireland volume 2 up to the end of the thirteenth century, except that I have replaced the surname element ‘Ua’ with ‘Ó’, and continued to apply the same system to names in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries also, for consistency. In the case of direct quotation from printed editions, I have retained the spelling of their respective editors. However, to make the readers’ task easier, I make use of the Anglicized versions of chieftains’ surnames once these have evolved, from about the eleventh century onwards, inserting the original Irish form in brackets at the first occurrence of the name. I also use the original English form for Christian names borrowed from English into Irish, except for Seaán, as this seems a borrowing from the medieval French, ‘Jehan’. On the other hand, in the case of surnames of medieval Irish poets and authors, I retain the Irish form, as this is how they are most commonly known, and in some cases the English form might render them unrecognizable, e.g., Conroy for Ó Máelchonaire, or Cruise for Mac Fhirbisig. Nicknames are distinguished by italics.

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Abbreviations ABM AFM

AI Aithd. ALC Anal. Hib. Anc. Laws Ire. Ann. Clonm. Ann. Conn. Ann. Grace Ann. MacFirb.

Ann. Tig.

Armagh Hist. & Soc. AU Bergin, IBP Bhreathnach, Tara Bieler, The Patrician texts Binchy, Críth Gablach Bk Fen.

Damian McManus and Eoghan Ó Raghallaigh (eds), A bardic miscellany (Trinity Irish Studies no. 2, Dublin, 2010). John O’Donovan (ed.), Annals of the kingdom of Ireland by the Four Masters (7 vols, Dublin, 1856, reprinted with unpaginated introduction by Kenneth Nicholls, Dublin, 1990). Seán Mac Airt (ed.), The Annals of Inisfallen (MS Rawlinson B. 503), (Dublin, 1951). Lambert McKenna (ed.), Aithdioghluim dána (2 vols, Dublin, ITS, 1939 text, 1940 translation). W.M. Hennessy (ed.), The Annals of Loch Cé (2 vols, London, Rolls Series, 1871, repr. Dublin, IMC, 1939). Analecta Hibernica. W.N. Hancock et al. (eds), Ancient laws of Ireland (6 vols, Dublin, 1865–1901). Denis Murphy (ed.), The Annals of Clonmacnoise (Dublin, 1896, repr. Felinfach, 1993). A.M. Freeman (ed.), Annála Connacht, the Annals of Connacht (Dublin, 1944). Richard Butler (ed.), Jacobi Grace Kilkenniensis, Annales Hiberniae (Dublin, 1842). John O’Donovan (ed.), ‘The Annals of Ireland, from the year 1443 to 1468, translated from the Irish by … Duald MacFirbis’ in Miscellany of the Irish Archaeological Society, 1 (Dublin, 1846), pp 108–302. Whitley Stokes (ed. and trans.), ‘The Annals of Tigernach’ from Rev. Celt. 16, 17 and 18 (1895–7), reprinted as two volumes, Felinfach, 1993, with new continuous pagination added at the foot of each page. My footnotes refer to this new pagination, with original Revue Celtique pagination in square brackets. A.J. Hughes and William Nolan (eds), Armagh: history and society (Dublin, 2001). Bartholomew MacCarthy (ed.), The Annals of Ulster, vols 2, 3 & 4 (Dublin, 1893, 1895 and 1901). Osborn Bergin, Irish bardic poetry, ed. David Greene and Fergus Kelly (Dublin, 1970). Edel Bhreathnach (ed.), The kingship and landscape of Tara (Dublin, 2005). Ludwig Bieler (ed.), The Patrician texts in the Book of Armagh (Dublin, 1979). D.A. Binchy (ed.), Críth Gablach (Dublin, 1941). W.M. Hennessy and D.H. Kelly (eds), The Book of Fenagh (Dublin, 1875; repr. IMC, 1939).

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14 Breatnach, Companion Breifne Byrne, Irish kings

Cal. Carew MSS

Cal. close rolls Cal. pat. rolls Carpenter, ‘The pilgrim from Catalonia’

CDI Chart, Reg. Swayne

CIH CMCS Corp. Gen. Hib. Curtis, Richard II Derry Hist. & Soc. DIAS DIB

DiD Donegal Hist. & Soc. Down Hist. & Soc. Early Statutes I–IV

Abbreviations Liam Breatnach, A companion to the Corpus iuris Hibernici (Dublin, 2005). Breifne: Journal of Cumann Seanchais Bhreifne (Breifne Historical Society). F.J. Byrne, Irish kings and high-kings (London, 1973, reprinted with original pagination, author’s corrections in prefixed additional pages, Dublin, 2001). J.S. Brewer and William Bullen (eds), Calendar of the Carew manuscripts preserved in the Archiepiscopal Library at Lambeth (6 vols, London, 1867–73). Calendar of the close rolls, 1272–1485 (42 vols, London, 1892– 1954). Calendar of the patent rolls, 1232–1485 (51 vols, London 1891– 1916). Dorothy Carpenter, ‘The pilgrim from Catalonia/Aragon: Ramon de Perellós’ in Michael Haren and Yolande de Pontfarcy (eds), The medieval pilgrimage to St Patrick’s Purgatory: Lough Derg and the European tradition (Enniskillen, 1988), pp 99–119. H.S. Sweetman (ed.), Calendar of documents relating to Ireland 1171–[1307] (5 vols, London, Public Record Office, 1875–86). D.A. Chart (ed.), The register of John Swayne, archbishop of Armagh and primate of Ireland, 1418–1439 [calendar] (Belfast, 1935). D.A. Binchy (ed.), Corpus iuris Hibernici (6 vols, Dublin, 1978). Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies/Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies (title change from Winter 1993). M.A. O’Brien (ed.), Corpus genealogiarum Hiberniae (Dublin, 1962). Edmund Curtis, Richard II in Ireland 1394–5 and the submissions of the Irish chiefs (Oxford, 1927). Gerard O’Brien (ed.), Derry and Londonderry: history and society (Dublin, 1999). Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. James McGuire and James Quinn (eds), Dictionary of Irish biography (9 vols, Dublin and Cambridge, 2009). Also available at www.dibcambridge.org Láimhbheartach MacCionaith (eag.), Dioghluim dána (Baile Átha Cliath, 1938). William Nolan, Liam Ronayne and Mairéad Dunlevy (eds), Donegal: history and society (Dublin, 1995). Lindsay Proudfoot (ed.), Down: history and society (Dublin, 1997). H.F. Berry (ed.), Statutes and ordinances and acts of the parliament of Ireland: King John to Henry V, idem, Statute rolls of the parliament of Ireland: reign of King Henry VI (being volume II of the Irish Record Office series of early statutes); idem, Statute rolls of the parliament of Ireland: 1st to 12th years of the reign of King Edward IV (being volume III of the Irish Record Office series of early statutes); idem, Statute rolls of the parliament of Ireland: 12th and 13th to the 21st and 22nd years of the reign of King Edward IV

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Abbreviations

15

(being volume IV of the Irish Record Office series of early statutes) (Dublin, HM Stationery Office, 1907, 1910, 1914, 1939). Éigse Éigse: a Journal of Irish Studies (published for the NUI). Emania Emania: Bulletin of the Navan Research Group. Eng. & Ire. ed. Lydon James Lydon (ed.), England and Ireland in the later Middle Ages: essays in honour of Jocelyn Otway-Ruthven (Dublin, 1981). Ériu Ériu, founded as the Journal of the School of Irish Learning (RIA). Etchingham, Church Colmán Etchingham, Church organization in Ireland, AD650– organization 1000 (Maynooth, 1999). Féilsgríbhinn Eóin Mhic John Ryan (ed.), Féilsgríbhinn Eóin Mhic Néill: essays and studies Néill presented to Professor Eoin MacNeill (Dublin, 1940; repr. 1995). Fermanagh Hist. & Soc. E.M. Murphy and W.J. Roulston (eds), Fermanagh: history and society (Dublin, 2004). Flanagan, Ir. royal Marie Thérèse Flanagan, Irish royal charters: texts and contexts charters (Oxford, 2005). Flanagan, Irish society Marie Thérèse Flanagan, Irish society, Anglo-Norman settlers, Angevin kingship: interactions in Ireland in the late twelfth century (Oxford, 1989). Foras Feasa David Comyn and P.S. Dinneen (eds), Foras feasa ar Éirinn: The history of Ireland by Geoffrey Keating (4 vols, London, 1902–14). Gilbert, Chart. St Mary’s J.T. Gilbert (ed.), Chartularies of St Mary’s Abbey, Dublin … and Annals of Ireland (2 vols, London, 1884). Gilbert, Facsimiles J.T. Gilbert (ed.), Facsimiles of the national manuscripts of Ireland (4 vols, Dublin, 1874–84). Gwynn & Hadcock, Aubrey Gwynn and R.N. Hadcock, Medieval religious houses: Medieval religious houses Ireland (London, 1970). IHS Irish Historical Studies. IMC Irish Manuscripts Commission. Ir. Texts J. Fraser, P. Grosjean and J.G. O’Keeffe (eds), Irish texts, fasc. I–IV (London, 1931–4). ITS Irish Texts Society. Jaski, Early Irish kingship Bart Jaski, Early Irish kingship and succession (Dublin, 2000). Johnes, Froissart Thomas Johnes (trans.), Chronicles of England, France, Spain … from the latter part of the reign of Edward II to the coronation of Henry IV by Sir John Froissart (2 vols, London, 1857). JRSAI Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland – volumes numbered continuously to include: 1849–53 Transactions of the Kilkenny Archaeological Society; 1854–5 Proceedings and Transactions of the Kilkenny and South-East of Ireland Archaeological Society; 1856–67 Journal of the Kilkenny and South-East of Ireland Archaeological Society; 1868–9 Journal of the Historical and Archaeological Association of Ireland; 1870–89 Journal of the Royal Historical and Archaeological Association of Ireland. Kelly, Audacht Fergus Kelly (ed.), Audacht Morainn (Dublin, 1976). Kelly, Early Irish law Fergus Kelly, A guide to early Irish law (Dublin, 1988). Knott, Tadhg Dall Eleanor Knott (ed.), The bardic poems of Tadhg Dall Ó hUiginn (1550–1591) (2 vols, London, 1922, 1926). Mac Airt & Mac Niocaill, Seán Mac Airt and Gearóid Mac Niocaill (eds), The Annals of Annals of Ulster Ulster to 1131 (Dublin, 1983). McCone, Pagan past Kim McCone, Pagan past and Christian present in early Irish literature (Maynooth, 1990).

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16 McCone & Simms, Progress The medieval pilgrimage

Abbreviations

Kim McCone and Katharine Simms (eds), Progress in medieval Irish studies (Maynooth, 1996). Michael Haren and Yolande de Pontfarcy (eds), The medieval pilgrimage to St Patrick’s Purgatory: Lough Derg and the European tradition (Enniskillen, 1988). Miller & Power, Liam Miller and Eileen Power (eds), Holinshed’s Irish chronicle Holinshed’s Ir. Chron. 1577: the historie of Irelande from the first habitation thereof, vnto the yeare 1509. Collected by Raphaell Holinshed, & continued till the yeare 1547 by Richarde Stanyhurst (Dublin, 1979). Misc. Ir. Ann. Séamus Ó hInnse (ed.), Miscellaneous Irish annals (Dublin 1947). Monaghan Hist. & Soc. P.J. Duffy and Éamonn Ó Ciardha (eds), Monaghan: history and society (Dublin, 2017). Morley, Ire. under Eliz. Henry Morley (ed.), Ireland under Elizabeth and James I (London, & Jas I 1890). Mullally, Deeds of the Evelyn Mullally (ed.), The deeds of the Normans in Ireland: La Normans geste des Engleis en Yrlande, a new edition of the chronicle formerly known as The song of Dermot and the earl (Dublin, 2002). NHI 1 Dáibhí Ó Croínín (ed.), A new history of Ireland, i: Prehistoric and early Ireland (Oxford, 2005). NHI 2 Art Cosgrove (ed.), A new history of Ireland, ii: Medieval Ireland, 1169–1534 (Oxford, 1987). NHI 3 T.W. Moody, F.X. Martin and F.J. Byrne (eds), A new history of Ireland, iii: Early modern Ireland, 1534–1691 (Oxford, 1976). NHI 9 T.W. Moody, F.X. Martin, F.J. Byrne (eds), A new history of Ireland, ix: Maps, genealogies, lists: a companion to Irish history part 2 (Oxford, 1984). Nicholls, ‘The register Kenneth Nicholls, ‘The register of Clogher’, Clogher Record, 7 of Clogher’ (1969–72), 361–431. NLI National Library of Ireland. NUI National University of Ireland. Ó Ceallaigh, Gleanings Séamus Ó Ceallaigh, Gleanings from Ulster history (Cork, 1951, enlarged reprint, with contributions from Donnchadh Ó Corráin, Niamh Whitfield and Nollaig Ó Muraíle with unchanged pagination, Draperstown, Ballinascreen Historical Society, 1994). O’Donovan, Tribes of John O’Donovan (ed.), The tribes of Ireland: a satire by Aenghus Ireland O’Daly (Dublin, 1852). O’Grady, Caithréim S.H. O’Grady (ed.), Caithréim Thoirdhealbhaigh (2 vols, London, ITS, 1929). O’Grady, Silva Gadelica S.H. O’Grady (ed.), Silva Gadelica I–XXXI: A collection of tales in Irish with extracts illustrating persons and places (2 vols, London and Edinburgh, 1892). O’Grady & Flower, S.H. O’Grady and Robin Flower, Catalogue of Irish manuscripts Cat. Ir. MSS in the British Museum (3 vols, London, 1926, reprinted as Catalogue of Irish manuscripts in the British Library [formerly British Museum], 3 vols, Dublin, 1992). O’Meara, Gerald of Wales J.J. O’Meara (ed.), Gerald of Wales: The history and topography of Ireland (rev. ed., London, 1982). Ó Muraíle, The Gt Bk Nollaig Ó Muraíle, The great book of Irish genealogies (Leabhar of Ir. Gen. Mór na nGenealach) compiled (1645–66) by Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh (6 vols, Dublin, 2003).

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Abbreviations Orpen, Normans

17

G.H. Orpen, Ireland under the Normans (4 volumes, Oxford, vols 1–2, 1911, vols 3–4, 1920; reprinted as single volume, with intro. by Seán Duffy and new continuous pagination [given here in square brackets], original page nos. retained in margins, Dublin, 2005). Orpen, Song of Dermot G.H. Orpen (ed.), The song of Dermot and the earl (Oxford, 1892). O’Sullivan, Hospitality C.M. O’Sullivan, Hospitality in medieval Ireland, 900–1500 (Dublin, 2004). Otway-Ruthven, Med. Ire. A.J. Otway-Ruthven, A history of medieval Ireland (London, 1968). Oxford DNB H.C.G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (eds), Oxford dictionary of national biography (60 vols, Oxford 2004). Also available at www.oxforddnb.com Plummer, Bethada Charles Plummer (ed.), Bethada náem nÉrenn (2 vols, Oxford, Náem nÉrenn 1922). Plummer, Vit. Sanct. Hib. Charles Plummer (ed.), Vitae sanctorum Hiberniae (2 vols, Oxford, 1910). PRIA Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. Quigley & Roberts, W.G.H. Quigley and E.F.D. Roberts (eds), Registrum Iohannis Reg. Mey Mey: the register of John Mey, archbishop of Armagh, 1443–1456 (Belfast, 1972). Regions and rulers David Edwards (ed.), Regions and rulers in Ireland, 1100–1650: essays for Kenneth Nicholls (Dublin, 2004). Rep. DKPRI Report of the deputy keeper of the public records in Ireland. Rev. Celt. Revue Celtique. RIA Royal Irish Academy. RIA Dictionary E.G. Quin (ed.), Dictionary of the Irish language based mainly on Old and Middle Irish materials (Compact edition, Dublin, RIA, 1998). Also available online as eDIL (Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language) at www.dil.ie Rot. Canc. Hib. [Edward Tresham, ed.], Rotulorum patentium et clausorum cancellarie Hibernie calendarium, Hen. II–Hen. VII (Dublin, 1828); also online at https://www.tcd.ie/CISS/chanceryrolls.php (CIRCLE project) with English translations of calendar entries, and in many cases expanded summaries, or full texts and digital images of manuscripts. Rymer, Foedera Thomas Rymer (ed.), Foedera, conventiones etc. revised Adam Clarke et al. (4 vols, London, 1816–20). Scott & Martin, A.B. Scott and F.X. Martin (eds), Expugnatio Hibernica: The Expugnatio conquest of Ireland, by Giraldus Cambrensis (Dublin, 1978). Simms, From kings to Katharine Simms, From kings to warlords: the changing political warlords structure of Gaelic Ireland in the later Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 1987, repr. 2000). Simms, ‘Gaelic warfare’ Katharine Simms, ‘Gaelic warfare in the Middle Ages’ in Thomas Bartlett and Keith Jeffery (eds), A military history of Ireland (Cambridge, 1996), pp 99–115. Simms, ‘The barefoot Katharine Simms, ‘The barefoot kings: literary image and reality kings’ in later medieval Ireland’ in Erin Boon, A.J. McMullen & Natasha Sumner (eds), Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium 30 (2010) (Cambridge, MA, and London, 2011), 1–21.

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18 Smith, Reg. Fleming Smith, Reg. Sweteman Spenser, A View State papers, Hen. VIII, pt 3

Sughi, Reg. Octaviani

TCD Tyrone Hist. & Soc. UJA Walsh, Beatha Aodha Ruaidh

Walsh, Ir. men of learning Williams, Poems of Gilla Brighde ZCP

Abbreviations Brendan Smith (ed.), The register of Nicholas Fleming, archbishop of Armagh, 1404–1416 (Dublin, 2003). Brendan Smith (ed.), The register of Milo Swetemen, archbishop of Armagh, 1361–1380 (Dublin, 1996). Edmund Spenser, A view of the state of Ireland, ed. Andrew Hadfield and Willy Maley (Oxford, 1997). State papers published under the authority of His Majesty’s Commission, vol. 2, King Henry VIII, part 3, Correspondence between the governments of England and Ireland, 1515–1538 (London, 1834). M.A. Sughi (ed.), Registrum Octaviani, alias Liber Niger: the register of Octavian de Palatio, archbishop of Armagh, 1478–1513 (2 vols, Dublin, IMC, 1999). Trinity College Dublin. Charles Dillon and H.A. Jefferies (eds), Tyrone: history and society (Dublin, 2000). Ulster Journal of Archaeology. Paul Walsh (ed.), Beatha Aodha Ruaidh Uí Dhomhnaill: The life of Aodh Ruadh O Domhnaill transcribed from the Book of Lughaidh Ó Clérigh (2 vols, London, ITS, 1948, 1957, text & trans. vol. 1; notes and additional material vol. 2). Paul Walsh, Irish men of learning, ed. Colm Ó Lochlainn (Dublin, 1947). N.J.A. Williams (ed.), The poems of Giolla Brighde Mac Con Midhe (Dublin, ITS, 1980). Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie

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SECTION ONE

Political History

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Introduction

WHY FOCUS ON ULSTER?

Nowadays, medieval Gaelic Ulster1 is virtually invisible. Physical evidence from the four centuries stretching between the invasion of the Anglo-Norman baron John de Courcy (1177) and the Plantation (1610) is rare, apart from remains of Anglo-Norman castles and sea-ports along the coasts of Antrim and Down. From almost any hill in the province, you may see archaeological monuments dating from before the Normans: neolithic passage graves or standing stones, ruins of early Christian churches, crannógs2 or ringforts.3 You may also see houses and fortifications dating from the seventeenth-century Ulster plantation. Yet medieval castles are few and far between, fewer than in other parts of Ireland,4 and there are no other signs of secular settlements from this period. The flimsy fabric of wattle and daub, of which most dwellings were then made,5 leaves so little trace that some archaeologists considered it impossible to know where to begin digging, though others now regard this view as overly pessimistic.6 For all that it left little physical trace, Gaelic Ulster was once a vigorous, confident society, whose members fought and feasted, sang and prayed. It maintained schools of poets, physicians, historians and lawyers, whose studies were conducted largely in their own Gaelic (Early Modern Irish) language, 1 Throughout the book ‘Ulster’ will be used to signify the area covered by the modern ninecounty province, whereas Ulaid will be reserved for the population group who claimed to have ruled the whole province in prehistory, but who in historic times were confined to the Antrim– Down area. 2 Crannógs, or artificial islands on lakes, were prestige residences typically constructed in the early Christian period in Ireland, although a few date back to the Iron Age and many continued to be occupied in the late medieval and early modern period. See Gabriel Cooney and Eoin Grogan, Irish prehistory: a social perspective (Dublin, 1994), pp 194–5; K.D. O’Conor, The archaeology of medieval rural settlement in Ireland (Dublin, 1998), pp 79–84. 3 The majority of archaeologists would place the construction of earthen or drystone ringforts before c.AD1000. While there is some evidence for continued occupation of individual sites into the high Middle Ages, it is not as common as in the case of crannógs. See O’Conor, Archaeology, pp 89–94. 4 See ‘Distribution map of tower-houses’ in T.B. Barry, ‘Rural settlement in medieval Ireland’ in T.B. Barry (ed.), A history of settlement in Ireland (London and New York, 2000), pp 110–23, at p. 120. 5 P.S. Robinson, ‘Vernacular housing in Ulster in the seventeenth century’, Ulster Folklife, 25 (1979), 1–28; see also Kevin Danaher, ‘Primitive structures used as dwellings, 16th to 19th centuries’, JRSAI, 75 (1945), 204–52. 6 P.J. Duffy, David Edwards and Elizabeth FitzPatrick (eds), Gaelic Ireland: land, lordship and

21

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rather than in the dead Latin of medieval schools elsewhere in Europe. Gaelic Ulster may have left few visible monuments after the Norman invasion, but it has left us numerous literary texts and historical records in the Irish language.7 The medieval province presents something of a puzzle to modern eyes: the Gaelic-speaking inhabitants of western and mid-Ulster were perfectly familiar with Anglo-Irish and Scottish money, and used these coins to pay foreign merchants, but they continued to trade among themselves by bartering livestock, foodstuffs and cloth.8 They visited the towns of their Anglo-Irish neighbours, sometimes to parley, sometimes to drink in their taverns, sometimes on pilgrimage.9 Gaelic pilgrims even travelled abroad to towns such as Compostela in Spain,10 to the ‘Eternal City’ of Rome, and to Nazareth and Jerusalem in the Holy Land,11 but apart from O’Reilly (Ó Raigillig/Ó Ragallaig) of Cavan, the Ulster chieftains founded no towns of their own. Why? To some extent, this failure to urbanize is symptomatic of a society based on subsistence agriculture. Consuming all they produced,12 the Ulstermen had little in the way of surplus with which to trade, or profits to provide capital for construction or industry. Nevertheless the counter-example of the O’Reilly chiefs who, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, licensed a market at Cavan, launched a local coinage and offered free commercial sites in Cavan town to a merchant prepared to finance the paving of one of their streets,13 indicates that the underdevelopment of the Ulster economy in the high Middle Ages was not inevitable, but could be partly attributed to the mentality of the province’s rulers.14 A Catalan knight passing through Ulster in 1397, while on pilgrimage to Loch Derg, reported that the Great O’Neill of Tyrone (Ó Néill of Tír settlement (Dublin, 2001), ‘Introduction’, pp 57–61. 7  See Katharine Simms, Medieval Gaelic sources, Maynooth Research Guides for Irish Local History 13 (Dublin, 2009). 8 P.S. Robinson, The plantation of Ulster: British settlement in an Irish landscape, 1600–1670 (Dublin, 1984; repr. Belfast, 1994), p. 37; Katharine Simms, ‘Guesting and feasting in Gaelic Ireland’, JRSAI, 108 (1978), 67–100: 67; eadem, ‘The concordat between Primate John Mey and Henry O’Neill, 1455’, Archivium Hibernicum, 34 (1976/7), 71–82: 73. 9 AU 3, pp 160–1 (Trim, county Meath); Misc. Ir. Ann., pp 112–13 (Carrickfergus, county Antrim); Early Statutes II, pp 176, 340–7 (Trim and Navan, county Meath); James Graves (ed.), A roll of the proceedings of the king’s council in Ireland (London, 1877), p. 191 (Drogheda, county Louth). 10 Roger Stalley, ‘Sailing to Santiago’ in J. Bradley (ed.), Settlement and society in medieval Ireland (Kilkenny 1988), pp 397–420, at pp 403–4; M.J. Haren, ‘Select documents XXXIX: the religious outlook of a Gaelic lord: a new light on Thomas Óg Maguire’, IHS, 25 (1986), 195–7. 11  Gerard Murphy, ‘Two Irish poems written from the Mediterranean in the thirteenth century’, Éigse, 7 (1953–5), 71–9: 71–4; Brian Ó Cuív, ‘Poem on the infancy of Christ’, Éigse, 15 (1973–4), 93–102. 12 Sir John Davies, ‘Letter to the earl of Salisbury touching the state of Monaghan, Fermanagh and Cavan ... 1607’ in Morley, Ire. under Eliz. & Jas I, pp 369–70. 13 Early Statutes II, pp 90–1, 450–1; Early Statutes IV, pp xliv, 818– 21; Michael Dolley and W.A. Seaby, ‘Le money del O Raylly’, The British Numismatic Journal, 36 (1967), 114–17; Gearóid Mac Niocaill (ed.), ‘Cairt ó Mhaolmhordha Ó Raighilligh, 1558’, Breifne, 1 (1959), 134–5; and see Kenneth Nicholls, ‘Gaelic society and economy in the high Middle Ages’ in NHI 2, pp 397–438, at p. 464. 14 Simms, ‘The barefoot kings’.

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Eógain): ‘spoke to me at length, asking me about the Christian kings, especially the kings of France, Aragon and Castile and about their customs and the way they lived. It appeared to me from his words that they consider their own customs to be better than ours and more advantageous than any others in the whole world’.15 The Spartan simplicity of Ulster’s material culture in the high Middle Ages gives a superficial appearance of continuity with early Christian and even Iron Age Celtic culture, shown for example in the tradition of stone carving in the Lough Erne area.16 However, if such conservative resistance to change resulted from cultural choice rather than economic necessity, the reasons for such a choice deserve further investigation. This book explores the neglected history of Gaelic Ulster between the eleventh and early sixteenth centuries, with the aim of shedding further light on its enigmatic society. The first section, on ‘Political History’, provides the reader with a chronological narrative, showing the influence of internal and external political change on the Ulster chieftains, while also illustrating how this northern province related to the rest of Ireland, either as part of the wider whole or, in some cases, taking a different course. The second section, on ‘Culture and Society’, aims to depict the world of Ulster during the Middle Ages, its culture and ideals, the lifestyle and customs of its people. My account is fully footnoted throughout, to guide interested readers towards more specialist studies on aspects of the area and period covered. Any attempt to recreate the society of medieval Ulster has to be subject to available sources.17 There is a notable lack of information on population numbers, taxation or trade figures, since the chiefs kept no administrative records, and the customs returns for Anglo-Irish ports like Ardglass and Carrickfergus are partly lost, and partly destroyed by the catastrophic fire in the Irish Public Record Office in 1922.18 My own work relies heavily on annals, genealogical tracts and verse eulogies, composed by bardic poets and historians working under the patronage of the Gaelic chiefs. Texts such as these form excellent sources for the ideology and culture of the chieftains’ courts, but are less reliable guides to their factual history, inevitably catering to the biases of 15  Carpenter, ‘The pilgrim from Catalonia’, p. 111. 16  Helen Hickey, Images of stone (Belfast, 1976); Helen Lanigan Wood, ‘Early stone figures in Fermanagh’ in Fermanagh Hist. & Soc., pp 33–56, at pp 33–6. 17 On sources for the history of Gaelic Ireland, see Simms, From kings to warlords, Chap. 1; eadem, Medieval Gaelic sources. 18 Herbert Wood, ‘The Public Records of Ireland before and after 1922’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 13 (1930), 17–49; Philomena Connolly, ‘The destruction of the Public Record Office of Ireland in 1922: disaster and recovery’ in Michael Duchein (ed.), Memory of the world at risk: archives destroyed, archives reconstituted (Munich, New Providence, London and Paris, 1996), pp 135–46; Ronan Keane, ‘A mass of crumbling ruins: the destruction of the Four Courts in June 1922’ in Caroline Costello (ed.), The Four Courts: 200 years: essays to commemorate the bicentenary of the Four Courts (Dublin, 1996), pp 159–68.

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their patrons.19 Records of foreign observers, Irish churchmen and AngloNorman administrators can be more reliable, though again, allowance must be made for bias, ethnic or ecclesiastical. The main focus of my own research has been the high Middle Ages, the period between 1100 and 1500, for which documentation is thinnest. I have glanced back to the archaeology, history and legends of the early Christian period, to identify the cultural background influencing the medieval rulers, and have followed the end of the Geraldine hegemony into the sixteenth century to assess how far the situation was altered by the Tudor project for reform and reconquest, even before the Ulster plantation. In the second section, dealing with culture and society, when discussing institutions that are known to have existed in Ulster, but are more fully described elsewhere in Ireland, I draw on sources from other provinces, but cautiously, because of Ulster’s distinctive regional character, which forms a major part of the following study. I have tried to ensure that in the case of any custom detailed in earlier or later sources I have found at least some hint of its practice in the high Middle Ages, sufficient to warrant an assumption of continuity.

H O W A R C H A I C WA S G A E L I C S O C I E T Y ? K I N G S H I P, L AW A N D T H E LEARNED CLASSES

Looking at medieval Ulster with the benefit of hindsight, it is a fact that both in the twelfth century and in the sixteenth, writers used the argument that Gaelic society was archaic and underdeveloped to justify invasion and colonization by Cambro-Normans, English and Scots as a ‘civilizing’ process, and that these were the same arguments that were applied in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to the invasion and colonization of North America, and subsequently used in colonizing contexts around the world in later centuries.20 The twelfth-century chronicler of the Cambro-Norman invasion, Giraldus Cambrensis or Gerald of Wales, at once a respected scholar and a close kinsman of some of the leading invaders, notoriously alleged:

19 See Katharine Simms, ‘Bardic poetry as a historical source’ in Tom Dunne (ed.), The writer as witness: Historical Studies XVI (Cork, 1987), pp 58–75. 20 Robert Bartlett, Gerald of Wales: 1145–1223 (Oxford, 1982), pp 158–77; idem, Gerald of Wales and the ethnographic imagination (Cambridge, 2013), pp 10–16; R.R. Davies, Domination and conquest: the experience of Ireland, Scotland and Wales, 1100–1300 (Cambridge, 1990.), pp 9–12; D.B. Quinn, The Elizabethans and the Irish (Ithaca, NY, 1966); Nagamitsu Miura, John Locke and the Native Americans: early English liberalism and its colonial reality (Newcastle upon Tyne, 2013), pp 21– 36, 47–74; E.W. Said, Orientalism: Western conceptions of the Orient (London, 1991), pp 14, 206–7, 349.

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[The Irish] are a wild and inhospitable people. They live on beasts only, and live like beasts. They have not progressed at all from the primitive habits of pastoral living. While man usually progresses from the woods to the fields, and from the fields to settlements and communities of citizens, this people despises work on the land, has little use for the money-making of towns, condemns the rights and privileges of citizenship, and desires neither to abandon, nor lose respect for, the life which it has been accustomed to lead in the woods and countryside.21 Even within his own writings, Gerald betrays that his description of the pastoralism of Irish society was an overstatement, when in his chronicle of the actual events of the Norman invasion of Ireland, Expugnatio Hibernica, he remarks: Miles de Cogan … crossed the river Shannon and boldly overran Connacht … But the men of Connacht set fire to the cities and villages (urbibus undiqe et villis) in all parts of the province, and destroyed by burning them all the provisions which they could not conceal in underground vaults, and also burned down the churches … finding the countryside had been stripped of all kinds of food, they returned to the Shannon.22 This passage also, of course, highlights the absurdity of Gerald’s complaint that the invaders found the Irish ‘inhospitable’. A more fundamental misjudgement grew out of Gerald’s assumption, which was a widely accepted orthodoxy inherited from ancient Greece and Rome, that civilization was the hall-mark of a society based on town-life, and that societies who had not developed an urban economy were barbarian also in other ways, illiterate, lawless, anarchic. Owing to its position outside the Roman empire, but inside the Christian church, Ireland’s development did not follow the neat pattern of progress classical authors prescribed. The church schools of early medieval Ireland, together with those of the scarcely more urbanized AngloSaxon England, were in a position to send out learned clerics who played a significant role in educating, if not ‘civilizing’, the Franks and Germans in the seventh to ninth centuries.23 21  O’Meara, Gerald of Wales, pp 101–2. 22  Scott & Martin, Expugnatio, pp 182–3. 23 Ludwig Bieler, Ireland, harbinger of the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1963), and see idem, ‘The Island of Scholars’ in Richard Sharpe (ed.), Ireland and the culture of early medieval Europe (London, 1987), Section VII. More exaggerated claims were made by Henri Daniel-Rops, The miracle of Ireland (Dublin and London, 1960), and Thomas Cahill, How the Irish saved civilization: the untold story of Ireland’s heroic role from the fall of Rome to the rise of medieval Europe (London, 1995).

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Even before the advent of the Christian church to Ireland, a comparison of classical authors’ description of Gaulish society in the first century BC with the later assertions of early medieval Irish writers suggests that like the Celtic Gauls, the early Irish in pagan times accorded high social status and considerable economic support to a professional learned class who may already by the fifth century AD have been divided into druids, poets and judges.24 The privileged status of the druids was rapidly taken over by the Christian clergy, and the druids themselves, having lingered for a century or two on the fringes of Irish society, eventually became obsolete.25 However, Irish poets and judges were able to combine their traditional high status and learning not merely with the new Christian religion, but in many cases with ordination as clerics and/or monks, and to continue to practise their skills inside the church schools using written texts in both Irish and Latin.26 This situation resulted in Ireland’s unique contribution to European culture, its extensive collection of texts on customary law. The laws of early medieval European peoples who lived outside the scope of the Roman empire had many features in common, reflecting these nations’ common derivation from one ancestral group of proto-Indo-Europeans.27 Early Irish law texts, like the ‘barbarian’ law-codes in the rest of western Europe, clearly showed influence from the Roman civil code and the decrees of church synods operating on the body of inherited customary law,28 but whereas the other customary law texts were normally in the form of royal decrees, only the Irish law schools produced detailed descriptive tracts for the education of judges, glossed and commented on in the manner of schools of canon and civil law elsewhere in Europe.29 Just as the civil law code of the sixth-century emperor Justinian continued to be studied, glossed and commented on into the sixteenth century and beyond, so the seventh- to ninth-century Old Irish law tracts continued to be studied by apprentice judges in Ireland into the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and it was once thought that this antiquarianism was a brake on development in Gaelic society, that as the texts of the law tracts were preserved unchanged, 24 McCone, Pagan past, pp 84–6. 25 Ibid., pp 220–3; Richard Sharpe, ‘Hiberno-Latin laicus, Irish láech and the devil’s men’, Ériu, 30 (1979), 75–92. 26 McCone, Pagan past, pp 22–8; T.M. Charles-Edwards, ‘The context and uses of literacy in early Christian Ireland’ in Huw Pryce (ed.), Literacy in medieval Celtic societies (Cambridge, 1998), pp 62–82; Donnchadh Ó Corráin, ‘Nationality and kingship in pre-Norman Ireland’ in T.W. Moody (ed.), Historical Studies XI: nationality and the pursuit of national independence (Belfast, 1978), pp 1–35, at pp 14–16. 27 See D.A. Binchy, Celtic and Anglo-Saxon kingship (Oxford, 1970), pp 3–7. 28 Donnchadh Ó Corráin, Liam Breatnach and Aidan Breen, ‘The laws of the Irish’, Peritia, 3 (1984), 382–438; Katherine Fischer Drew, Law and society in early medieval Europe: studies in legal history (London, 1988); P.D. King, Law and society in the Visigothic kingdom (Cambridge, 1972); Bart Jaski, ‘Marriage laws in Ireland and on the Continent in the early Middle Ages’ in Christine Meek and Katharine Simms (eds), ‘The fragility of her sex’?: medieval Irishwomen in their European context (Dublin, 1996), pp 16–42. 29 Kelly, Early Irish

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Introduction

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so  the social institutions remained unchanging also.30 However, the texts in  Justinian’s Code could be made to justify all manner of subsequent developments in European society,31 and similarly the commentators on the Old Irish or ‘Brehon’ law tracts were perfectly capable of adapting the basic principles of the law to changing circumstances.32 Besides its continued use of Old Irish law tracts containing a scholarly version of customary law, another ‘archaic’ feature of Gaelic society up to the sixteenth century was the small scale of its kingdoms. Ireland’s multitude of minor local kings was quite a normal political system in fifth- and sixth-century Europe, among the early Anglo-Saxons, for example, or the Franks before the rise of King Clovis.33 Even in Ireland the system slowly evolved as time went by, although the local petty kingdom, or túath, long retained its identity as the basic political unit, a community of landowning families under a single ruler, occupying a territory so confined that all freeholders within its borders could easily travel in one day from their homes to hold council or muster for war at their traditional field or hill of assembly. The sixteenth-century poet Edmund Spenser, who was also a plantation-owner in Munster, was interested to observe parallels between these gatherings of local communities (dála, ‘meetings’, or óenaig, loosely rendered ‘fairs’) and what he considered Anglo-Saxon folk-moots must have been like.34 The clear implication is that he considered Gaelic political organization archaic. Although the corpus of the Old Irish law tracts uniformly refers to the túath as the primary political unit in Irish society, when we turn to actual territorial divisions in Ireland, we find túath is an elastic term. In the former O’Brien kingdom of Túadmuman, ‘Thomond’ or north Munster (approximately counties Clare, Limerick and Tipperary), the word túath became applied to a small fiscal or administrative unit, sometimes identical with a later parish,35 while the basic law, pp 225–41; Breatnach, Companion, pp 92–9. 30 See, for example, W.L. Warren, ‘The interpretation of twelfth-century Irish history’ in J.C. Beckett (ed.), Historical Studies 7 (London, 1969), pp 1–19, at p. 6; G.A. Hayes-McCoy, ‘Gaelic society in Ireland in the late sixteenth century’ in G.A. Hayes-McCoy (ed.), Historical Studies 4 (London, 1963), pp 45– 61. 31 ‘For debates about sovereignty the Digest could supply proponents of autocracy with the brocard that the emperor was not bound by statutes (princeps legibus solutus est, D. 1.3.31) and republicans with the proposition that he should profess himself to be subject to them (digna vox maiestate regnantis legibus alligatum se principi profiteri, c.1.14.4)’, David Johnston, Roman law in context (Cambridge, 1999), p. 135. 32 Katharine Simms, ‘The contents of later commentaries on the Brehon law tracts’, Ériu, 49 (1998), 23–40. 33 J.M. Wallace-Hadrill, Early Germanic kingship in England and on the Continent (Oxford, 1971), pp 16–21; W.A. Chaney, The cult of kingship in Anglo-Saxon England (Manchester, 1970), pp 7–17; Guy Halsall, Barbarian migrations and the Roman West, 376–568 (Cambridge, 2007), pp 121, 125; Ian Wood, ‘Kings, kingdoms and consent’ in P.H. Sawyer and I.N. Wood (eds), Early medieval kingship (Leeds, 1977), pp 9–10, 19–20, 28. 34 Spenser, A View, p. 79. On óenaig see below, Chap. 13. 35 In the ‘Office of Thomond’ (1585) out of nine baronies in all, the barony of ‘Tullagh Naspill’ contains 8 territories whose names begin with ‘toe’ or ‘togh’ (=túath), the

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Gaelic Ulster in the Middle Ages

political unit was known as a tricha-cét or ‘cantred’,36 possibly reflecting an administrative reorganization by the modernizing O’Brien high-kings. In Ulster the túatha were larger, and a number of the petty kingdoms there have since bequeathed their names to ‘baronies’, administrative subdivisions of the counties created during the Tudor and Stuart re-conquest. Some of the clearest examples include the kingdoms of Tellach Echach, and Tellach Donnchada, represented by the baronies of Tullyhaw and Tullyhunco in county Cavan; Dartraige Coininnse and Tricha-Cét Airgiall, the forerunners of the baronies of Dartree and Trough in Monaghan; and Fir Luirg, represented by the barony of Lurg in Fermanagh. In this province the dimensions of named tuatha, local petty kingdoms or lordships, may relate to the typical tuath of the Old Irish law tracts. There is some difference of opinion among historical geographers as to how helpful it is to work backwards from modern baronies37 in seeking to locate the political boundaries of pre-plantation Ulster. Nevertheless, a map of modern barony boundaries can be helpful to establish a sense of the physical scale of the túatha and cantreds, the basic political units that formed the building blocks of government in medieval Ulster. The Maguire (Mág Uidir) kings of Fir Manach, for example, were described as ruling the ‘Seven Túatha of Fir Manach’, and the present county of Fermanagh is reckoned to contain seven-and-a-half baronies.38 (See Fig. 1) barony of ‘Dengenivegyn’ has 7, the barony of ‘Dorcomran’ or ‘Corcumroe’ has 4, the barony of ‘Borren’ has 2, and the barony of ‘Tullagh Ida’ has 4. This contrasts with the ‘Office of Clanrickard and Ireconnaught’ which shows just three further territorial sub-divisions with a ‘túath’ element in the border area of south Galway, that is, two in the barony of Clare and one in the barony of Leitrim, but none at all in West or Iar-Connacht, where the most frequent designation for territorial sub-divisions of a similar size is ‘baile’ (‘town’ or ‘townland’), A.M. Freeman (ed.), The Compossicion Booke of Conought (Dublin, 1936), pp 7–10, 47–53. See also James Frost, The history and topography of the county of Clare (Dublin, 1893), pp 95, 194; Charles Plummer (ed.), ‘The Miracles of Senan’, ZCP, 11:1 (1914), 1–35: 8–9. On varying sizes of tuatha see also Paul MacCotter, Medieval Ireland: territorial, political and economic divisions (Dublin, 2008), p. 48. 36 C.A. Empey, ‘The settlement of the kingdom of Limerick’ in Lydon (ed.), Eng. & Ire., pp 1–25, at pp 2–4; James Hogan, ‘The trícha cét and related land-measures’, PRIA, 38C (1929), 148–235; MacCotter, Medieval Ireland, passim. 37 Thom Kerr and Finbar McCormick, ‘Early secular settlement in county Fermanagh’ in Fermanagh Hist. & Soc., pp 57–75, at pp 64–5. Recent detailed investigations (Kay Muhr, ‘Territories, people and place-names in county Armagh’ in Armagh Hist. & Soc., pp 295–331; Domhnall Mac Giolla Easpaig, ‘Placenames and early settlement in county Donegal’ in Donegal Hist. & Soc., pp 149–82; Brian Lacey, ‘County Derry in the early historic period’ in Derry Hist. & Soc., pp 115–48; Ailbhe MacShamhráin, ‘The making of Tír nÉogain: Cenél nÉogain and the Airgialla from the sixth to the eleventh centuries’ in Tyrone Hist. & Soc., pp 55–84) have served to demonstrate not only that, in the words of Séamus Ó Ceallaigh, ‘these English baronies were, in the main, arbitrary divisions, being each, usually, a conglomeration of old Irish territories’ (Ó Ceallaigh, Gleanings, p. 48) but also that the earlier native Irish units themselves fluctuated down the years, not only as regards the details of their boundaries, but in the identity of the dynasties which ruled over them and their political affiliations. 38 Kerr

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Introduction

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Fig. 1 Modern barony boundaries in the north of Ireland.

Long before the era of the Ulster plantation, many of these little túatha were permanently grouped into larger over-kingdoms (like Fir Manach), and their local rulers lost the title of rí or ‘king’ (in Latin documents rex or sometimes regulus, ‘petty king’), being known henceforward as toísech, ‘leader’ or ‘chieftain’ (in Latin dux).39 However, as late as the twelfth to the early fifteenth centuries, the Irish title rí or Latin rex, ‘king’, was still the normal term for the overlords who ruled clusters of four to seven túatha forming a larger area – what had been termed in the law tracts a mórthúath (‘a great-túath’), approximating to the modern Irish counties in scale, though not in the detail of their boundaries. Typically, these territories were composed of a stable inner group of túatha that operated as a