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The collapse of the Gaelic world, 1450–1650

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Steven G. Ellis
Steven G. Ellis*
Affiliation:
Department of History, National University of Ireland, Galway (Historisches Institut, Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen)
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Extract

This article offers some reflections on the processes of nation-making and state formation as they affected the oldest ethnic and cultural grouping in the British Isles, that of the Gaedhil, roughly in the period 1450–1650, and examines the ways in which these processes have been portrayed by historians. At the present day the Gaelic language remains the normal medium of communication in small areas of western Ireland and western Scotland; and in respect of political developments in both Scotland and Ireland, Gaelic customs and culture have exercised a much more substantial influence. Despite these similarities, there remain significant differences between British and Irish historians in the ways in which the Gaelic contribution to nation-making and state formation have been presented.

A basic distinction advanced by historians both of Ireland and Scotland has been one between the Gaelic peoples inhabiting Ireland and those resident in Scotland. It can be argued that this may reflect the relative importance of the Gaelic contribution to the making of two separate kingdoms, and ultimately two separate states; but it also means that the wider process of interaction and assimilation between Gaedhil and Gaill is split into separate Irish and Scottish experiences. In theory, these two Gaelic experiences should provide material for a comparative study of a particularly illuminating kind, but in practice other historiographical influences have generally militated against this kind of comparative history. One such is the more marginal position of Gaelic studies within Scottish historiography than is the case in Ireland. Considering that half of Scotland was still Gaelic-speaking in 1700, for instance, it is remarkable how few Scottish historians seem able to make use of Gaelic sources. Another is the practice of establishing separate departments of history in the universities for the teaching of national history. This has meant, for instance, that students are usually taught that portion of the Gaedhil/Gaill interaction process which relates to the ‘nation’ by specialist teachers of national history. Yet, since these national surveys reflect modern nations and modern national boundaries, students are trained to study Irishmen and Scots in the making rather than to consider how the inhabitants of late medieval Gaeldom might have viewed developments in the wider Gaelic world. Arguably, behind these approaches lies the influence of the modern nation-state. Scotland and Northern Ireland remain part of a multi-national British state which is dominated by England.

Type
Research Article
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 31 , Issue 124 , November 1999 , pp. 449 - 469
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 1999

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References

1 See especially Bradshaw, Brendan, ‘Native reaction to the Westward Enterprise: a case study in Gaelic ideology’ in Andrews, K. R., Canny, N. P., and Hair, P. E. H. (eds), The Westward Enterprise: English activities in Ireland, the Atlantic and America, 1480–1650 (Liverpool, 1978), pp 66–80Google Scholar; Dunne, T. J., ‘The Gaelic response to conquest and colonisation: the evidence of the poetry’ in Studia Hib., xx (1980), pp 7–30Google Scholar; Canny, N. P., ‘The formation of the Irish mind: religion, politics and Gaelic Irish literature, 1580–1750’ in Past & Present, no. 95 (May 1982), pp 91-116CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Buachalla, Breandán Ó, ‘Na Stíobhartaigh agus an t-aos léinn: Cing Séamas’ in R.I.A. Proc, lxxxiii (1983), sect. C, pp 81–134Google Scholar; Cunningham, Bernadette, ‘Native culture and political change in Ireland, 1580–1640’ in Brady, Ciaran and Gillespie, Raymond (eds), Natives and newcomers: essays on the making of Irish colonial society, 1534–1641 (Dublin, 1986), pp 148–70Google Scholar; Simms, Katharine, From kings to warlords: the changing political structure of Gaelic Ireland in the later middle ages (Woodbridge, 1987)Google Scholar; Riordan, Michelle O, The Gaelic mind and the collapse of the Gaelic world (Cork, 1990)Google Scholar; Buachalla, Breandán Ó, ‘Poetry and politics in early modern Ireland’ in Eighteenth-Century Ireland, vii (1992), pp 149-75Google Scholar; Leerssen, Joep, The Contention of the Bards (Iomarbhágh na bhFileadh) and its place in Irish political and literary history (London, 1994)Google Scholar; Buachalla, Breandán Ó, Aisling ghéar: na Stíobhartaigh agus an t-aos léinn, 1603–1788 (Dublin, 1996).Google Scholar

2 See especially Alexander Grant, ‘Scotland’s “Celtic fringe” in the late middle ages: the Macdonald lords of the Isles and the kingdom of Scotland’ in Davies, R. R. (ed.), The British Isles, 1100–1500: comparisons, contrasts and connections (Edinburgh, 1988), pp 118-41Google Scholar; Bannerman, J. M. W., ‘The lordship of the Isles’ in Brown, J. M. (ed.), Scottish society in the fifteenth century (London, 1977), pp 209-40Google Scholar; Steer, K. A. and Bannerman, J.M.W., Late medieval monumental sculpture in the west Highlands (Edinburgh, 1977).Google Scholar

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4 See, for instance, Cosgrove, Art, Late medieval Ireland, 1370–1541 (Dublin, 1981)Google Scholar, ch. 5; Bradshaw, Brendan, The Irish constitutional revolution of the sixteenth century (Cambridge, 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ch. 1.

5 Colley, Linda, Britons: forging the nation, 1707–1837 (New Haven, 1992), pp 14–15Google Scholar.

6 The Hamilton papers: letters and papers illustrating the political relations of England and Scotland in the XVIth century, ed. Bain, Joseph, i: 1532-43 (Edinburgh, 1890), pp lxxi–lxxiiiGoogle Scholar. For other references to ‘Irish’ as applied to the Gaedhil in Scotland, and to ‘Ireland’ as applied to the Scottish Highlands, see Hayes-McCoy, G. A., Scots mercenary forces in Ireland (1565-1603) (Dublin, 1937), pp 4–5Google Scholar.

7 Actspari, Scot., ii, 11.

8 L. & P. Hen. VIII, xix (ii), no. 795.

9 Quoted in Ellis, S.G., Ireland in the age of the Tudors, 1447–1603: English expansion and the end of Gaelic rule (London, 1998), p. 278Google Scholar. In accordance with modern Irish historiographical convention, the forms ‘Randal’ and ‘MacDonnell’ are used in this article to denote members of the branch of Clan Donald which eventually settled in north County Antrim, though it may be observed that usage of this kind has helped to sustain the false distinctions contended against here.

10 A recent, sensitive discussion of many of the problems raised by this evidence is Leerssen, Contention of the Bards, esp. pp 5–16.

11 A.L.C., i, 162, 168; ii, 176, 290, 364.

12 Watson, W. J. (ed.), Scottish verse from the Book of the Dean of Lismore (Edinburgh, 1937), esp. pp vii–xivGoogle Scholar.

13 The sovereignty of the Gaedhil to Clann Colla / It is right to proclaim it / They were again in the same battalions, / The heroes of Fodla / The sovereignty of Ireland and Scotland of the sunny lands / Was had by the bloody sharp-bladed tribes / The fighting champions. / The sovereignty of the entire tribes was obtained / By John of Islay’ (‘The Book of Clanranald’ in Cameron, Alexander, Reliquiae Celticae: texts, papers, and studies in Gaelic literature and philosophy, ed. MacBain, Alexander and Kennedy, John (2 vols, Inverness, 1892-4), ii, 208–10Google Scholar). The author of the poem is identified as one O’Henna (‘O henna do rinne so deoin a hile’), and in a later transliteration of the text into Scots Gaelic the editors describe him as ‘an Irish bard’ (A. J., and MacDonald, A. M. (eds), The MacDonald collection of Gaelic poetry (Inverness, 1911), pp vii, 6)Google Scholar.

14 ’Book of Clanranald’, p. 260. Notwithstanding this evidence, speculation concerning ‘the possibility of political links between [Ireland and Gaelic Scotland] under an “ard rí na nGael” ‘ has simply been dismissed: see Cosgrove, Art, ‘The writing of Irish medieval history’ in I.H.S., xxvii, no. 106 (Nov. 1990), p. 104Google Scholar.

15 ‘Pride of the Gaedhil; I The champion of Ulster /... The sun of the Gaedhil, I the countenance of O’Colla; / By the banks of the Bann, / quick are his ships; / An angry hound / that checks plunders, / A modest heart, / the tree of Banbha / The land with fire-brands / is red after him; / His prime purpose / is to come to Tara / Putting Meath in commotion, / the leopard of Islay’ (‘Book of Clanranald’, p. 264).

16 ‘The best-beloved of Conn’s dwelling / Sorley, son of MacDonnell / The expected mate from Monadh’s plain / He for whom Ireland is waiting’ (The bardic poems of Tadhg Dall Ó Huiginn (1550-91) (2 vols, London, 1922-6), i, 173–9; ii, 115–19Google Scholar).

17 ‘The path of the three who came from the east / To conquer Fódla from Scotland / The stars of the race of Conn will come / In the same way to us’ (McKenna, Lambert (ed.), Aithdioghluim dána (2 vols, Dublin, 1939-40), i, 114–18; ii, 69–71Google Scholar). Dr Katharine Simms has pointed out to me that the poet had employed virtually the same couplet (‘Do-ni réaida cinidh Cuinn / sa slighidh cheadna chuguinn’) a generation earlier to compare Niall Óg O’Neill with the Red Branch Knights (ibid., poem no. 16), and he also addresses James Butler, fourth earl of Ormond, as the rightful ruler of Ireland (ibid., no. 36). This chameleon-like tendency in the professional poets supports her argument that the political content of each poem reflects the particular patron’s own aspirations: see Simms, Katharine, ‘Bardic poetry as a historical source’ in Dunne, Tom (ed.), The writer as witness: literature as historical evidence (Cork, 1987), pp 58–75Google Scholar.

18 For example, Watson (ed.), Scottish verse, pp 6–12. Of course, to concentrate on the Scottish poetry is to ignore the large proportion of verse from Irish-based poets of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in the Book of the Dean of Lismore, which offer a different perspective on the direction of cultural exchange: see Quiggin, E. C., Poems from the Book of the Dean of Lismore, ed. Fraser, J. (Cambridge, 1937).Google Scholar

19 ‘Send your summons east and west / For the Gaedhil from the field of Leinster / Drive the foreigners westward over the high sea / So that Scotland be not divided’ (Watson (ed.), Scottish verse, pp 158–64).

20 The most sweeping presentations of this 1970s revisionism are the studies by Dr Brendan Bradshaw. See especially his ‘Manus “the Magnificent”: O’Donnell as Renaissance prince’ in Cosgrove, Art and McCartney, Donal (eds), Studies in Irish history presented to R. Dudley Edwards (Dublin, 1979), pp 15–36Google Scholar; ‘Native reaction to the Westward Enterprise’ in Andrews, , Canny & Hair, (eds), The Westward Enterprise, pp 65–80Google Scholar. (Cf. Walsh, Katherine, ‘In the wake of Reformation and Counter-Reformation: Ireland’s belated reception of Renaissance humanism?’ in Harrassowitz, Otto (ed.), Die Renaissance im Blick der Nationen Europas (Wiesbaden, 1993), pp 33–50Google Scholar.) More balanced assessments of developments include Nicholls, K.W., Gaelic and gaelicised Ireland in the middle ages (Dublin, 1972)Google Scholar; Simms, From kings to warlords; O’Dowd, Mary, ‘Gaelic society and economy’ in Brady, & Gillespie, (eds), Natives & newcomers, pp 120-47Google Scholar.

21 For instance, Guy, John, Tudor England (Oxford, 1988)Google Scholar; Williams, Penry, The later Tudors: England, 1547–1603 (Oxford, 1995)Google Scholar; Ellis, Ireland in the age of the Tudors, passim; and for developments in Gaelic weaponry, ibid., pp 28–9.

22 See Ellis, S.G., Tudor frontiers and noble power: the making of the British state (Oxford, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ch. 4.

23 Hayes-McCoy, Scots mercenary forces in Ireland, p. ix; Nicholls, Gaelic and gaelicised Ireland, p. 71.

24 Harris, Walter (ed.), Hibernica: or some ancient pieces relating to Ireland (Dublin, 1747), p. 44Google Scholar.

25 Price, Liam, ‘Armed forces of Irish chiefs in the early sixteenth century’ in R.S.A.I. Jn., lxii (1932), pp 202-7Google Scholar. I am grateful to Kenneth Nicholls of University College Cork for help with the dating of this document.

26 Ibid., pp 202,206.

27 Ibid. My calculations differ slightly from the totals given.

28 Price, ‘Armed forces of Irish chiefs’, p. 207.

29 Cf. Williams, Penry, The Tudor regime (Oxford, 1979)Google Scholar, chs 3–4.

30 See, for instance, New hist. Ire., ii, 397.

31 See White, D. G., ‘Henry VIII’s Irish kerne in France and Scotland, 1544–5’ in Irish Sword, iii (1957-8), pp 213-25Google Scholar; Ellis, S. G., ‘Representations of the past in Ireland: whose past and whose present?’ in I.H.S., xxvii, no. 108 (Nov. 1991), pp 289–308Google Scholar.

32 The numbers of horsemen available to Leinster chiefs as estimated by the ‘description’ broadly agree with Chief Baron Finglas’s estimate made a few years earlier: Harris (ed.), Hibernica, p. 44.

33 P.R.O., E 101/549/13. The roll may be missing a few membranes, but the totals are consistent with those for Elizabeth’s reign. In 1563 Cumberland had the lowest level of population of any shire in England: c. 46, 000 inhabitants, or 30 per square mile. See also Ellis, S.G., The Pale and the far north: government and society in two early Tudor borderlands (Galway, 1988), pp 22–3Google Scholar; Nicolson, Joseph and Burn, Richard, The history and antiquities of the counties of Westmorland and Cumberland (2 vols, London, 1777), i, p. xciGoogle Scholar.

34 Newton, Robert, ‘The decay of the borders: Tudor Northumberland in transition’ in Chalklin, C.W. and Havinden, M. A. (eds), Rural change and urban growth, 1500–1800 (London, 1974), pp 8–9Google Scholar,13.

35 Quoted in Canny, N.P., The formation of the Old English elite in Ireland (Dublin, 1975), p. 9Google Scholar.

36 P.R.O., SP1/48, ff 117–34v (L. & P. Hen. VIII, iv (ii), no. 4336 (2)); John Hodgson, A history of Northumberland (3 pts in 7 vols, Newcastle, 1820–25), pt 2, vol. iii, pp 208–9,243.

37 S.P Hen. VIII, ii, 146.

38 B.L., Cott. MS Calig. B I, f. 141rv (L. & P. Hen. VIII, xv, no. 570).

39 Ellis, S. G., ‘A border baron and the Tudor state: the rise and fall of Lord Dacre of the north’ in Hist. Jn., xxxv (1992), pp 253-77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 See Ellis, Tudor frontiers and noble power, esp. ch. 4; idem, Reform and revival: English government in Ireland, 1470–1534 (London, 1986)Google Scholar, passim; idem, Ireland in the age of the Tudors, esp. chs 3–6.

41 P.R.O., C 113/236.

42 S.P.Hen.VIII, n, 16.

43 The view of Chief Baron Finglas, in Harris (ed.), Hibernica, p. 44.

44 Mackenzie, John, ‘Treaty between Argyll and O’Donnell’ in Scottish Gaelic Studies, vii (1953), p. 98Google Scholar.

45 Bower, Walter, Scotichronicon, ed. Watt, D. E. R., viii (Edinburgh, 1987), 74-6Google Scholar. See also Grant, , ‘Scotland’s “Celtic fringe”, pp 131-2Google Scholar.

46 Munro, Jean and Munro, R. W. (eds), Acts of the lords of the Isles, 1336–1493 (Edinburgh, 1986), p. xliGoogle Scholar; Hill, J.M., Fire and sword: Sorley Boy MacDonnell and the rise of Clan Ian Mór, 1538–90 (London, 1993), p. 30Google Scholar.

47 Munro & Munro (eds), Acts of the lords of the Isles.

48 ‘Raghnall mac Eoin was high steward of the Isles when his father was advanced in years and ruling over them. On the death of his father, he summoned the nobles of the Isles and his brethren to the one place, and he gave the rod of lordship to his brother at Cill Donan in Eigg, and he was proclaimed MacDonald and Donald of Islay against the view of the men of the Isles’ (‘Book of Clanranald’, p. 160).

49 Price, ‘Armed forces of Irish chiefs’, pp 202–7.

50 ’Appointment of a fleet against Sweeney’s castle, / Welcome is the adventure in Inis Fail, / Horsemen travelling the waves / Brown banks are being cleaned for them. / Tall men are arraying the ships / Which hold their course swiftly / On the sea’s bare surface. / No hand without a swift javelin / In our shields shining and comely’ (Watson (ed.), Scottish verse, p. 6). See also, ‘Urnaigh mara Chlann Raghnuill’ (The poem of Clanranald on going to sea) in MacDonald, & MacDonald, (eds), MacDonald collection of Gaelic poetry, pp viii, 25.Google Scholar

51 Munro, & Munro, (eds), Acts of the lords of the Isles, pp lxxi, 318–20Google Scholar.

52 Foirm na n-Urrnuidheadh: John Carswell’s Gaelic translation of the Book of Common Order, ed. Thomson, R.L. (Edinburgh, 1970), pp 110-17Google Scholar.

53 This seems to be the implication of such innovations as the compilation of the Book of the Dean of Lismore in the ordinary Scots hand and spelling of the period (perhaps in a bid to make the Gaelic language more intelligible to English-speaking Lowlanders?); the printing of Bishop Carswell’s Gaelic translation of the Book of Common Order, and in Roman rather than Gaelic type; and the early development in Scotland of a brand of vernacular poetry with a strong political content which broke with bardic conventions. On the orthography of the Dean’s Book see Quiggin, Poems from the Book of the Dean of Lismore; and see ‘The Fernaig Manuscript’ in Cameron, , Reliquiae Celticae, ii, 1–137Google Scholar; Ross, Neil (ed.), Heroic poetry from the Book of the Dean of Lismore (Edinburgh, 1939), p. xvGoogle Scholar, for another seventeenth-century example. For Scottish vernacular poetry see Macinnes, Allan, ‘Scottish Gaeldom, 1638–1651: the vernacular response to the Covenanting dynamic’ in Dwyer, John, Mason, R. A. and Murdoch, Alexander (eds), New perspectives on the politics and culture of early modern Scotland (Edinburgh, 1988), pp 59–94Google Scholar, esp. pp 60–69.

54 Munro, & Munro, (eds), Acts of the lords of the Isles, p. xliGoogle Scholar; Hill, Fire and sword, p. 30.

55 Hill, Fire and sword, pp 73–4; Dawson, Jane, ‘The fifth earl of Argyle, Gaelic lordship and political power in sixteenth-century Scotland’ in Scot. Hist. Rev., lxvii (1988), pp 1–27Google Scholar; eadem, , ‘William Cecil and the British dimension of early Elizabethan foreign policy’ in History, lxxiv (1989), pp 196–216Google Scholar.

56 See especially Ohlmeyer, J.H., Civil war and Restoration in the three Stuart kingdoms: the career of Randal MacDonnell, marquis of Antrim, 1609–1683 (Cambridge, 1993)Google Scholar, chs 1–4.

57 Morgan, Hiram, Tyrone’s rebellion: the outbreak of the Nine Years War in Tudor Ireland (London, 1993Google Scholar),passim.

58 See below, pp 468–9.

59 ‘We suffer a greater want than any other, that we have not the Holy Bible printed in Gaelic, as it has been printed in Latin and English ... and likewise that the history of our ancestors has never been printed, although a certain amount of the history of the Gaedhil of Scotland and Ireland has been written in manuscripts’ (Foirm na n-Urrnuidheadh, ed. Thomson, pp 10–11).

60 Ibid.

61 After that, travel over each wave / To the land of Ireland, of the liberal bounds; / Although the friars hate you, / Move westward within their sight’ (ibid., p. 13).

62 See especially Dawson, Jane, ‘Calvinism and the Gaidhealtachd in Scotland’ in Pettegree, Andrew, Duke, Alastair and Lewis, Gillian (eds), Calvinism in Europe, 1540–1620 (Cambridge, 1994), pp 231–53Google Scholar; Kirk, James, Patterns of reform: continuity and change in the Reformation kirk (Edinburgh, 1989)Google Scholar, ch. 12.

63 ‘Alas, Scotland does not believe, as she ought / That the blood of the High King / Enters into the host / But I cling to the law he made’ (McKenna, (ed.), Aithdioghluim dána, i, 204–7Google Scholar; ii, 120–22).

64 Dawson, ‘Calvinism & the Gaidhealtachd’, pp 248–9; Giblin, Cathaldus (ed.), Irish Franciscan mission to Scotland, 1619–1646: documents from the Roman Archives (Dublin, 1964)Google Scholar.

65 New hist. Ire., iii, 541; O’Rahilly, T. F., ‘A poem by Piaras Feiritéar’ in Ériu, xiii (1942), pp 113–18Google Scholar.

66 New hist. Ire., ix, 409.

67 Ó Buachalla, ‘Poetry & politics in early modern Ireland’, pp 160–61; Craith, Mícheál Mac, ‘The Gaelic reaction to the Reformation’ in Ellis, S. G. and Barber, Sarah (eds), Conquest and union: fashioning a British state, 1485–1725 (London, 1995), pp 146–8Google Scholar. For Scotland see below, p. 467.

68 Mac Craith, ‘Gaelic reaction to the Reformation’, pp 139–61.

69 ‘Against foreigners, I tell you, / Before they have seized our native land. / Let us not yield up our native land. / Let us make terrible war / After the manner of the Gaedhil of Banbha. / Let us watch over our fatherland’ (Watson (ed.), Scottish verse, p. 158).

70 See especially Perceval-Maxwell, Michael, The outbreak of the Irish rebellion of 1641 (Dublin, 1994)Google Scholar; Ohlmeyer, J. H. (ed.), Ireland from independence to occupation, 1641–1660 (Cambridge, 1995)Google Scholar; Ó Buachalla, Aisling ghéar, ch. 2.

71 See, in general, Nicholls, Gaelic and gaelicised Ireland, passim.

72 ‘Albeit it is easy for you to learn of the present troubles from the common language in which they are writing in the kingdom. But this I remember, that the Scots were the soonest to begin this war of the three kingdoms, and not the English or Irish. For, after the making of the Covenant or league against the king and the English in order to remove the bishops and replace them with presbyteries, they sent for all the Scottish officers in the other kingdoms overseas and they made comman-der-in-chief Alexander Leslie, an old soldier who had long experience of war abroad’ (‘Book of Clanranald’, p. 176). Is this passage the first description in Gaelic of the British Civil Wars as ‘the war of the three kingdoms’?

73 Stevenson, David, Alasdair MacColla and the Highland problem in the seventeenth century (Edinburgh, 1980).Google Scholar

74 ‘The victories of those two battles raised the courage and spirit of the Gaedhil thereafter’ (‘Book of Clanranald’, p. 178).

75 Morgan, Hiram, ‘Hugh O’Neill and the Nine Years War in Tudor Ireland’ in Hist. Jn., xxxvi (1993), pp 1–17Google Scholar.

76 On these developments see Bradshaw, Irish constitutional revolution, pt III, which construes the evidence rather differently.

77 Ellis, ‘Crown, community & government in the English territories’, pp 187–204; idem, ‘Writing Irish history: revisionism, colonialism, and the British Isles’ in Irish Review, xix (1996), pp 1–21.

78 Keating, Geoffrey, Foras feasa ar Éirinn: the history of Ireland, ed. Comyn, David and Dinneen, P. S. (4 vols, London, 1902-14Google Scholar).

79 This paper has benefited considerably from comments and suggestions of other historians on an earlier draft. The views expressed here are my own, but I should particularly like to thank Dr Ciaran Brady, Professor Nicholas Canny, Mr Robert Hunter, Professor Allan Macinnes, Dr Jane Ohlmeyer and Dr Katharine Simms for their help and advice.