"Here," says Mac Firbis, "is the distinction which the profound historians draw between the three different races which are in Erin. Every one who is white of skin, brown of hair, bold, honourable, daring, prosperous, bountiful in the bestowal of property wealth and rings, and who is not afraid of battle or combats, they are the descendants of the sons of Milesius in Erin.
"Every one who is fair-haired, vengeful, large, and every plunderer, every musical person, the professors of musical and entertaining performances, who are adepts in all druidical and magical arts, they are the descendants of the Tuatha De Danann in Erin.[12]
"Every one who is black-haired, who is a tattler, guileful, tale-telling, noisy, contemptible, every wretched, mean, strolling, unsteady, harsh, and inhospitable person, every slave, every mean thief, every churl, every one who loves not to listen to music and entertainment, the disturbers of every council and every assembly, and the promoters of discord among people, these are of the descendants of the Firbolg, of the Gailiuns,[13] of Liogairné, and of the Fir Domhnann in Erin. But, however, the descendants of the Firbolg are the most numerous of all these.
"This is taken from an old book. And, indeed, that it is possible to identify a race by their personal appearance and dispositions I do not take upon myself positively to say, for it may have been true in the ancient times, until the race became repeatedly intermixed. For we daily see even in our own time, and we often hear it from our old men, that there is a similitude of people, a similitude of form, character, and names in some families of Erin compared with others."
Mac Firbis's book, which is an enlarged continuation down to the year 1650 or so, of the genealogical trees contained in the Books of Leinster, Ballymote, and Lecan, is as O'Curry remarks, perhaps the greatest national genealogical compilation in the world, and it is sad to think that almost every tribe and family of the many thousands mentioned in this great work has either been utterly rooted out and exterminated, or else been dispersed to the four winds of heaven, and the entire genealogical system and tribal polity, kept with such care for fifteen hundred years, has disappeared off the face of the earth with the men who kept it.
Lughaidh [Lewy] O'Clery, the great northern poet, ollamh and historian of the O'Donnells, who, in the "Contention of the Bards" opposed Mac Dairé, lived somewhat earlier than Keating and Mac Firbis. He has left behind him, written in the difficult archaic Irish of the professional ollamhs, an interesting life of Red Hugh O'Donnell, giving the history of the time from 1586 to 1602,[14] with a full account of his hero's birth, his treacherous capture and confinement in Dublin Castle, his escape and recapture, his second escape, and the hardships he underwent in returning to his people in Donegal, his inauguration as the O'Donnell, and his "crowded hour of glorious life," until his death at Simancas in 1608, poisoned as we now know almost to a certainty, from the publication of the State Papers, by an emissary of Mountjoy the Lord Deputy, and Carew the President of Munster. Of this, however, Lughaidh O'Clery had no suspicion, he only tells of the sudden and unexpected sickness which overtook O'Donnell and killed him after sixteen days, to the utter ruin of the cause of Ireland. Here is his account, which I give as a specimen of his style, of O'Donnell's preparations before the Battle of the Curlews:
"The occupation of O'Donnell's forces during the time that he was in this monastery was exercising themselves and preparing for the fight and for the encounter which they were called to engage in. They were cleaning and getting ready their guns, and drying and exposing to the sun their grain powder, and filling their pouches, and casting their leaden bullets and heavy spherical balls, sharpening their strong-handled spears and their war-pikes, polishing their long broadswords and their bright-shining axes, and preparing their arms and armour and implements of war."
O'Donnell's address to his soldiers is quite differently recorded from the way in which O'Sullivan Beare relates it; it is much less ornate and eloquent, but is probably far more nearly correct, for Lughaidh O'Clery may very well have heard it delivered himself, and it had not passed with him through the disfiguring medium of the Latin language.
"We, though a small number," said O'Donnell, "are on the side of the right as it seems to us, and the English whose number is large are on the side of robbery, in order to rob you of your native land and your means of living, and it is far easier for you to make a brave, stout, strong fight for your native land and your lives whilst you are your own masters and your weapons are in your hands, then when you are put into prison and in chains after being despoiled of your weapons, and when your limbs are bound with hard, tough cords of hemp, after being broken and torn, some of you half dead, after you are chained and taken in crowds on waggons and carts through the streets of the English towns through contempt and mockery of you. My blessing upon you, true men. Bear in your minds the firm resolution that you had when such insults and violence were offered to you (as was done to many of your race) that this day is the day of battle which you have needed to make a vigorous fight in defence of your liberty by the strength of your arms and by the courage of your hearts, while you have your bodies under your own control and your weapons in your hands. Have no dread nor fear of the great numbers of the soldiers of London, nor of the strangeness of their weapons and arms, but put your hope and confidence in the God of glory. I am certain if ye take to heart what I say the foreigner must be defeated and ye victorious."
O'Clery's summing up of the effects of the fatal battle of Kinsale, almost the only battle in which the Irish were defeated throughout the whole war, is pathetic.
"Though there fell," he writes, "but so small a number of the Irish in that battle of Kinsale, that they would not perceive their absence after a time, and, moreover, that they did not perceive it themselves then, yet there was not lost in one battle fought in the latter times in Ireland so much as was lost then.
"There was lost there, first, that one island which was the richest and most productive, the heat and cold of which were more temperate than in the greater part of Europe, in which there was much honey and corn and fish, many rivers, cataracts, and waterfalls, in which were calm productive harbours, qualities which the first man of the race of Gaedhal Glas, son of Niall, who came to Ireland beheld in it.... There were lost, too, those who escaped from it of the free, generous, noble-born descendants of the sons of Milesius and of the prosperous, impetuous chiefs, of the lords of territories and tribes, and of the chieftains of districts and cantreds, for it is absolutely certain that there were never in Erin at any time together men who were better and more famous than the chiefs who were then, and who died afterwards in other countries one after the other, after their being robbed of their fatherland and their noble possessions which they left to their enemies on that battlefield. Then were lost besides, nobility and honour, generosity and great deeds, hospitality and goodness, courtesy and noble birth, polish and bravery, strength and courage, valour and constancy, the authority and the sovereignty of the Irish of Erin to the end of time."
An interesting prose work, evidently written by an eye-witness, exists of the wanderings of O'Neill and O'Donnell upon the Continent after they had fled from Ireland in 1607. It describes how they were driven by a storm past Sligo harbour and past the Arran islands, where they were unable to land for fear of the king's shipping then in Galway bay. For thirteen days they were hurried along by a tremendous storm. The narrator notes a curious incident which took place during the rough weather at open sea: two merlin falcons descended and alit upon the ship, which were caught by the sailors who kept and fed them; they were ultimately given by O'Neill to the governor of a French town. After long buffeting by the storm and after hopelessly losing their way they fell in with three Danish ships who informed them that they were in Flemish waters. They were afterwards nearly wrecked on the coast of Guernsey, and finally, after twenty-one days at sea, they managed with the utmost difficulty to put in at "Harboure de Grace," on the French coast, just as their provisions had run out. Their reception by the French king, the machinations of the English ambassador against them, and their journey into Spain[15] are minutely described, evidently by some one who had been in their own company, probably a Franciscan friar. Their life and adventures in Spain are minutely recounted down to the period of O'Donnell's death, who was treacherously poisoned by an emissary from Carew, the President of Munster, with the sanction of Mountjoy, the Lord Deputy. It is noticeable that the Irish biographer entertained no suspicion of this foul crime, which has, as we have said, only come to light through the publication of the State Papers during the last few years.[16]