Trollope.
‘The people,’ says Dymmok, ‘are of nature very glorious, frank, ireful, good horsemen, able to endure great pains, delighted in war, great hospitality, of religion for the most part Papists, great gluttons, and of a sensual and vicious life, deep dissemblers, secret in displeasure, of a cruel revenging mind and irreconcilable. Of wit they are quick and capable, kind-hearted where they take, and of exceeding love towards their foster brethren. Of complexion they are clear and well-favoured, both men and women, tall and corpulent bodies, and of themselves careless and bestial.’ This is very much the view taken by English travellers generally, and in many points they are confirmed by the Spaniard Cuellar. Mountjoy complains of the want of clean linen, and his secretary has much to say on that subject. ‘Many of the English-Irish,’ he tells us, ‘have by little and little been infected with the Irish filthiness, and that in the very cities, excepting Dublin, and some of the better sort in Waterford, where the English continually lodging in their houses, they more retain the English diet.... In cities passengers may have feather-beds soft and good, but most commonly lousy, especially in the high ways; whether that come by their being forced to lodge common soldiers or from the nasty filthiness of the nation in general. For even in the best city, as at Cork, I have observed that my own and other Englishmen’s chambers hired of the citizens, were scarce swept once in the week, and the dust laid in a corner was perhaps cast out once in a month or two. I did never see any public inns with signs hanged out among the English or English-Irish; but the officers of cities and villages appoint lodgings to the passengers, and perhaps in each city they shall find one or two houses where they will dress meat, and these be commonly houses of Englishmen, seldom of the Irish; so as these houses having no sign hung out, a passenger cannot challenge right to be entertained in them, but must have it of courtesy and by entreaty.... Some of our carriage horses falling into wild Irish hands, when they found soap or starch carried for the use of our laundresses, they did eat them greedily, and when they stuck in their teeth, cursed bitterly the gluttony of us English churls, for so they term us.’ And Andrew Trollope, an English lawyer, who wrote with more force than politeness, says the Irish, except in the walled towns, were almost savages, and that ‘at night Mr., or Mrs., or dame, men-servants, maid-servants—women-servants I should have said, for I think there be no maids—guests, strangers, and all, lie in one little room not so good or handsome as many a hogscote in England, and when they rise in the morning they shake their ears and go their ways, without any serving of God or other making of them a-ready.’ On arriving in Dublin, he says, ‘I lodged in a lawyer’s house, a man of my own profession, where I found my entertainment better than my welcome, as all Englishmen shall do.’[427]
Tyrone’s soldiers.
How they were armed.
Diet and pay.
The gallowglasses, with their axes, and the kerne, with their darts, became gradually obsolete during the Elizabethan period, pikemen taking the place of the former and musketeers of the latter. Tyrone taught his men the use of firearms, and they became better shots than the English. The difficulty of recruiting in England was great, and deserters were habitually replaced by Irishmen, who often passed over to their countrymen, arms and all. When Tyrone was loyal he was allowed a certain number of men in the Queen’s pay, and these he frequently changed, so as to increase the number of trained soldiers about him; thus anticipating on a small scale the famous expedient of Scharnhorst. From Spain there was a constant supply of arms, and the merchants in corporate towns made no difficulty about selling contraband of war to rebels with whom they had religious sympathies. Deserters sold their matchlocks, and they were resold to the Irish. Even officers were accused of selling powder. Nor were English ports closed to such good customers. ‘I dare not trust any Chester man,’ said the mayor of that town, and Liverpool turned an honest penny in the same way. Powder could not be made in Ulster, for there was no sulphur, but it was imported even from Dantzig. There was also a constant supply of ammunition from Scotland, and Fenton proposed that the Queen should employ factors to buy up all the powder at Glasgow and Ayr, which could only have made the trade more lucrative. Tyrone fed his men on oatmeal and butter, which was exacted, according to certain rules, from the people on whom they were billeted. The pay was at the rate of 24s. a quarter, and when money was scarce the deficiency was made up in milk. If a prisoner was ransomed, his captor had one-third of the amount and the rest went to the chief. Mountjoy believed that Tyrone raised a revenue of more than 80,000l. a year in Ulster.[428]
Dress.
The Irish mantle.
‘In Ireland,’ says Moryson, who spoke from actual observation, ‘the English and the English-Irish are attired after the English manner, for the most part, yet not with such pride and inconstancy, perhaps for want of means: yet the English-Irish, forgetting their own country, are somewhat infected with the Irish rudeness, and with them are delighted in simple light colours, as red and yellow. And in like sort the degenerated citizens are somewhat infected with the Irish filthiness, as well in lousy beds, foul sheets, and all linen, as in many other particulars; but as well in diet and apparell, the citizens of Dublin most of all other, and the citizens of Waterford and Galway in some good measure, retain the English cleanliness. Touching the meer or wild Irish, it may truly be said of them, which of old was spoken of the Germans, that they wander slovenly and naked, and lodge in the same house (if it may be called a house) with their beasts. Among them the gentlemen or lords of countries wear close breeches and stockings of the same piece of cloth, of red or such light colour, and a loose coat, and a cloak or three-cornered mantle, commonly of coarse, light stuff made at home, and their linen is coarse and slovenly. I say slovenly, because they seldom put off a shirt till it be worn; and these shirts, in our memory before the last rebellion, were made of some twenty or thirty ells folded in wrinkles and coloured with saffron to avoid lousiness, incident to the wearing of foul linen.... Their wives living among the English are attired in a sluttish gown, to be fastened at the breast with a lace, and in a more sluttish mantle and more sluttish linen; and their heads be covered after the Turkish manner with many ells of linen: only the Turkish heads or turbans are round in the top, but the attire of the Irish women’s heads is more flat in the top and broader on the sides, not much unlike a cheese-mot, if it had a hole to put in the head.’ Moryson also mentions the loose mantles worn by both men and women, often as an excuse for wearing nothing else, which Spenser, who is very eloquent on the subject, calls ‘a fit house for an outlaw, a meet bed for a rebel, and an apt cloke for a thief.’ The shock-heads of curled hair called glibbs also excited the poet’s wrath, ‘being as fit masks as a mantle is for a thief. For whensoever he hath run himself into that peril of law, that he will not be known, he either cutteth of his glibb quite, by which he becometh nothing like himself, or putteth it so low down over his eyes that it is very hard to discern his thievish countenance.’ In a contemporary drawing of Tirlogh Luineach’s submission to Sidney all his followers are represented with glibbs, and it became a matter of treaty with Tyrone that he should allow none of his people to wear them.[429]
Progress of civilisation. Richard, Earl of Clanricarde.