344 Limehrr. 
oaten reed and pastoral stop *’ on their share of the confiscated lands “ among 
the green alders by the Mulla’s shore ” at Kilcolman or in the plundered Des- 
mond collegeat Youghal. And again the land has peace. They will write 
minutes and reports (to be pigeon-holed but to survive) tending to the exter- 
mination of their remaining fellow subjects in ‘this loste land,’’ as Raleigh 
calls it. But the land will hold them in its grip as it will hold sterner men, and 
the grandsons of these literary cut-throats will stand for an Irish cause. 
UnconqueREeD ULSTER. 
In the North, meanwhile, lowers unconquered Ulster and soon the storm breaks 
on the devoted colony. The great clans regnant of the Hy Niall, the Kinel- 
Owen and the Kinel-Connell, O’Neill and O'Donnell, with their allied, tributary 
and mercenary tribes, chiefs, wrraghts, taoiseachs and bonnacht, rise under Hugh 
O'Neill, the great Earl of Tyrone, a shrewd and experienced statesman, courtier 
and soldier, and under young Red Hugh O’Donnell, the darling of the Gael. 
The latter had been kidnapped as a boy by being enticed on board a “ ship 
with wines,’ sent ad hoc to the Swilly by Lord Deputy Perrott (bastard of 
Henry VIII). After various attempts he escaped to his mountain wilds from 
Dublin Castle, lamed for life by the hardships of the evasion. He had done 
no wrong. Perhaps the captivity explains his subsequent predilection for 
hanging all male inhabitants of Connaught above sixteen, who could speak no 
Irish. All Ireland for eleven years is “a shaking sod.”’ 
For eleven years Hugh O'Neill was virtually king of Ireland. He and 
O'Donnell beat in open fight army after army of English and Anglo-Irish. The 
Munster colony went up at once in smoke and flame and the broken clans took 
possession of their own. Many of the Norman nobles joined him or remained 
neutral and the great head of the Butlers, Black Thomas of Ormonde main- 
tained a secret friendship and understanding with this last native prince of 
Ulster. When the O’Moores captured Black Thomas he was promptly released 
by order of “‘ Hugh Tirone.” James, a nephew of the last Earl of Desmond 
was even named by Tyrone to the headship of the Geraldines, which 
shocked the constitutionalists of the towns. The O’Neill they thought 
could gift with the white staff of chiefship and make an O’Sullivan, 
a Macarty more, anO’Hanlon or any other chief, but none but the High 
Queen herself could make an earl. Few, however, besides the Barry, dared 
to hold by the Crown where the banner of the Red Hand was displayed in those 
eleven years and Lord Barrymore was soon for the time a broken and fleeing 
man. ‘I hate the Norman churl as though he had but landed yesterday, ” 
said the sombre Ulster prince, the long ethnic hate of five hundred years too 
much for once for that politic and cautious brain. Never but once was that 
great combination of the Ulster clans beaten in fight. Bribery drew away 
Nial Garbh, the stoutest soldier of the O’Donnells, and set him up as a Queen’s 
O'Donnell. The unscrupulous diplomacy of Carew, President of Munster, after- 
wards Karl of Totness, threw discord among the confederates of Munster when 
O’Neill withdrew from the South. But the State was bankrupt in money 
and credit and Tyrone only waited aid from Spain to drive out the last of 
the invaders, 
