Wicklow’s William Wallace? -The Battle of Glenmalure 1580

The battle of Glenmalure is one of the rare examples of a total victory by an Irish army against an English one. Set within the times of the second Desmond rebellion and the determination of England’s Tudors to conquer Ireland.

I had wanted to tell Fiach’s story for quite a while now and managed to cover some of it with the backdrop of this battle. Yet the entire story of Fiach is truly intriguing and would extend to many, many, more hours of work on my part. However (and sadly) I am now considering my future on Youtube, as I feel my efforts are not getting traction. If this is the case I would like to thank you all for your support over the past three years and thank you for watching. Regards Ronan.

#glenmalure #irishhistory #irelandsancienteast

Notes

An Leabhar Branach—The Book of the O’Byrnes, comprises the poem books of four generations of the O’Byrnes of Gabhal Raghnaill. It is a testimony to their adherence to a Gaelic way of life and contains many songs in praise of Fiach and his father Hugh McShane O’Byrne and Fiach’s son Fheilim. The Leabhar Branach contains two poems by poets who had viewed the slain chief’s quartered corpse when it was exhibited in Dublin after his death in May 1597, this is one of them..

‘THE DEATH OF FIACH MC HUGH O’BYRNE’
Woe is me! Ah! Woe is me! And endless in my grief,
Because I’ve seen the sever’d head of my beloved chief;
Not mine alone the bitter dole; full well may Ireland mourn,
The traitor’s blow that laid thee low, brave Feagh McHugh O’Byrne.

I wish my eyes were blind before I saw that ghastly face;
I wish the limbs hath withered up that bore me to that place;
I wish that I had never risen when fever struck me down,
Ere I beheld that gory head in hateful Dublin town.

Woe is me! Oh woe is me! that I had ears to hear
The bitter news that Feagh was slain, like wild beasts in his lair!
I felt the words go through my heart—I felt my blood run cold—
And like one dead I fell to earth ere half the tale was told.

My curse be on him night and day, God’s curse be on him too,
The heartless wretch whose word betrayed the generous son of Hugh!
Our clan will miss his sheltering arm, the Church a bounteous hand;
And strangers now unchecked will rob and ravage through the land.

They bore his head across the sea, a butt for jibe and sport,
To England’s fierce and cruel queen and all her cruel court,
Oh, God! ’tis hard this should be, and we can do no more,
Than keen him on the echoing hills and weep him on the shore!

My thanks to Dylan and his comrades from knightforhire.ie

Fiach was also known as Feagh and Fiaca

800 Dead?
English accounts are that just 360 were killed, while Sir William Stanley states just 25. However the Irish annals record 800 and English accounts may not consider dead Irish fighting for the English army. There are also differing accounts as to where in the valley Cosby was buried.

“Palesmen”
For a video on the Irish pale here is a link to my video    • Boundaries of Culture beyond the Pale.  .
Many of the palesmen would have had their ancestry back to the Norman invasions and who would have taken the land from the likes of the clans of the O’Tooles & O’Byrnes. They would have protected the borderlands or “marches” to the pale.They would have been classified as “old English” as many stayed true to the Roman Catholic religion after Henry VIII had formed the “protestant” religion.

Follow me up to Carlow
The lyrics were written by P.J.McCall in the late 1800’s; he was a nationalist and liked to look to Ireland’s past as a way of providing inspiration for nationalists to take action against British rule. The song certainly celebrates the victory of Glenmalure but in the song this has already happened. Now the Irish are being urged to stop brooding on the past and to stop worrying about the strength of the English. They have a leader in O’Byrne who is capable of leading them on to victory. The main focus of the lyrics is to provide a rallying call for a future battle, i.e. to take the English castle in Carlow. That’s why the refrain of the song is Fiach’s cry of Follow Me Up to Carlow and many of the characters mentioned in the song are not part of my story/video because they occur later on Fiach’s story.

The song is also associated with the Irish band “The Wolftones”

Wikipedia credits
By Richard J. King - https://odomhnaill.com/history, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
By Cyberolm - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
By self-created - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
Follow me up to Carlow
Christoph Noltehttp://www.jamendo.com/en/track/45314...
By The Vicious Chicken of Bristol - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
By Patrick Mcdermott25 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...