They had almost made it. Travelling without cloaks – in tunics, linen shirts, tight trews and flimsy shoes – in rain, sleet, snow and wind, they had come within reach of Glenmalure, with an exhausted man, bloated by prison diet. In some accounts, there is a hint that the guide may have attempted to cover his companions with a layer of sods before leaving them. It sounds unlikely. There was an ancient practice, though, of making overnight shelters from hooped rods thatched with ‘scraws’ stripped from the surface of the ground. But this covering of the victims in a mantle of earth, true or not, suits a theme of death and resurrection, which is developing irresistibly at the core of the story. When the guide returned with help from Glenmalure, the two seemed to all intents and purposes to be frozen to death, shrouded in a mantle of hail, and blending into the surrounding earth. Ó Cléirigh’s description of the savage scene almost conjures up a marble tomb in winter snow.
It is not difficult to fill in the silent details. Having started with an immersion in the moat, followed by a soaking night-march, the group is unlikely to have been moving fast the following day, given Art’s condition. It could well have been afternoon when the guide left them, for that decision would have been postponed, hour by hour, until it was obvious at last that they would not reach Glenmalure together by the light of day.
Midwinter darkness closed in early and the guide would have had to allow himself enough time to cross difficult terrain if he were on the high western route, as popularly supposed. Then he had to descend into Glenmalure by what must have been a complex path. We are used to the valley now with a road and tracks opened up by lead-mining, farming and forestry, but it was a very different place in terms of access in 1592. It is possible that help did not arrive until the following day was advanced, as the rescuers would not have travelled without light to guide them over such terrain in winter weather – particularly with flooded streams and fords to cross.
In that case, the fugitives may have lain on the ground, virtually shoeless, for anything up to fifteen hours, while the wind blew and snow or hail fell intermittently. In those conditions, the sky sometimes clears and it freezes hard. Racing stars glitter between shreds of cloud. The air tastes like cold steel. Was Art dead by then? According to Ó Cléirigh, he died later, as the rescuers tried to revive him with ale. They may have been going through the motions. An exhausted victim of exposure would probably lose consciousness soon after he was lowered to the ground in freezing conditions. Art could have gone into a coma and died during the night. Hugh, attempting to shelter against the body, would have felt it turn stiff as a snowdrift beside him in a very short while.
He must have fought to stay awake himself as the numbness increased, knowing, as one instinctively does, that sleep might be irreversible. Reserves of willpower would have shrilled their alarm periodically. From time to time, in the darkness of the mind, there are voices, shouts, footsteps. That’s how it works – a waking nightmare, the dream of death, jolting awake to the rhythm of soldiers’ feet, the baying of bloodhounds yet again. He was in a coma when help arrived. Although he was forced back to consciousness, he would not have known what was happening to Art. The body turns entirely in upon itself, reflecting its own disaster.
When the rescue party reached them, the victims were shrouded in snow, the clothing frozen to their skin, and O’Donnell’s feet were ‘dead members without feeling owing to the swelling and blistering from the frost and snow’. They gave up the attempt to revive Art and buried him there on the hillside, wherever it was. What an eerie scene that must have been, with or without a moon. A rough excavation; or perhaps the body was simply heaped over with stones. They had to cover him, for there were wolves in Wicklow then.
ART’S CROSS
Today, a plaque in a niche under the Nye Rocks at the head of Glenreemore marks the spot where Art O’Neill is thought to have died, and there is a wooden cross high on the slopes above. Marked on the Ordnance Survey map of the plateau, Sheet 56, along with a scatter of little lakes, the cross provides an advanced exercise in navigation on a day or night of poor visibility. When it appears at last in a tunnel of mist, there is no sense of a real conclusion. It marks a supposition, floating between calendars, between memory and myth, fixed as much by its own co-ordinates on the map as by the rootless timber of the cross planted in the ground.
Is that really the place where Art’s journey ended, or is it just a location that suits the story? It is supported by local tradition from Granabeg just north of the King’s River, connecting the fugitives with the striking corrie at the head of Glenreemore, visible to the southeast a couple of miles away and reputedly known as ‘Art’s Grave’. The first cross was erected in 1932, the year of the Eucharistic Congress and the fifteen-hundredth anniversary of St Patrick’s arrival in Ireland. It was a good year for crosses.
Of course, this tradition might have arisen not from historical fact at all, but from a loose interpretation of what Philip O’Sullivan wrote, or – in the case of Edward Eustace as guide – what he didn’t write about a western route.
When J. B. Malone, expert on Wicklow landscape and tradition, came to comment on the journey (Walking in Wicklow, 1964), he accepted the assumption of Glenreemore as the approach to Glenmalure. He pointed out the junction of two mountain streams on this final stage of the route where a slightly different choice would have reached the destination quickly and easily, and he went on to remark: ‘… here was made the error that killed Art O’Neill, that crippled Red Hugh O’Donnell for twelve months, and led at length to the Flight of the Earls.’ It is an apocalyptic conclusion to say the least, implying that the junction of the Asbawn and Glenree streams, an innocent V on a mountainside, actually points to the collapse of Gaelic Ireland.
Ten miles and many mountains away, an alternative tradition existed at the southeast end of Glenmalure. Local people strongly believed that the fugitives had come that way – heading for the area where the hotel stands today, at Drumgoff crossroads. Research in the 1950s found that the people in one valley had not heard of the tradition in the other. It was also reported that the folklore around Drumgoff was far stronger than that in Granabeg.
For what it’s worth, the Drumgoff tradition points to the fugitives having taken the same route as that pursued on the first escape – to the east, towards Glendalough. High above the Glenmalure Hotel, beside an ancient track that long predates the Military Road, there is a battered cairn reputed to be the burial place of Art O’Neill. It is called the Clorawn, from clocharán: a heap of stones. Funerals passing by on the way to Glendalough would add a stone to the cairn. The tradition of Art’s grave was fully established there. It included the necessary small niche under a crag where the fugitives sheltered, although no one has raised a wooden cross, or even a plaque to rival Glenreemore.
Either route is possible. The O’Byrnes had access to the neighbouring valleys of Glendalough and the Glen of Imaal. There was a rear entry to Glenmalure via the high plateau of Table Mountain at the northwest end. They had mountain access and escape to and from the Pale, the lowlands of Leinster controlled by the English. They were experts in guerrilla defence measures, and the slopes of the narrow valley are thought to have been covered in dense woods with heavy undergrowth.
However, the idea of Fiach MacHugh O’Byrne living in Glenmalure creates a misleading impression today when one can drive to the Baravore Ford at the very end of the narrow, steep valley, almost as far as the An Óige Hostel (formerly the house of a gamekeeper). Fiach MacHugh lived at the other, lowland end of the valley, a further six miles or so from the well-known ford at the very back of the Glen. Anyone entering Glenmalure via the upland route associated with Red Hugh had a wearisome distance still to go along the rocky valley to reach sanctuary. Fiach MacHugh O’Byrne’s fortified home was at Ballinacor, in the vicinity of Greenane today. The famous guerrilla chieftain lived in a rath-type settlement, with wooden dwellings inside an earthen enclosure, densely hedged for additional protection. This was in direc
t continuity with the ringfort style of dwelling associated mainly with the early Christian period, around AD 500. These were largely obsolete by the end of the sixteenth century, but the O’Byrnes were nothing if not traditional. The fact that they had not built a stone tower-house by then testifies to the natural defences of Glenmalure itself.
FROSTBITE
Red Hugh was carried down to Glenmalure from the grave of Art O’Neill. Except for his feet of clay, he had been brought back to life with the force of a slow resurrection. He was kept in a house hidden in the depths of the woods, where he had care and medical attention. They may have attempted to thaw out his feet with direct heat, placing him close to a fire. That would seem urgent and natural, but it actually worsens the condition. Mountaineers have massaged the frostbitten limbs of their companions, hour after hour, and even flogged the feet with frayed rope-ends, trying to restore circulation. Sadly, it has been revealed that such efforts actually add to the damage, if the cells within the tissue are frozen. Deep frostbite must be left as it is until it can be treated medically.
Frostbitten skin is hard and waxy, like ivory to the touch, until the frost-blisters set in. The flesh of both of Red Hugh’s feet was torn and shredded and could not have been massaged by hand, which people do in desperation, instead of warming the frozen limb in a rescuer’s groin or armpit. Instead of direct heat, his attendants may have immersed the feet in warm water (a good idea, at about 40°C). Nothing is felt at first, but as the less afflicted areas thaw out, feeling returns to burn like raw electricity.
O’Sullivan claims that Red Hugh had lost his big toenails during the walk, but this classic symptom is more likely to have occurred later. Anyone with experience of the condition (and perhaps the attendants had, given the harsh winters of the time) would have watched anxiously for the shadow of gangrene setting in, the putrefaction of ruined flesh. It is the kiss of ice, as if the toes had kicked through the shell of survival into the frozen void outside.
Too soon – within a week or two – a messenger came from Hugh O’Neill, Red Hugh’s brother-in-law, no doubt informing him of political imperatives at home. The messenger, a close associate of O’Neill’s, was the dashingly named Turley Boy O’Hagan. (‘Boy’ from buí: yellow-haired.) O’Donnell set off on the tortuous journey northwards. According to information recorded later by the Castle authorities, he bought two horses at Ballinacor for the journey north, one of them a ‘white bobtayl mare’. His feet had not healed and he had to be helped on and off his horse by O’Hagan. Obviously the toes were infected by then. The toenails would have blackened and lifted off as the shadow deepened.
O’Hagan, who spoke confident English and was familiar with the authorities, accompanied him all the way. The route was heavily guarded, and they chose a series of daring options. Fiach MacHugh O’Byrne sent a troop of Wicklow horsemen to protect them as far as the River Liffey. They forded it dangerously close to Dublin, at a deep but unguarded spot. Among the horsemen who had come to escort O’Donnell to the Liffey was one Phelim O’Toole.
Red Hugh and Turley Boy travelled by Drogheda, Dundalk and Armagh to Dungannon and Ballyshannon. The journey must have been excruciating for O’Donnell. Injured feet in motion are particularly vulnerable. They catch on every obstruction. His biographer strains for a biblical parallel to celebrate the homecoming, and settles on Moses delivering his people from bondage. However, it was nothing of the kind. Though celebrated as a hero, Red Hugh became an unstable element in Hugh O’Neill’s campaign to prise Ireland out from under English rule and into his own control.
As if he had been wound up tight and then set loose, O’Donnell was to make a dizzying set of journeys in the remaining decade of his life, including the night crossing of the frozen bogs of Slievefelim on his way to disaster at Kinsale in 1601. All those journeys were on horseback. Shortly after reaching home from Glenmalure in 1592, he was confined to bed from February to April, and his two big toes were amputated. This was to stop the infection spreading through his body, and it is still the only option in the case of serious, untreated frostbite. In O’Donnell’s case, the only question is whether the damage was quite so severe and whether amputation might have been avoided if the wounds had been kept clean. Proper recovery was expected to take a year. After three months, he defied his physicians’ orders and called for an assembly of tribal chiefs. His father abdicated at the instigation of Iníon Dubh, and Red Hugh became the ‘O’Donnell’, chieftain of a dangerously divided people.
He was scarcely out of his twenties when he died in 1602, going out in a hectic blaze of failure. There is no glory in the final winter march from Sligo to the débâcle of Kinsale or in the headlong skite to the Continent that followed. Dramatic to the bitter end, he died mysteriously in Spain. James Blake, known spy and double agent, was on his heels with the declared intention of killing him. Although it seems more likely now that O’Donnell died of natural causes, a bitter whiff of poison haunts his demise. If popular suspicion were a forensic test, Blake would have been hanged ten thousand times.
Notes
1. According to the ‘Life’ by Ó Cléirigh. The captain is named elsewhere as John Bermingham.
2. The Rev. Paul Walsh, whose commentary on the ‘Life’ is responsible for popular opinion on the route, opts lightly for Glenasmole, Lough Bray, Sally Gap, and the Valley of the Annamoe.
3. The present fourth storey and the battlements were added in 1814.
4. O’Sullivan’s Latin account has serica tela, which has been translated as silk coverlets or curtains. Hard to trust the knots in such material.
II
SURVIVAL MARCH
2 NAKED AMONG THE SAVAGES
The Adventures of Captain Francisco de Cuéllar (1588–9)
Shipwrecked off the west coast of Ireland in September 1588, Spanish sea-captain Francisco de Cuéllar spent more than seven months attempting to escape with his life from a deeply disordered country on the brink of war. Irish chieftains, O’Rourke, MacClancy, O’Neill and McDonnell, whose territories de Cuéllar traversed, were soon to be embroiled in the Nine Years’ War with England, a campaign that would start well and end in disaster for the Irish at the Battle of Kinsale.
Reaching Europe after a year of sensational adventures, de Cuéllar wrote a detailed account of his Irish travels. Composed in Antwerp, October 1589, his letter, to an unidentified patron in Spain, lay for three centuries in an archive in Madrid. It provides dramatic insights into Irish culture and the tensions dividing it at the time.
I escaped from the sea … with over three hundred soldiers who also succeeded in staying alive and swimming ashore. With them I shared extreme misfortunes: naked, barefoot the whole of last winter, more than seven months through mountains and woods, among savages, which all of them are in those parts of Ireland where we ran aground.
FRANCISCO DE CUÉLLAR
ATLANTIC STORMS
Early summer, 1588, a fleet of one hundred and thirty ships sailed north from the port of Lisbon, bound for war with England. The Spanish Armada carried eight thousand sailors and twenty thousand soldiers.
Three and a half months later, the Armada was on the run, routed by the English fleet. Trapped in the Straits of Dover, the Spaniards chose the long way home. Rather than fight their way back through the English Channel, they fled up the east coast of England and Scotland. Turning the northern tip of the British Isles in freezing fog, they struggled south along the Atlantic coast of Ireland where storms had been raging for days.
Some vessels crawled into harbours along the coast, desperate for shelter and fresh water. In Galway, an entire crew was executed, in response to the orders of the English lord deputy, Sir William Fitzwilliam. Many vessels were unfit for the heavy seas crashing against them, and they leaked severely. The leverage of mainmasts under sail in heavy weather opened up the planks of others. In all, twenty-six ships were lost and over five thousand men of the Spanish Armada were shipwrecked in the storms that raged along the Irish coast.
SHIPWRECK AT STREEDAGH STRAND
On 21 September, three ships staggered towards Streedagh Strand in Co. Sligo. They were the Juliana, Lavia and Santa Maria de Visón. Failing to round Erris Head, they had hung on their anchor cables for four days off the Sligo coast, until disaster struck, hurling them towards the shore where they struck a reef. They were to lose a thousand men between them, while three hundred at most reached the shore alive.
On the poop of the battered Lavia, Francisco de Cuéllar weighed up the disintegrating timbers against the fate awaiting him on the Sligo shore. Men were drowning all around – many inside the actual ships. Others were sluiced into the boiling sea by enormous breakers. Wealthy officers plunged overboard, their clothing laden with coins. They sank immediately between the waves. Certain noblemen had themselves sealed up in a small boat and launched as if it were a barrel. Scores of men clung to it as it entered the water. By the time it reached the strand, it had become a sealed coffin.
The reception awaiting survivors was plainly visible. Hordes of plunderers danced with delight on the beach as the ships broke asunder and booty was washed ashore. Castaways were stripped, beaten and robbed by the Irish salbajes – savages. Soldiers of the local garrison robbed the Spaniards and then executed them. ‘It did not seem to me,’ de Cuéllar remarked later with a rather cool sense of the odds, ‘that anything good was happening on any side.’
With only minutes to spare before the hull collapsed, de Cuéllar rescued the Judge Advocate of the Armada, Martín de Aranda, a patron to whom he owed a great debt. They took to a mass of floating wreckage, but it was chained to the Lavia and battered by storm-tossed timbers. The unfortunate judge was weighed down with money sewn into his waistcoat and leggings. De Cuéllar managed to seize a floating hatchway about the size of a table. Launching his weight on one end, he overbalanced and sank in deep water, only to come up again and struggle onto the raft. He dragged his patron after him, but a huge wave washed the Judge Advocate away. ‘He kept shouting as he was drowning, calling on God.’
Endurance Page 4