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Therefore, King Ranald, says, by the mouth of my humility, the great O'Brodar, Lord of Ivark, 'Take example by Alcinous, the wise king of Fairy, and listen not to the ambassadors of those lying villains, O'Dea Lord of Slievardagh, Maccarthy King of Cashel, and O'Sullivan Lord of Knockraffin, who all three between them could not raise kernes enough to drive off one old widow's cow.
Was it strange that there should be murmurs at the appointment of so dangerous a chief to guard a wavering city which had so recently been secured? The Irish kernes and they are described by all contemporaries, English and Flemish, in the same language were accounted as the wildest and fiercest of barbarians.
Irish campaigns were very costly, and England was in those days by no means wealthy. English armies in Ireland, after a short period spent in desultory warfare with light armed kernes in the fever-stricken Munster forests, began to melt away. For many generations, therefore, England, adopting a policy of divide et impera, set clan against clan.
Go back to your Angus kernes and ragged craw-bogle Highland folk!" Meanwhile Sholto had recovered from his surprise, and the crowd of varlets was melting apace, thinking the Angus marshal some one of consequence.
In return for these troops, who were in number not quite four thousand, he undertook to send to Ireland between seven and eight thousand excellent French infantry, who were likely in a day of battle to be of more use than all the kernes of Leinster, Munster and Connaught together, One great error he committed.
Tell me yourself, Rob, what has a' this cutting, and stabbing, and shooting, and driving of dirks, whether through human flesh or fir deals, dune for yourself? and werena ye a happier man at the tail o' your nowte-bestial, when ye were in an honest calling, than ever ye hae been since, at the head o' your Hieland kernes and gally-glasses?"
Roderick and O'Ruarc did indeed muster a host against him, and some of their cavalry and Kernes skirmished with the troops in his service at Kellistown, in Carlow, when six were killed on one side and twenty-five on the other, including the Welsh Prince already mentioned; afterwards Dermid emerged from his fastnesses, and entering the camp of O'Conor, gave him seven hostages for the ten cantreds of his patrimony; and to O'Ruarc he gave "one hundred ounces of gold for his eineach" that is, as damages for his criminal conversation with Devorgoil.
So soon as he had received information of the arrival of the fleet before Calais which was on the 8th August he had proceeded the same night to Newport and embarked 16,000 men, and before dawn he was at Dunkerk, where the troops stationed in that port were as rapidly placed on board the transports. Sir William Stanley, with his 700 Irish kernes, were among the first shipped for the enterprise.
One or two of them were broken Royalists, of gentle birth, with a memory in their hearts of English country houses. Others were Irishmen from Montserrat, the wretched Kernes deported after the storm of Tredah. Some were French hunters from the Hispaniola woods, with the tan upon their cheeks, and a habit of silence due to many lonely marches on the trail.
The Irish kernes too, were allowed to come to mass within the city, and were received there with as much fraternity by, the Catholic soldiers of Tassis as the want of any common dialect would allow a proceeding which seemed better perhaps for the salvation of their souls, than for the advancement of the siege.
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