Page:Studies in Irish History, 1649-1775 (1903).djvu/265



the history of Ireland there is no Bannockburn, or if there is, we must go back to Clontarf to find it, and the day of Brian's victory saw Brian slain at his tent door. The names of Irish champions since the landing of Strongbow are the names of men who fought and who lost. And in all that splendid and tragic array there is no name more cherished than that of Patrick Sarsfield, there is no figure more truly heroic, there is no man who achieved less. We speak now of the fighters; of the men who had their triumphs, their victory of a period however brief; of Shane O'Neill, who "made Ulster a shaking sod" before he was hacked to rags in Cushendun, and his head sold to the English; of Red Hugh who swept victorious over three parts of Ireland, before he fled from the rout at Kinsale to die in Spain, poisoned by Carew's emissary; of Tyrone who conquered at the Yellow Ford, and was a prince and a leader for long years before the "Flight of the Earls"; and of Owen Roe, victor at Benburb, before he was cut off by the sickness 253