Subject: gallóglaigh 'galloglass' mercenary heavy infantry
Culture: Norse-Gael / Hiberno-Norse
Setting: Ireland 15-16thc
Evolution:
Context (Event Photos, Primary Sources, Secondary Sources, Field Notes)
* Hurley 2007 p17
"In the middle ages Gaelic-speaking Scottish mercenaries were imported into Ireland and served as a part of the professional armies of many Gaelic Irish lords. This distinct cultural tradition has repeatedly been referred to by historians who have noted the existence of a Scottish Gaelic 'sub-culture' among those gall-óglagh or 'foreign soldiers' who served, often as hereditary soldiers in Ireland, for generations."
* Norman 2018 p118
"The endemic clan warfare in Ireland and resistance to English aggression proved a magnet for footloose ambitious young men from the west coast of Scotland who lived to fight. These gallóglaigh, galloglass or 'foreign warriors' became the nucleus of most Irish armies. By the sixteenth century they were armed and armoured: tall bascinet, aketon and mail hauberk, or at least a mail pisane or mantle, long 'Danish' axe or spear and a sword. .... The galloglass were always placed in the front line and led the charge against the enemy with fierce war cries, or they stood and faced the charge of their enemy. Either way their battles tended not to last long; they either slaughtered or were slaughtered."
* Gresh 2023 p82
"galloglass: Heavily armed Irish foot soldier of the medieval and Tudor eras"
* Hurley 2007 p183 n15
"... Gallowglas [were] heavily armed Irish mercenaries originally of Scottish origin."
Ax
* Gresh 2023 p83
"tuagh: In Irish, a battle ax, generally with a six-foot haft, characteristic of the galloglass"
Sword
* Melville 2018 p118
"An alternative to the axe was the two-handed sword, although it never seems to have been a common weapon. Numbers of Scots Highland-style two-handed swords have been found in Ireland, as well as a very few examples of an Irish style, which match the illustrations of Irish warriors with two-handed swords by artists such as Dürer. .... In 1557 Shane O'Neill's bodyguard included sixty Scots mercenaries with 'massive, broad and heavy-striking swords in their hands to strike and parry' -- no doubt these were two-handed swords. Ten years later he was killed by Antrim Scots with their 'slaughter-swords', a contemporary English term for the two-handed sword, cognate with the German 'schlachtschwert' which is often applied to the two-handed sword. In 1594 O'Clery's Life of Hugh O'Donnell remarks of the Scots mercenaries that
many had swords with hafts of horn, large and warlike, over their shoulders. It was necessary for the soldier to put his two hands together at the very haft of his sword when he would strike a blow with it.
This is a clear reference to the two-handed sword. And in 1595 the leader of a group of MacDonalds on their way to fight as mercenaries in Ireland proposed to settle a dispute in Argyll by fighting a duel 'with two-handit swordis'."
Armor
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Dagger
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