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."
* Berleth 1978 p57
"The mainstay of the Irish battle line had long been the galloglaigh, or young foreign warrior -- a name corrupted to gallowglass in English and soon to become synonymous with blind savagery and valor. To an English soldier who fought them, gallowglass were 'picked and selected men of great and mighty bodies, cruel without compassion. The greatest force of the battle line consisteth in them, choosing rather to die than to yield, so that when it cometh to bandy blows, they are quickly slain or win the field. They are armed with a shirt of mail, a skullcap of steel, and a skein [dagger]; the weapon they most use is a battle-axe, six foot long, the blade whereof is somewhat like a shoemaker's knife; the stroke whereof is deadly where it lighteth.' While in fact gallowglass could be Irish or Scottish, they had their origin in the Scottish Isles and, along with the redshanks, or Scottish highlanders, constituted the professional mercenaries on which every Irish chieftain was dependent. The employment was seasonal, and the gallowglass often returned to Scotland during the winter months. In Ireland, they were maintained at the expense of a lord's peasantry, their feeding called coynage and their stabling livery. The gallowglass might be helpless against musketeers and pikemen, but in ambush or the first rush of battle they could justify their keep, working terrible harm at close quarters. Fitzmaurice led the famous Desmond gallowglass -- the MacSheehys and MacSweenys -- and these families lost heavily in many of his engagements."
* 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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