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Galloglas
Galloglas/ gallóglaigh were heavily armed professional foot soldiers. They were most deadly in the closed fighting of a pitched battle and we are told that "in every sharp and severe engagement… they either soon kill or be killed". Richard Stanihurst tells us, 1571, that they were "men of great stature, of more than ordinary strength of limb ….. altogether sanguinary and by no means inclined to give quarter". They were also described as "great endurers of cold, labour, and all hardness, very active and strong of hand, very swift of foot". It was recorded, in 1598, that all the Mac Sweeneys were galloglas.
The Annals record that galloglas were in the van when approaching an enemy and in the rear when leaving an enemy's territory. No reference can be found to the deliberate flight of galloglas in battle and Dymock who faced them in the 1590's described them as: "picked and selected men of mighty bodies, cruel without compassion, the force of the battle doth lie in them choosing to die rather than surrender … the weapon they most use is a battle-axe or halbert, six feet long, the blade whereof is somewhat like a shoemakers knife, and without pike; the stroke whereof is deadly where it lighteth".
Prof. G. A. Hayes Mac Coy noted that the battle-axe of one type or another was the weapon par excellence of the galloglas in the sixteenth century and he asked the question: "was the axe the principal weapon that they used"? The answer was in the affirmative - the use of axes as the characteristic weapon of the galloglas cannot be questioned.
Standish O Grady tells us "by these implements all Mac Sweeneys lived and most of them perhaps died".
March 3, 2004
