OPINION: Warriors, winners and losers

I had never before been to a book launch in an abbey, and certainly not one where the book’s subject lay buried. So the launch in Ballintubber Abbey of a new edition of Ann Chambers’ biography of Tibbott-ne-Long Bourke, son of Grace O’Malley, was both fascinating and atmospheric. (The book, ‘Lord Mayo’, published by Mayo Books Press, 2023, shares those attributes.)
In the austere abbey, one could almost imagine oneself back in the late 16th or early 17th century, when control of Ireland’s governance was being decided by people like Tibbott as the old, fractious and ineffectual Gaelic order was confronted by relentless English military and civil incursions.
It is sobering to reflect that if Westport House, the seat of the Marquesses of Sligo since the Act of Union, had suffered the same fate as many other stately homes in Ireland during the War of Independence (burnt to the ground by the IRA), it is unlikely that we would have such vivid accounts of Grace O’Malley, of her son Tibbott and of the 2nd Marquess of Sligo (Howe Peter Browne). Anne Chambers’ books uniquely benefitted from access to Westport House archives that recorded the family’s role in Irish history since the 16th century.
It must have been something of a trial to be the son of such a famous personality as Grace O’Malley. A kind of nautical superwoman who had an uncanny ability to read the evolving complex political and military situation.
During that latter part of the 16th century, the English faced possible invasion by Spain and feared that Ireland might be used as a back door. If Grace was the end of a long line of tribal chieftains who ruled with panache under the old Gaelic laws, her son was among the first to be forced to compromise with a new world order of English laws and military dominance. If Grace was the last romantic, Tibbott was the first of the new realists. We inherited Tibbott’s world, not Grace’s.

Parallels
As I read of Tibbott’s subterfuges and struggles to emerge from the collapse of the old Gaelic order with at least some of his property intact, I kept being reminded of two quite different cases where unity and decisiveness in the face of overwhelming odds made all the difference between winning and losing: Prime Minister Churchill in Britain of 1939 and President Zelenskiy in Ukraine in March 2022. Their association with Gaelic Ireland of the late 16th century is not as farfetched as you might think.
Churchill and Zelenskiy acted as charismatic national leaders in situations where charisma was a necessary, though not sufficient, quality for effectiveness of leadership. Crucially, there was a willingness of all factions in their countries to unify behind the leader to fight for survival against an external enemy. In 1939 in the UK and in 2022 in Ukraine, the situation looked completely hopeless. In 1939, the Nazis had conquered all of Europe and were poised to invade Britain. In 2022, Russian forces had reached the suburbs of Kyiv and nobody gave Ukraine much of a chance.
Faced with overwhelming odds, Zelenskiy, when offered extraction by the Americans, is reputed to have declared: “The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride.” Churchill famously declared to the nation that he had nothing to offer ‘but blood, toil, tears and sweat’.

Divided they fell
A fascinating aspect of ‘Lord Mayo’ is the portrait Chambers paints of the utterly chaotic and poisonous relationships that existed between the Gaelic tribal leaders. When they were not forming fractious coalitions among themselves to fight each other, they regularly sided with the British to do down a hated neighbour and devastate his lands. Inter-tribal warfare was exacerbated by the complexity and confusion created by the Brehon Laws on succession and inheritance. You might call it a Society of Disunited Irishmen.
All this worked to the advantage of the English, since their policy was to control Ireland as cheaply as possible and avoid having to finance an invasion using massive and expensive military force. In such a situation, the old Gaelic order (or, rather, disorder) never stood a chance and probably never deserved to survive.
The Gaelic tribal chieftains behaved like violent and rapacious robber barons. If they had united and had recognised the strategic dilemma that an independent and hostile Ireland posed for England, then they might just have secured a better outcome for themselves and their people. However, as described by Anne Chambers, speaking of Tibbott: “Personal ambition was the primary motivation for his actions, which often led him and his family […] to ‘put their hands far in blood and upon their nearest kinsman’.”
Tibbott stayed, eventually worked out a compromise with the English, and sought to make the new political dispensation work. But mainly for himself, not for his country. As for many of the rest, the ‘Earls’ created by the English process of surrender and re-grant, they took the ride and abandoned their people to a fate that became catastrophic in later centuries.
We will never know what might have happened had the Disunited Irishmen been united. We do know for sure what happens to a country when they are not.
Just as we have learned what happens to a region.

‘Lord Mayo – Tibbott-ne-Long Bourke, Son of the Pirate Queen, 1567-1629’, by Anne Chambers, published by Mayo Books Press, is available in local stockists and online at mayobooks.ie.