Standish O'Grady; selected essays and passages

l6o STANDISH O'GRADY
reader will recognise his type in a great many of the
southern territorial magnates with whom the text is
concerned. Brian Ogue O'Rourke, of the Battleaxes,
the O'Rourke, high lord of all Leitrim, is a character in
the Pacata Hibernia. It was he who gained the brilliant
victory of the " Battle of the Curlew Mountains" over
Sir Conyers Clifford and the Queen's forces. In the
" Four Masters " his appearances are always characterized
by a certain greatness ; and from the pages of Pacata
Hibernia he passes forth unscathed. Once I regarded him
as one of the few stainless, simple, and heroic characters
of the age. But alas ! very few indeed are the reputations
which can stand the fierce light shed by the letters recently
unearthed from the archives. Brian Ogue was the oldest
son of Brian na Murtha O'Rourke, Brian of the Ramparts,
of whom it was recorded that " a prouder man walked
not the earth in his time." In 1589 Brian na Murtha
went into rebellion, recalling his son, Brian of the Battle-
axes, from Oxford to join him. Brian Ogue (junior) fought
in that war, and did some brilliant feats as lieutenant to
his father. Eventually the old proud chieftain was taken
prisoner, brought to London, and there beheaded at
Tyburn. Hardly had his father's head fallen when Brian
Ogue wrote a letter to the Privy Council, informing them
that in his opinion his father had met with a fit punish-
ment for all his " fractiousness," and inviting the Govern-
ment to appoint to his father's seignory such an excellent
and dutiful young man as himself ;
flattering his father's
murderers (for as such, of course, he regarded them),
in the hope that they would give him his father's land and