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The anglicized version is Hugh.
On Young Irishmen in England
During Queen Elizabeth’s reign
Aodh Mac Con Rardove is pure fiction, mores the pity, but there was a real life Irish clan chief, Hugh O’Neill (1550–1616), who would have been a contemporary of Aodh’s. I did not base Aodh on Hugh, indeed, when I started writing I did not even think of Hugh, although of course I knew him as one of the great Irish earls who fled during the infamous Flight of the Earls in 1607. But Hugh O’Neill had many of the same experiences as Aodh (or vice versa, I suppose), and if you’re interested in Irish history, I thought you might find this fascinating.
Brought up in England after his father was killed by warring factions in the ongoing battle for supremacy of the Irish O’Neill dynasty (derbfine), Hugh (aka: Aodh!) was Dublin’s choice to inherit the English-recognized O’Neill lordship and title Earl of Tyrone. To protect—and indoctrinate—him, Hugh was sent to England by the then-justiciar Sir Henry Sidney, and raised both in England and out on the Pale in Ireland by English families. He became known as ‘a little rascal horse boy.’
He was raised like other royal wards at the English Court, interacting with other young nobles, was taught the ‘new religion’ and generally indoctrinated into English ways. He was sent back to rule and inherit the title Earl of Tyrone when he was 17 years old.
The training seemed to have taken: he encouraged a court-like life in his Irish world, dressed his sons like English courtiers, trained them to speak English, and generally encouraged a refined life—an English life. As was true for many Irishmen, he served in the English army, and commanded a troop of cavalry in the Munster wars against Desmond (the ones Aodh’s father and grandfathers were killed/captured in.)
Unfortunately for Hugh, and in the end, England, within the Irish O’Neill sept, they had already picked their guy, and it wasn’t Hugh. It was Turlogh. They’d inaugurated Turlogh as The O'Neill, and as you know, there can only be one “the.” Many “a’s”, only one “the.”
Being the earl of Tyrone just didn’t compare to being a clan chief for Hugh. It was also surely difficult to see the Plantations happening, where transplanted English and Scottish settlers were taking up residence on Irish lands. And too, Hugh could see a future where they would begin to encroach on his lands. Indeed, rebellions were sparking up all over Ireland.
In retrospect, it seems inevitable. It was only a matter of time.
When Turlogh finally died (and only after much drama) in 1595, guess who took over?
/> Yep. Hugh accepted the outlawed Gaelic title “The O’Neill.” For this and other offenses (including supporting & then finally leading an attack against English forces) he was declared a traitor.
The story gets sad after this, for Irish culture, which had been experiencing a renaissance under great Irish lords like The O’Neill, was all but extinguished after the Flight of the Earls.
For his part, O’Neill always meant to return, and was continually seeking allies to come back to Ireland and remount a defense against England, and regain his lands. Unfortunately, he died before those ambitions could be realized, and the English Plantations in the north continued unchecked.
Which is part of why I wanted Rardove to be what it was. A place where you can imagine Irish culture could go on, and would go on, no matter what external forces pressed upon it. A bulwark that would stand forever, a safe haven to cultivate and protect the spirit of Ireland, throughout the trials and tribulations in the centuries to come.
I hope you can imagine Aodh and his Katy being the ones who could start a lineage that would do just that.
Sea Travel by Katarina & Aodh’s men
This is a small point, but as I was writing, I realized that although Ré and Cormac and even Bran might be experienced seamen, there was no way they were going to get a large ship across the Irish Sea with a three man crew to rescue Aodh. Additionally, they then needed to be able to cruise into a small cove, Renegades Cove.
After much research on the matter (it’s amazing the amount of research that goes into a story element that’s barely alluded to), I realized they had to have traveled in a pinnace. Here’s a great picture of one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DhowChase.jpg
Sturdy enough to undertake long open-water voyages and handy enough to use close to shore, it was used as a warship, a merchant ship and quite often as a tender, a small boat, to ferry goods and passengers to and from larger ships. It could be rowed or sailed, and could be manned by a small crew.
So, now you can picture Katy and the boys traveling over the Irish Sea to rescue Aodh!
Prisms
Elizabethans knew of prisms as novelties. Isaac Newton and his work on refraction and the essence of light was decades in the future, but I admit to a bit of rebelliousness when I’m told, “This is the way it was—the only way it was,” and “People did not know/use this word/say X before such-and-such a date.”
Newtown experimented, and validated, and, perhaps most importantly, published. But he surely wasn’t the first to think, or to wonder, to suspect, or even to experiment. Especially among inquisitive and curious people, maybe even people who worked around prisms and light and water, and might depend on them for their livelihood. Like seamen and captains. Like Aodh.
Originally, in fact, I pictured Aodh giving Katarina a gift of Icelandic spar (Viking sunspot) used by seamen in the Elizabethan era (and before) to help navigate, but as the spar does not refract light in the same way as a prism, I had to leave that one behind.
Still, refraction as a concept was theorized about in the 13th century, by Englishman Roger Bacon (1220-1292), and even further back, it was studied experimentally Al-Hasan Ibn al-Haytham (964-1014). Known as “Ahazen” in the West, he was a Muslim physicist and philosopher in Iraq & Egypt, who studied and wrote seminal works on the nature of light and optics. It was he who first introduced the law of refraction, and he used this knowledge to make lens shapes that focused light with no geometric aberrations. Pretty cool, huh? He is reputed to have written over 90 books, including his seminal work, the Book of Optics.
I think a thoughtful, curious, questing person like Aodh might have done a little experimenting on his own. And then, shared it with his woman, to help light her fire, so she could burn for him.
On Katarina’s investment flop, Gilbert Humphrey
This name was a total play on the real-life, contemporary ‘adventurer’ Sir Humphrey Gilbert, solider, mariner, adventurer in Ireland and the New World, and half-brother to Sir Walter Raleigh.
Unfortunately, his ‘adventuring’ in Ireland was quite viciously done. On one campaign, he put everyone to the sword, even women and children, then cut off their heads and staked them along the pathway to his tent. Because the Irish were the savages, right?
