sh from Ireland and restore the Catholic faith. By this
time the Scottish settlers in Ulster, who appear to have once been as
much disliked by the English government as the Irish themselves, had
turned completely against him. His end was not in keeping with his
soldierly picturesque career. After a severe defeat he took refuge with
some old tribal enemies of his, who at first professed to receive him
as a friend and find a shelter for him. A quarrel sprang up at a
drinking-festival during the June of 1567, and Shane and most of his
companions were killed in the affray.

It is not easy to come to a satisfactory estimate of the character of
Shane O'Neil. Some English historians treat him as if he were a mere
monster of treachery and violent crime. Most Irish legends and stories
convert him into a perfect hero and patriot; while other Irish writers of
graver order are inclined to dwell altogether upon the wrongs done to
him, and the perfidies employed to ensnare him by those who acted for the
English government. It is necessary to keep always in mind that, in their
dealings with the Irish native populations, the English government only
too frequently employed deception and treachery, thus giving the Irish
chieftains what they considered warrant enough for playing a similar
game. Shane O'Neil was very unscrupulous in his methods of dealing with
his enemies; he was a man of sensuous passions and fierce hatreds, but he
was gifted with splendid courage, a remarkable capacity for soldiership,
and much of the diplomatist's or statesman's art.

An Irish essayist, who writes with much judgment and moderation on the
subject, describes Shane as "a thorough Celtic chief, not of the
traditional type, but such as centuries of prolonged struggle for
existence had made the chieftains of his nation." This seems the only
fair standard by which to judge his career. No Irish family gave more
trouble in its time to the English conquerors than did the O'Neils, and
Shane O'Neil was in some of his qualities the most extraordinary man of
the family. There were other O'Neils who bequeathed to their country's
history a brighter and purer fame, and of whose characters we can form a
common estimate with less chance of dispute, but in Shane O'Neil we see a
genuine type of the ancestral Irish chieftain brought into dealings and
antagonism with the advances and the emissaries of a newer civilization.

This prolonged period of incessant war brought abou