who they are and what they have done. It shows also the value and
the necessity of documentary evidence for establishing the truth
of history. How different from the vague, uncertain, shadowy
representations derived from oral tradition, or mere reports,
though contemporary, circulated from mouth to mouth, and exaggerated
according to the interests of one party or the other. Let us for
illustration compare Mr. Froude's vivid picture of this battle, so
disastrous to the English, with the account given of the same event by
the Annalists called the Four Masters. These writers had taken great
pains to collect the most authentic records of the various Irish
tribes from the invasion by Henry II. to the period of which we
are writing. They were intensely Irish, and of course glad of any
opportunity of recording events creditable to the valour of their
countrymen. They lived in Donegal, under the protection of O'Donel,
but they showed themselves quite willing to do full justice to his
great rival O'Neill. The presence of the lord deputy, the Earl of
Ormond, and other great men at Armagh, with a select English army,
would naturally have roused their attention, and when that army was
encountered and vanquished in the open field by the Irish general, we
should have expected that the details of such a glorious event would
have been collected with the greatest care from the accounts of
eye-witnesses. The bards and historiographers should have been on the
alert to do justice to their country on so great an occasion. They
were on the spot, they were beside the victors, and they had no excuse
whatever for ignorance. Yet here is the miserably cold, _jejune_,
feeble, and imperfect record which we find in the Annals of the Four
Masters:--'The Lord Justice of Ireland, namely Thomas Fitzwalter
(Sussex), marched into Tyrone to take revenge for the capture of
Caloach O'Donel, and also for his own quarrels with the country.
He encamped with a great army at Armagh, and constructed deep