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"kerns and gallowglasses"
Context and Language Videos
Act 1,
Scene 2
Lines 7b-23

An explanation of the reference to "kerns and gallowglasses" in Act 1, Scene 2 of myShakespeare's Macbeth. 

myShakespeare | Macbeth 1.2 Historical Reference: Kerns and Gallowglasses

Sergeant

                                   Doubtful it stood,
As two spent swimmers that do cling together
And choke their art. The merciless Macdonald —
Worthy to be a rebel, for to that,
The multiplying villainies of nature
Do swarm upon him — from the Western Isles,
Of kerns and gallowglasses is supplied.
And Fortune, on his damned quarry smiling,
Showed like a rebel's whore. But all's too weak,   
For brave Macbeth — well he deserves that name
Disdaining fortune with his brandished steel
Which smoked with bloody execution,
Like Valor's minion carved out his passage
Till he faced the slave,
Which ne'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him,
Till he unseamed him from the nave to the chaps,
And fixed his head upon our battlements.
Video Transcript: 

RALPH:  We now know that the battle is being fought between the forces of King Duncan and those of the nobleman Macdonald, who is rebelling against the king. Part of Macdonald’s forces consist of kerns and gallowglasses. 

DAVINA: Kerns and gallowglasses are Celtic warriors from the Western Islands off the coast of Scotland. The Celts were the earliest inhabitants of Great Britain. 

RALPH:  However, waves of Germanic tribes arrived in Britain in the 5th Century and their Anglo-Saxon culture eventually dominated in England and the populated lowlands of Scotland. That left the more primitive Celts only in Wales, the remote Scottish Highlands, and the Western Islands.

DAVINA:  King James, like all lowland Scots, tended to view the Celts as uncouth barbarians; so it’s not surprising that Shakespeare has characterized the kerns and gallowglasses as villains here.