Count Redmond O'Hanlon (c. 1640–1681) was a dispossessed Irish chieftain who became the most famous tóraidhe — outlaw or rapparee — of seventeenth-century Ulster. Born into the ruling O'Hanlon dynasty of Oirghíalla, whose ancestral seat was Tandragee Castle in County Armagh, he was stripped of his birthright by the Cromwellian land confiscations. When it became clear that the Restoration would not reverse these seizures, O'Hanlon took to the hills around Slieve Gullion and waged a guerrilla campaign against the new settlers.
The story
His legend grew rapidly after his death, fuelled by John Cosgrove's widely reprinted 'Genuine History of the Lives and Actions of the Most Notorious Irish Highwaymen' (1747) and William Carleton's adventure novel 'Redmond Count O'Hanlon; The Irish Rapparee' (1862). In folk tradition, O'Hanlon became a Robin Hood figure — robbing the rich Protestant landowners while protecting Catholic tenants. Thomas Clarke Luby included him among Ireland's 'Illustrious and Representative Irishmen' in 1878.
In the countryside around Slieve Gullion and the south Armagh borderlands, ghost stories of O'Hanlon riding on horseback are still told. The Gaelic football team in Poyntzpass, County Armagh, bears his name, and the landscape he haunted — the Ring of Gullion — remains deeply associated with his legend.