Gallowglass

Chambers's Encyclopaedia, Volume 5: Friday to Humanitarians, p. 68

Gallowglass, a heavy armed foot-soldier in the ancient Irish wars. They are grouped with kernes in Shakespeare's Macbeth (I. ii. 13) as coming from the western isles of Scotland. The word is of course Irish, formed from giolla, 'a man-servant,' and cognate with the well-known gillie.

Source scan(s): p. 0077