According to John J. Marshall, Of the childhood and upbringing of the famous outlaw we have no reliable account, but a very rare pamphlet on the life and death of Redmond O'Hanlon, dated 1st August 1681 and published in Dublin, 1682, states that "Redmond, son of Loghlin O'Hanlon, was born near Poyntzpass in the County of Armagh in the year 1640," but some of the later lives say he was born at the foot of Slieve Gullion, and local tradition confirms this. "It was his good fortune to be educated in an English school where he attained to such perfection in that language that it might have proved a great advantage to him in the afterlife." His linguistic accomplishments certainly did prove useful to him in the afterlife. He is represented as a most accomplished gentleman, equal to Ossory, who was accounted for manners and bearing the finest cavalier since Sir Philip Sidney. He was also an excellent actor and mimic, able to personate a King's officer, merchant or countryman, as the exigencies of the case required. In one of the contemporary pamphlets, there is given what is most evidently a fictitious account of his youth and early days in which he is represented as a being a footman for Sir George Acheson of Markethill, and while in the gentleman's employment practising himself in all the accounts of roguery. Cosgrave's account seems quite probable when he says – "Redmond once happened to be at the killing of a gentleman in a quarrel, and flying for safety, stayed abroad for a long time, still refusing to come to a trial, till he was outlawed, which put him into his shifts." It is likely that O'Hanlon fled to France and there joined the Army where he acquired which he so often turned to good use in his after-career, and also was able to speak French like a native, Gaelic and English being equally at his command.