Raymond J. Clarke is one of the founders of the Gerry Tobin Irish Language School in
Babylon, New York. He has been a teacher of Irish at the school from its start.
The Gerry Tobin Irish Language School is a volunteer organization which exists to teach
and promote the Irish language. Lessons at the school are free. For more information,
see www.scoilgaeilge.org.
Raymond is also a long standing member of the Philo-Celtic Society, an organization
which exists to support the rennaissance of the Irish Language worldwide. For more
information, see www.philo-celtic.com.
Raymond’s history of the Gerry Tobin Irish Language School, in Irish (Gaelic) was
included in the book An File Ar Buile, by Séamas Ó Neachtain. His poetry in Irish has
been published in An Gael (www.angaelmagazine.com). A CD of his poems is available
from TiTráLí Media (www.scoilgaeilge.org/ceol).
Raymond is a life long resident of Long Island, New York, USA.
Dedicated to
The Indian Nations of North America
© 2009 Raymond J. Clarke
Pictures by James Norton
Preface
This all started out as a ‘p.s.’, a postscript, to a letter of thanks to a librarian. I thought it might be a
page or two in length. I kept writing and it got longer and longer. As too much time was going by, I sent the
letter off without a postscript so I could keep on writing. After a year or so, I ended up with what is written
here. I made it into a book, with a table of contents, and now a preface.
In the summer of 2008, escorted by two friends who encouraged me along, I delivered a bundle or
packet of folded charts I had made to the James Hardiman Library in Galway. I left the originals there for
copies to be made and kept by the library. A few weeks later, I received the originals back and brought them
with me when I returned to New York.
The idea of letting the library copy my charts came from my friends. It was something I hadn’t
planned to do and I packed the charts together without any forethought. When I inspected the bundle in New
York, I became concerned about this. A lot of the charts were unfinished, some with parts only lightly pencilled
in. I had brought these to Ireland to work on if I happened to be alone on rainy days. Even the few finished
charts in the pack would need some explanation of what I was intending to show.
So, when I wrote that letter thanking the librarian, that’s how it came about that my intended postscript
began with the words: I think I should write something about my charts.
I was anxious to defend the charts. I didn’t know how I would do it. I had the bundle opened and
several books of my earlier charts spread around on chairs and on the big table. If I had a plan in mind before I
started, I suppose it was to pick out charts and describe them one by one. It was only after I was well on with
the writing that a better method occurred to me. I would create new charts right on the pages as samples to
explain aspects of my chartmaking.
After I settled on that, I hit upon a second idea. Instead of making a random selection of chart topics as
samples of what I have done, I decided to make a stream of charts all flowing in the same thought direction. I
would take this opportunity to express and work out some of the ideas I had formed over the years about
Ireland’s history .
My sample charts would all be related in some way to the O’Clerys. I had actually started my Irish
history charting with the early O’Clerys. I could write about how I went back to them again later and looked at
both the part they played in history and the part history played on them. They were the way
I could express my thoughts and in fact my work on them had helped shape those very thoughts.
The form of the writing came out of my initial need to explain the charts. It just fell into place.
It’s like, and it is, an old chartmaker describing his craft. It resembles a kind of ‘how-to-do-it’ book. I kept that
idea in mind right through to the end. And, if I didn’t get so involved with actual history, I could have written
more about how the generation system itself is the basis for this craft. Along the way I could have shown
sample charts made from the early literature of Ireland
The original postscript was addressed to a single reader, the librarian. As I wrote and re-wrote things I
had different readers in mind at different times.
It was my children and grandchildren I was thinking of mostly when I was describing Cléireach and
various O’Clerys. I wanted them to be able to visualize and remember them not just as names on a list, but as
real people. I was thinking of friends, I suppose, when I was interpreting the history. Most of them have an
interest in history. It was probably for the friends also that I attempted to be witty, here and there..
I remembered the university students I saw in and around the library in Galway. Maybe I was trying to
inspire them to take up charting as an aid to their studies. Later on, I know I was thinking of their professors
and historians in general, when I was directing hard questions to them.
The things I focused on moved around also, as I went along. I made a sweep across them in the title —
‘my charts, the early O’Clerys, and the end of Aidhne’ — but there were more than that. I thought about land
and law in Ireland, surnames, Firbolgs, Vikings, independence, sovereignty, Christianity, missing history, and
errors in records – all sorts of things. Some of these of course were important themes that I would keep coming
back to.
From the beginning, I wanted to tell about things I had done with my charts and to point to discoveries
that otherwise might not be noticed. After I got into making the sample charts, I was surprised by new
discoveries myself. These were things I hadn’t expected. I became very happy that I was writing.
I got lost in it. I forgot about who would be reading. I was writing for myself. I was learning.
I didn’t go outside the house to libraries or use the internet for any of the material in the writing.
I had only the books in my own library as sources. Often with the new charts leading me, I re-read passages in
texts more carefully, more closely. I learned from that. I discovered new things directly but I would say I
uncovered other partially hidden things by noting and comparing the styles of language or the peculiar phrasing
of written records. I raised suspicions in my own mind at least..
For example, there were the killings of Flann Ó Cléirigh in 952 and Braon Ó Cléirigh in 1033, both
kings of Aidhne, that could be murders. Then there was Guaire Aidhne’s alleged killing of a saint around 550.
False! It was like ‘detective work’ to ask the right questions about these and other ‘mysteries’ uncovered by
careful re-reading..
A few times I did get the feeling that messages were coming to me out of the past. I heard things like
that from people who were searching through their family histories. I put a number of mysterious things in the
writing to keep the attention of my readers but I left the question open as to whether helpful messages were
coming across the barriers of time.
I should add that, when I was making new discoveries too fast and frequent to be that rare thing called
‘luck’ or when a flow of words seemed like someone else wrote them, I did imagine I was getting unseen help.
But it wasn’t coming from times in the past. I had asked God’s help in the writing and, when things went well,
that was the unseen help I imagined I was getting. Of course, the errors I’ve made here are my own.
I got help before the time of writing – from friends in Ireland and on Long Island. I told you that going
to the library in Galway I was encouraged along by a couple of friends. And before that, months and years ago,
other friends gave me books. And I noticed that a number of those very books helped in this particular writing.
So, I have a few who were messengers ahead of time to thank.
In Galway, thank you Séamas there in Bearna and Anna beyond in Headford. You insisted there was
value even in the rough old charts I made. You got me and them to the library. Without that, there’d be no
postscript and none of the new charts.
In north Mayo, thank you Peter and also Mícheál. Some time ago, you both saw that there were
peculiarities of history in the charts that should be in writing. When I finally began trying to write out some of
that history, I remembered your remarks, and it made me bolder.
As for books of history, thank you Cristíona over in Dublin. The dictionary of old and middle Irish you
sent me a few years ago had neat little phrases sprinkled all through it that gave insights about the tuath and old
Irish law. Another book you sent gave me what I needed to know about the character of Dubhaltach
MacFhirbhisigh. My writing would have been weaker without those books.
And thank you Bríd in Bearna. If you hadn’t shown me the corrections made to the book about the
high kings, I would have put in some generation changes based on one of the wrong dates and be regretting it
now.
On Long Island, below in Seaford, thank you Brian for those two shiny books on the Vikings you
probably forgot you gave me. It would have been hard to trace the raids in and around Aidhne in the 800s and
900s without them.
And there in Seaford too, thank you Gearóid for that book of the O’Clery genealogies. I wouldn’t have
known about the missing name mystery otherwise. It might turn out to be important. And, more than ten years
ago you said I should write something about the O’Clerys and now I did it.
It’s amazing. How did you all know what to say to me or give to me ahead of time? Who got you to do
those things that helped me? God only knows!
After the writing was done – the two early drafts of it at least — I got help too. Thanks again Cristíona,
Séamas, and Bríd for seeing that copies got to persons who might review the work and make comments. Thank
you Damien and Milly, mother and son in wonderful Kerry, for doing the same. And thanks now to Séamas in
West Babylon and my son Ciaran in Northport for seeing to whatever has to be done with this latest version.
Raymond J. Clarke
17 November 2009
CONTENTS
Topics Charts Parts Pages
I From Family Diagrams to History Charts 1
2
1. Early Times 4
2. Eusebius and Nennius 5
3. Hittites and Egyptians
4. Eusebius Revived 6
7
II From Family to History in Ireland 7
8
5. Getting Into Irish History Charts 9
6. Drawing Charts with a Slant 9
7. The Ancientness of Aidhne 10
8. Thoughts About the Tuath 11
9. Charts on Cléireach and His Early Descendants 12
13
(1) A Trial Arrangement of Cléireach and His Early Descendants 14
10. The Royal Heirs Take A Surname 15
(2) The Uí Fiachrach Aidhne, Uí Fiachrach Muaide, and Uí Biúin Aí Lines 16
(3) A Map of the Old Kingdom of the Fir Craíbe 17
11. A New Order in Old Gaul 18
12. Cléireach of Aidhne 18
(4) Fergal Aidhne’s Line to Cléireach and His Cousins 19
19
III Pages For Aidhne’s History Not Written 20
20
13. Cléireach and His Family in the Independent Struggle to Defend Aidhne 21
(5) Births and Ages of Maolfabhail’s Children 22
22
14. ‘Tulach Aidhne’ and the Arrival of ‘Thomond’ 23
(6) The Two-Generation Rise of the Dál gCais 24
25
15. ‘Tulach Aidhne’ and Mag Adhair From the 200s to 800s 25
(7) The Takings of Clare (following Gaynor) 26
27
16. The Poet Flann mac Lonáin and Lorcan 28
(8) Flann mac Lonáin in the Middle 29
(9) Kings of Caisil and Munster 30
30
17. Other Poems by Flann mac Lonáin and His Mother 31
18. A Diversion in the Mountains and Fin mac Cumhail
(10) When Find mac Umail Could Have Come to Aidhne
19. Flann mac Lonáin Meets a Dalcassian Coming Home
20. When Did the Dál gCais Become the Dál gCais?
(11) A Proposed Date-Line for the Dál gCais Line
21. Free Allegiance in Aidhne
22. New Learning in Aidhne
(12) Cléireach’s Family with Saints and Scholars
(13) Guaire Aidhne Not Guilty of Saint-Killing
23. Guaire Aidhne’s Two Defeats in Battles for Aidhne
(14) The Battle of Carn Feradaigh in ‘Limerick’ in 627
(15) The Battle of Carn Conaill in Aidhne in 649
IV Flann Ó Cléirigh, a Princess and a Prince
24. Flann O’Clery, Tuath King of Independent Aidhne and His End 33
(16) A Time-line for the Life of Flann O’Clery 33
34
25. Who Killed Flann O’Clery, and Why? 34
26. A Young Prince Arrives in Aidhne 35
27. The ‘Princess Mor’ and Her Place in the Family 36
36
(17) Five Generations in the Family of Eidhean 36
(18) Fr. Fahey’s First Version of Mor 37
(19) Mor, as Daughter of Eidhean, Matched with Brian’s Family 38
(20) Fr. Fahey’s Second Version of Mor 39
(21) Mulroy O’Heyne as a Possible Father of Mor 39
28. Could Mor Be the Child of a Next Generation Mother? 40
(22) Mor, as a Granddaughter of Eidhean, Matched with Brian’s Family 40
29. A Second Mor From Aidhne Marries into Brian’s Dynasty
(23) Who is the Most Likely Father of the Second Mor?
V Back To Square One: The Source Genealogies
30. The Problem of the Disappearance of the O’Clerys 41
31. Ó hAidhin and Ó hEidhin 42
42
(24) A Comparison of Cucogry O’Clery and Dubhaltach MacFhirbhisigh 43
32. Adapting Dubhaltach to Cucogry, the First Seven Generations 43
44
(25) Cucogry’s Genealogy in the O’Heyne and O’Brien Setting, Upper Section 44
33. Maelfavail’s Son Cugaola, and Who Was the Man He Killed? 44
45
(26) Three Possible Duplications in Dubhaltach 45
(27) Events Related to the Last O’Clery Kingship 46
34. A Depression in Spirit in Ireland and the Sad Slaying of Donald Ruadh 47
(28) Who Might Domhnall Ruadh ‘O’Brien’ Be? 48
35. Muircheartach Mór Ua Briain, What He Did in Aidhne, and How He Affects My Chart 49
(29) Who Was Giolla na Naomh na Foghla? 50
(30) Cucogry O’Clery’s Genealogy in the O’Heyne and O’Brien Setting (a new trial chart) 52
(31) A Missing ‘Aidhin’ in Cucogry’s Genealogies 54
36. A Likely Period for the Declaration of the Ó hEidhin Surname, 1092-1102 56
37. The O’Heyne Chieftainship in Aidhne in the 1100s and into the 1200s
38 Nearing the End of the O’Clery and O’Heyne Days Together in Aidhne
39. The Expulsion of the O’Clerys from Aidhne
Appendices
I Firbolgs and Their Connections to Later History 58
II A Surprising Chart Built on Guaire Aidhne’s Battles 59
III Cléireach Descendants, Cucogry’s Line, and Some Clarkes 61
IV The Ideas behind the Dedication 62
1
MY CHARTS, EARLY O’CLERYS, AND THE END OF AIDHNE
I think I should write something about my charts. I’ve been drawing them occasionally for more than
twenty years. For most of that time I haven’t shown them to anyone, even family members. It was a solitary
world I entered when no one was looking. I never thought I’d be describing it. I kept no written record of my
ideas or reasons. Now I have only a large collection of charts. Maybe they will remind me of what I was
thinking while I was making them so I can explain things.
I. From Family Diagrams to History Charts
1. Early Times:
In the 1970s I was working on my family history, usually on Sundays, and I began to make crude
diagrams to keep the family members straight in my mind. I was able to picture the family relationships through
the diagrams.
My early diagrams had a simple plan. If I was working from parents to children and children’s children
the drawing was narrow on top and wider down the page. If I was working from a child to parents and parents’
parents, the shape was like an inverted triangle, narrow at the bottom, wider toward the top. Whichever way the
drawing went, earlier time was from the top of the page. I saw it as children ‘coming down’ from the past
I used vertical lines to go from generation to generation, horizontal lines for children or uncles and
aunts in the same generation. The trouble would start when there were too many persons in one generation and
the paper wasn’t wide enough. At first, I began to draw more than one horizontal line for a single generation,
fitting the names in wherever I could find space on the page and with longer and sometimes angled lines back to
their fathers. The paper was dictating the shape of the diagram and the page became a kind of hodge-podge.
I still see hodge-podge diagrams in very respectable books today. But when I was doing them myself,
it bothered me. I wanted to keep one generation to one horizontal line – brothers, sisters, and cousins on the
same level. I suppose I wanted the diagram to dictate to the paper, not the paper dictating the diagram. I guess
that was the beginning of my pre-planning. If I had to get wider paper or paste papers together to keep the
horizontal levels straight, I would do it
Up to the mid-1980s, all the diagrams I was making were of my parents’ families in New York and
Ireland. That’s what I was concentrating on. I can only guess at the thoughts I had about the drawing itself. In
my mind, it seems, I had a vague notion of a map, with lines of latitude and longitude. I didn’t put words on it
but I seemed to be thinking of a two-dimensional format. I may have already begun calling these diagrams of
mine ‘charts’ – even though I had no numbers along the side and bottom, as charts usually do.
I can’t say it was the beginning of my ‘history charts’ yet because there was no history – or what is
usually called history – involved in it. I am fairly sure when and how the ‘history’ came in. In the spring of
1985, as the time was coming for me to retire from my job of teaching school, I was thinking of ways I could
enjoy my new free time. One of several things I thought of was ancient history. I used to like that when I was
young and in my early twenties studying in college, or university. When I got out of school I went right into the
Navy and after that into the hard world of working for a living. I never got back to ancient history. Why not let
that be one of the things I do with my free time?
My major courses in college and for several post-graduate years were in philosophy, but in college I
also ‘minored’ in ancient history. I enjoyed the history courses most. I studied the classics, Roman and Greek,
and, in a Catholic college, the Holy Land and a few other parts of the Near East. I was anxious to go back
through the thirty-five years or so and continue where I left off.
Even before my teaching job ended, I gathered up some of my old school books and purchased other
books on the Greeks and Romans. It wasn’t long before I had leisure hours to go back through years to my
favorite college reading and from there back through centuries to another almost familiar ancient world.
And so, my readings in ancient history began. Here again, as with my family history, dealing with all
the names of the interrelated Roman emperors, the Julians and others, I soon fell into trying to picture the
relations I was reading about by making ‘charts’. It was just natural for me to do it.
I had no practical use for the charts, these were not members of my family. I enjoyed the drawing.
Also, the charts made the history reading clearer to me and I could see wider periods of time in one place. When
I put the books aside and looked at the charts alone, I could remember what was in the reading again. And, I
could actually imagine new things not in the reading.
If I have to analyze it more closely now, I would say that the history charts were different from my
family charts precisely in regard to the range of years covered. Perhaps that explains why I soon became
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conscious that I was actually making two-dimensional charts and I began superimposing them onto a
chronological grid. Along the side of the page, I began to mark horizontal lines into ten or twenty year periods
from earlier to later time, moving down the paper.
I can tell you about some of the charts I made and maybe along the way mention ideas I picked up
about this kind of chartmaking.
I worked on Roman families, on the Herodians in Judea, the families of Joseph and Mary, king David’s
family, and others. Those early family diagrams were triangle-shaped, similar to my own family diagrams but
spread out further. I needed wider paper and I found it when I got myself a large accounting book. Some of my
most extensive early family charts are in this large book. I got three slightly smaller books like it later on. With
the large book, I was free to explore plural marriages and combine greater families on the same chart.
On one double page spread of the book I see that I drew the combining of the Hasmonians with the
Herodians through the marriage of Mariamne to Herod I. From Mariamne’s brother Aristobolus III, last of the
line, her family is traced eight generations back, passing through the ‘Maccabee’ brothers to their great
grandfather Simon Hasmonai. The chart shows that a daughter of Jonathan Haphus, one of the brothers,
married the great great grandfather of the famous author Flavius Josephus. It also shows eight of the ten
marriages of Herod I and from three to five generations of their descendants.
On another spread of pages, I see myself trying to work out whether Jesus is a great grandson, and
John the Baptist a grandson, of Matthan, the Levite. That would make Jesus a second cousin once removed
from John the Baptist. On the same chart, I am showing that Mary Cleopas (? married to Alpheus) is the half-
sister of Mary, the mother of Jesus. That would make Jesus a (? quarter) first cousin to the children of Mary
Cleopas, namely, James, Joses, Simon, Jude, Salome, and possibly another sister, Anna.
On separate papers I keep in a looseleaf book, I have several diagrams trying to work out other
possibilities for the families of Mary and Joseph. I see on one of those sheets that I was getting information
from five volumes (of a larger set ?) that I rescued from the incinerator on my part-time evening job, The New
Testament, A Commentary and Notes, by Adam Clarke, New York, 1837. He is a ‘namesake’ but no ancestor
of mine, as far as I know.
With the chronological grid I could also work on ‘non-families’. I could draw column-like listings of
emperors, pharaohs, or kings. These listings took the shape of vertical lines matched to time periods on the side
of the page. Using two or more lists, I could compare contemporaries on the grid. They weren’t tied together
horizontally by siblings and cousins, but by something outside themselves, the grid dates that I had put on the
edge of the paper.
I think this tying of unrelated people together by dates is called ‘synchronizing’. I wasn’t familiar with
that term then. I would think the word ‘contemporary’. Actually, since that was a big mouthful for me, I
shortened it to ‘co-temp’, a slang form, which I can still see on my charts. I used to be looking for co-temps.
2. Eusebius and Nennius:
It’s only fairly recently that I learned something about the long history of ‘synchronizing’. A few years
ago I purchased a book called The Chronicle of Eusebius and Greek Chronographic Tradition by Alden A.
Mosshammer, New Jersey, 1979. I took an interest in it because of my charting. It’s a difficult book to read but
I struggled through a lot of it, making numerous margin notes.
Synchronizing was practiced by Eusebius (260-340 A.D.) Here are some easy quotes from the book:
“He collected … the regnal lists of the Chaldeans, Assyrians, Medes, Persians, Lydians, Hebrews, Egyptians,
Athenians, Argives, Sicyonians, Lacedaemonians, Corinthians, Thessalians, Macedonians, and Romans” (p.
34). He “arranged the lists in parallel columns in such a way as to make the numbered years in accordance
with their own annual systems appear as a horizontal synchronism on the page.” He began “with the birth of
Abraham and assigned to that year the number 1.”… “Every ten years he made some kind of distinctive mark,
so that the universal chronology was divided into convenient decades on the Abraham standard” (p.35). I’d say
he was making a two-dimensional chart without using a grid.
I didn’t know about Eusebius and the Greek ‘synchronists’ when I began my charts but I was led into
similar thinking because I was finding both undated and dated lists occupying roughly the same historical
period. I suppose it would occur to any chart maker to try to coordinate these two kinds of lists. The horizontal
on a chart invites synchronizing. As for dating itself, what is it if not a tool for synchronizing.
So, the nature of what I was doing set me up to look for contemporaries. One thing I had to learn,
however, was to distinguish between a generation list (father to son) and a reign list (not always father to son).
The reign list also would generally have more names on it than a generation list over the same time span or
period. Synchronizing is not easy.
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I can tell I had thoughts like these in my head in 1985 by a series of charts I find now in my early
collection. At some point back then, I photocopied all the pages of a book from a library: It was Nennius’
History of The Britons (together with ‘The Annals of the Britons’ ‘The Court Pedigrees of Howell the Good’
and ‘The Story of the Loss of Britain’), a collection by A.W. Wade-Evans, London, 1938.
The pedigrees were a group of early undated generation lists centered around Howell (Hywel or Higuel
Dda), a king of the Britons who died in A.D. 950. I decided to make a chart of his genealogical line that went
back 35 generations to a man named Belus Magnus who was married to Anna, allegedly a cousin to Mary, the
mother of Jesus. I had a plan in my mind for the chart.
I see now that my plan was like something Eusebius used to do. He divided his period of history into a
number of great events, or ‘epochal dates’. These were well-known horizontal marks for history and he would
adjust his various vertical lists between or overlapping these marks. Well, I had two marks, Howell’s death in
A.D. 950 and the Anna / Mary generation beginning about 25 B.C.
The two marks covered a span of nearly a thousand years. In one of my school books, I had two
vertical lists that, taken together, also covered this period, a list of Roman emperors and a list of the Popes. The
book had roughly synchronized these lists. I had what I thought I needed.
I decided to copy the three lists together on a series of pages, but I would space the names differently.
There were more than a hundred Popes before A.D. 950, so for each of Howell’s 35 pedigree names, I could put
maybe three Pope names. The emperor line, which began before Christ, would be lined up with the Popes.
Each list of names in its own way would cover the time span between the two markers.
I was hoping that when I finished I’d have at least a general idea when Howell’s ancestors might have
lived. I wouldn’t have dated an undated list, but I would have a ‘date period’ to put around each name. If old
Eusebius was around, he probably would have cautioned me about my plan. There’s an old saying that may
apply here: ‘If you don’t know history, you’re bound to repeat it’.
How did my plan work out? I don’t know because I never finished it. I can’t remember exactly why
I stopped. I sensed it wouldn’t work. I may have begun to think seriously about the differences between a
generation list and a reign list at that time. The reigns were erratic. There was no pattern to them. I think I saw
at least that much then. But I doubt I went further yet to notice that there was a kind of natural rhythm in the
generation lists. That was to come later.
After I abandoned that plan to make long vertical lists, I got a large sheet of paper and began what
seems to be my first conscious attempt to construct a kind of latitude-and-longitude-type chart that could be
tacked up. I began to chart all the British pedigrees side by side. There were about thirty lists, many connected
back into others. They had some interesting and some confusing things in them,
I noticed that the list for Howell’s wife, Elen, traced back to Maximus, a Roman general in Britiain,
who was ‘proclaimed’ an emperor in 383, and then her line went further back through seven generations to
Constans (b.? 323 – d. 350), the third son of Constantine the Great – too many generations for too few years. I
found a Welsh connection with the Anglo-Saxons, going back to what looked like heathen gods. I found early
Briton connections with the Roman Claudians, with the wife of St. Peter and a half-brother of St.Paul, and with
Joseph of Arimathea, in whose grave Christ was laid. Even though I thought these were invented stories, I
dutifully put them all onto my chart as the months of 1985 went by.
Finally, I was ready in November 1985 to formally ‘proclaim’ the completion of my first neatly done
wall chart. I have it still, all folded up in my book of charts. It was carefully done in pencil. On top, in Roman
capitals, it has a title: ‘EARLY KINGS OF WALES AND ROMAN BRITANNIA’…… ‘CHART ONE’.
With the title and all, it looks like I intended to display it, but I don’t think a single soul has seen it,
except me. It has a picture of a thousand years on it – inventions and all. As I look it over now, I see I was not
strict enough with my horizontal generation rule. I left what I thought were sensible gaps trying to match up
with dates in the book. Because of that lack of strictness, it may have to remain unseen, and folded up as a
keepsake.
On those pages in 1985, there’s another thing I did. I think it’s important now that I mention it. I began
to work out the generations ‘hidden’ in the Roman reign list – out of pure curiosity it seems, because I didn’t
make use of it on Chart One.
If you count the names of the Roman emperors from the first, Octavius (27 BC – AD 14 ), to the last in
the West, Romulus (AD 475-476 ), I think you’ll find there were 71 or 72 of them. Octavius was a grand-
nephew, adopted by Julius Caesar (Dictator, 47-44 BC). By hunting through several books, I worked out the
related and matching generations that had passed by from the parents of Julius Caesar (Gaius and Aurelia) down
to Valentinianus III (425-455). Extending it now to a daughter of his, Eudoxia, who was married a second time
in 456, would make her children a match for Romulus’ generation. I make the count that only 23 generations
passed from Caesar’s father to the last Roman emperor of the West.
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I could be off by one or two generations, but I don’t know of anyone else who has tried to figure the
count. Knowing the generations of the Roman rulers (as well as their reigns) would help in efforts to make
‘synchronisms’, especially with other generation lists. It would help me too, if I ever try to re-do Chart One.
There is also another book I used back then and I still have it. A friend gave it to me when I was in the
hospital recovering from a knee problem. I think it’s a rare book, in old-fashioned Irish with an English
translation: An Authentic History of Ireland by Eoin Ua Chearbhshuil, Chicago, 1901. I kept the book on my
shelves at home and along about 1985 I began to make charts from the prose genealogies in it. It contained what
I believe now is a unique view of the early settlement of Ireland. Perhaps it is a work of fiction. I mention it
only because it might be the first charting I did on early Irish genealogy. It was an isolated introduction for me
and didn’t develop into anything.
3. Hittites and Egyptians:
Mentioning the Roman generations makes me think of a later chart I did where I also changed reign
lists into generation lists. We can ‘fast-forward’ 21 years for a look and then ‘rewind’ back to 1985. It’s a chart
I made in September 2006. It is titled ‘EXPLORING THE STORIES’ and subtitled ‘With Egyptians and
Hittites fitted to the Irish Noah scheme’. One goal of the chart was to compare the Egyptian and Hittite reign
lists with the Irish and Jewish generation lists. I had forgotten working on the Roman generations in 1985 but
something in my head told me I had to deal completely in generations here. (Maybe I was wiser by 2006 – it
was about time). Anyway, without hesitating, I made the effort to convert the reign lists into generation lists.
From the prose in The Kingdom of the Hittites by Trevor Bryce, Oxford, 1998, I worked out that there
were 18 generations from the first listed king, Labarna (d. 1650 BC ), to the 29th and last listed king, Suppilu-
liuma II (reigned 1207 – ? BC ). I spelled his name wrong on the chart. The work was fairly easy because the
author consistently noted family relationships.
It was much harder for me to extract the family details from the prose of The Oxford History of
Ancient Egypt edited by Ian Shaw, Oxford, 2000. Little by little, I worked out that there seemed to be 21
generations from the beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasty to the beginning of the Twenty Second Dynasty.
That would be from Ahmose (1550-1525 BC) to Sheshonq I ( 945-924 BC).
For the chart, I first reconstructed the generations of Hittites and Egyptians independently by the
vertical descent of family relationships (like son, nephew, adoption, or marriage). I didn’t use the reign dates.
After that, in a secondary way, I could use the reign dates to horizontally line up the two distinct and unrelated
peoples. At one point I was able to match the Hittite Ammuna ( ?1555-1535 BC) in the sixth generation from
Labarna with Ahmose (1550-1525BC), in the first generation of the 18th Dynasty.
And thirdly, I looked through the index of the texts to see if I could find any cultural, political, or war
contacts, or ‘links’, in the historical narrative. I found two, and there may be more. In 1274 BC, the battle of
Kadesh between the Hittites and Egyptians took place. It was the second from the last year of the Hittite
Muwatilli II’s reign and the fifth year in the beginning of the Egyptian Rameses II’s reign. This fit my chart
because Muwatilli was in the generation ahead of Rameses. Also, centuries earlier, around 1447 BC, the Hittite
Zidanta II sent gifts to the Egyptian Tutmose III. Again, the two were one generation apart on my chart. I was
satisfied that these two narrative links confirmed the generation matches I had made.
Then there was at least one good link between the Egyptians and the kings of Judah, which I knew
about beforehand or I wouldn’t have attempted the chart. In 926 BC, the pharaoh Sheshonq I, or ‘Shishak’
( 945-924 BC) exacted a harsh tribute from the king of Judah, Rehoboam ( 931-914 BC), who was Solomon’s
son and the grandson of David. I got the Judah reign dates (but only back to David) from The Bible Unearthed
by Finkelstein and Silberman, New York, 2001.
The Egyptian-Judah match is the key to the chart. I matched the generation of Sheshonq I and the
generation of Rehoboam. Every thing else fell into place around that.
Now, on the left side of the chart I was able to list the Jewish or Hebrew generation names down from
Rehoboam to Amazia (798 – 760 BC) and up from Rehoboam, past David, through undated time back to Noah.
Then on the right side of the chart I crossed over to Noe, the Irish for Noah, and copied in an abridged version
of the generation lists that were taken from Lebor Núachongbála (c. AD 1151-1201), as copied by Michel Ó
Cléirigh in 1631, which I found in The Book of Leinster, Vol. I, edited by Best, Bergin and O’Brien, Dublin,
1931. On several vertical lines, I brought those generations down to the grandsons of Golam, or ‘Milés
Espáine’, and these grandsons, Conmal, Iarel Fáith, etc. match with the generation of Jehoram (851-843 BC),
horizontally across from them.
By the way, on the chart I mistakenly put in Athaliah as the wife of Ahaziah, she was the wife of
Jehoram and mother of Ahaziah.
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I had begun this chart to explore the stories, that is, the narrative, based on the largely undated or
controversially dated Hebrew generation lists and the undated Irish generation lists that trace back from ‘the
takings of Ireland’ to the Bible’s Noah. I think the chart shows that the generation lists need more exploratory
work. A lot of people would know that much without looking at a chart. But the chart displays the length and
breadth of the dating landscape that is before us. How can you explore if you don’t see where you can go?
I used the metaphor of a ‘landscape’ there, but the ‘exploring’ I’m thinking about is of time. The lists
of ancient names in the Bible and in Ireland’s literature, as I said, have no dates. The only connection they have
with time is through ‘generations’. They are not just any lists, they are father-and-son lists. That can be
‘timed’.
For example, Finkelstein and Silberman found a trace of a longer version of the generation ‘road’ or
‘time-trail’ to Noah. On page 35 of their book it says : “…the later genealogies that traced Jacob’s
descendants were confusing, if not plainly contradictory. Moses and Aaron, for example, were identified as
fourth-generation descendants of Jacob’s son Levi, while Joshua, a contemporary of Moses and Aaron, was
declared to be a twelfth-generation descendant of Joseph, another of Jacob’s sons. This is hardly a minor
discrepancy.”
Yes, it’s not minor. It would push Jacob’s grandfather Abraham back to a place eight generations
earlier than the chart’s 1400s BC and Noah himself eight generations earlier than the chart’s 1600s BC. That
would also pull the synchronized Irish Noe list in the Lebor Núachongbála back eight generations into B.C.
time.
In addition, I found a trace of what might be a shorter version of the generation ‘road’ to Milés
Espáine in one of my books, the Genealogical Tracts I, prepared by Toirdhealbhach O Raithbheartaigh, Dublin,
1932. On page 101, it gives the genealogy of one Conall Cruachna. He was a king in Connacht and said to be
the foster-father of Conn of the Hundred Battles, placing him, perhaps, around A.D. 200. Conall’s genealogy
has only 21 generations back to Genand, the Firbolg, and therefore only 18 generations back to Milés. The
traditional generation road from Conn to Milés, by one count I made, goes through 52 generations. Other
versions might make it less, but I doubt any traditional version would be as low as 18 generations.
Any shortening of that distance would have the effect of pulling the entire Irish generation scheme
forward in time.This would make it impossible for the lists given in the Irish scheme to reach back to a Noe /
Noah, even if he’s left in the 1600s BC. Forget it, if Finkelstein and Silberman are on to something.
Those are two examples of what I mean by ‘exploring’. I noted both of these ‘road cautions’ on my
Exploring the Stories chart with ‘a signposting’ and ‘a billboard’ on the ‘map’ itself for any traveller who enters
the landscape.
Speaking of signs, there are also signs of art or historian tinkering in the Irish Noe scheme that are
noticeable when it is ‘synchronized’ with the biblical Noah scheme, as it is on the chart. If you move your
finger horizontally across from Abraham, the father of the Jewish people, you come to Ebir Scot(t), the father of
the Gaels or Scots, and Nemed, the father of the Tuatha Dé Danaan and the Fir Bolg. It looks artificially
contrived.
On the other hand, maybe there was a traditionally known juncture of brothers, sons to a common
father, at Nemed and then, much later, the people-word ‘Scot’ was added to Ebir as a mark of comparison,
equivalent to Nemed – without any reference to Abraham. Nemed’s generation may have been where it
belonged in the tradition and the ‘art’, if any, came in guessing the generations above that, to get back to what
was thought to be the generation of Noah. It’s a story element to explore.
However, these questionings and suspicions do not bring about any changes. The literature we have
remains. We are left with the traditional Bible generation lists back to Noah and the traditional ‘takings of
Ireland’ generation lists back to Noe. The literature is the literature.
As for my personal reasons for doing this Exploring the Stories chart, well, I think I made it just so
I could look at it and think about it. I can look at Abraham, at generation 11, and I can think of his ‘co-temps’,
the Egyptian Amenhotep II and the Hittite Tudhaliya I. I can look at Lug ‘of the many arts’ among the Tuatha
Dé Danaan, at generation 25, and can think of his co-temp, Solomon, the wise ruler in the Holy Land. I can
make secular associations with the biblical list and biblical associations with the secular lists. Imagination
works through associations. I have facilitated my imagination. I can see pictures. What does it matter for a
while that my pictures haven’t been proven. When they are proven false, I can make new pictures.
4. Eusebius Revived:
I have described the chart and my intentions for it, but now I think an unintentional outcome of the
chart might be worth mentioning. Before I began, I didn’t know how the Hittite and Egyptian reign lists would
fit in with the generation lists to Noah. After the chart was all done, I looked, and there it was! Labarna the
Hittite and Noah are both on the same generation horizontal. They both can be labelled generation one. There’s
a biblical number 1, Noah, and now a new secular number 1, Labarna (d. 1650 BC). I didn’t design the chart for
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this to happen. It came about because Sheshonq went to war against Rehoboam and, therefore, I put them in the
same generation. The Noah-Labarna connection was unforeseen.
After just seeing the book about Eusebius again and my 1985 generation list of Roman rulers
converted from reign lists, I’m beginning to think about the significance this Noah-Labarna connection could
have. It’s like Eusebius calling Abraham number one, but it goes back beyond Abraham to Noah for number
one and it provides a second, independent number one in Labarna. Eusebius tried for second and third lists too,
using literature that was ancient even in his time. This second Hittite Labarna list, reinforced and then continued
by a third Egyptian Ahmose list, is taken from today’s historical narrative, from today’s scholarship.
Reign dates are meticulously examined now against a single standard calendar. Eusebius was using a
literature of mixed undated generation lists and dated reign lists from various calendars. This new list could be
converted from dynastic reign lists into a ‘pure’ or unmixed generation list with supporting dates. Suppose a
single documented generation list from Labarna the Hittite in the days of Noah down to our own generation
could be screwed and fitted together as a measuring rod. The dream of old Eusebius could be realized at last.
II. From Family to History in Ireland
5. Getting into Irish History Charts:
So far I’ve explained why I did family diagrams and why I did history charts while reading books
about the classic period of Roman and earlier Near Eastern history. I have to try to explain now why I started
to do charts about Irish history. Two things come to mind as I am looking at charts that I did in the early1987.
The first is a small matter but significant. It has to do with my surname, Clark or Clarke. For a long
time I knew that our family surname Clarke was Ó Cléirigh in the Irish language and that the English spellings
Clarke, O’Clery, and Cleary were varieties of the same surname. My father’s mother, Katy Quinn, had Irish
from the cradle and after she came to America she would speak in Irish to her brother and two sisters in New
York. My father knew a few words and expressions. I began to take an interest in the language myself during
the 1950s. So, it’s perhaps as early as the 1950s that I would have known about the Clarke-O’Clery name
connection and this could explain the peculiar way I began my charts on Irish history. I see that the earliest
charts I made that touch on actual Irish history are all about the O’Clerys.
The second is a larger matter. Though I had started making history charts in my leisure time in the
mid-1980s while reading Roman and classic-period history, I also had a fairly strong interest, from at least the
late 1950s onward, in Ireland’s political history – mostly recent history, but it had strands that reached back to
the distant past. This Irish interest played no part in the early-world history charts I made, but it was there in my
head along with a lot of other things I thought about.
I began to buy books about Ireland before I did any Irish history charts. I continued buying them while
I was doing the charts. I got them from shops in Ireland and from an Italian buyer who travelled up and down
the east coast of the United States. He kept his eyes open for Irish history books for me. On the top of one of the
O’Clery charts I did in 1987, I thought to write a list of the books I was using. Unfortunately, I didn’t continue
that practice. I’ll copy the list for you in the order I numbered them. The order might have some significance,
I don’t know. One thing for sure is that I had all these books by 1987:
(1) Walsh, Paul. The Ó Cléirigh Family of Tír Conaill, Dublin, 1938
(2) Moody, Martin, & Byrne. A New History of Ireland, Vol VIII, Oxford, 1982
(3) Ua Clerigh, Arthur. History of Ireland, Port Washington, N.Y., first published, circa 1910
(4) Hynes, James. The White Sheeted Fort, Mold, Wales, 1980.
(5) O’Brien, M.A. Corpus Genealogiarum Hiberniae, Vol I, Dublin, 1976
(6) Blacum, Aodh de. Gaelic Literature Surveyed, Dublin and Cork, 1929
(7) Freeman, Martin. Annála Connacht, A.D. 1224 –1544, Dublin, 1938
(8) Fahey, J. History and Antiquities of the Diocese of Kilmacduagh, Dublin, 1893
(9) O’Donoghue, John. Historical Memoir of The O’Briens, Dublin, 1860
(10) O’Hart, John. Irish Pedigrees, Dublin, 1876
(11) Knox, Hubert T. The History of the County Mayo, Dublin, 1908
(12) O’Flaherty, Roderick. West or H-Iar Connacht, notes by James Hardiman,Dublin, 1846
(13) O’Connor, Dermod. Keatings General History of Ireland, J. Duffy & Sons, Dublin, undated, but
dedicated to William O’Bryen, 4 th earl of Inchiquin, who died 1719
It was on a visit to Galway city, I don’t know exactly when, that I bought Father Paul Walsh’s book,
number (1) above, in Kenny’s Book Shop.. Without that rather thin, soft-covered book, there would be no
beginning for my Irish history charts.
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6. Drawing Charts with a Slant:
When I was charting Roman or Egyptian history I had no slant in that. But before I started charting
Irish history I had a slant or perspective that I brought into it – especially, in regard to the O’Clerys, where I
began my charting of Ireland’s history.
It’s impossible for me to reconstruct all the notions I had about Irish history before I began charting the
O’Clerys. There is one thing I noticed just now as I was re-reading the very first page of Father Walsh’s book. It
seems I had some kind of preference that had to do with ‘land’. He happened to mentioned two places and I
took more interest in one than I took in the other: In introducing the O’Clerys he says:
“It is a historical fact that dynasts of the name Ua Cléirigh ruled the district of Uí Fiachrach Aidhne –
roughly, the territory of Cill Mac Duach, about Gort, in the southwest of county Galway. Cléireach, from whom
the surname came, must have lived before the year 850. Ua Cléirigh, the surname, is first found at the notice of
the death in 916 of one of Cléireach’s descendants. From that year until 1033 the surname is in continuous
association with the same territory… About 150 years later William fitz Adelm de Burgh, ancestor of all the
Burkes of Ireland, is said to have dispossessed the Ó Cléirigh family. They migrated to Tirawley, a region in the
north-east of county Mayo, west of the Moy and Ballina.”
[Note: There are three mistakes in that second to last sentence. I’ll point them out and go on: (1) Adding 150 to
1033 gives 1183, but the O’Clerys weren’t expelled from Aidhne until about 1267. (2) William fitz Adelm de Burgh (d.
1198) was not ancestor of these Burkes. William de Burgo (d. 1205/6 ) was their ancestor. (3) Walter de Burgo (d. 1271), a
grandson of the Willam de Burgo who died in 1205/6, was the one who dispossessed and expelled the O’Clerys.]
The two places Fr. Walsh mentioned were Uí Fiachrach Aidhne in Galway and Tirawley in Mayo. My
attention went to Aidhne. In the remainder of his book, Fr. Walsh tells us in detail about the achievements of
the later O’Clerys in Tír Conaill. I admired those achievements, but I seemed to take more interest, from the
very first, in Aidhne, the home place of the early O’Clerys.
On visits to Ireland, I would stop at a hotel in Gort Inse Guaire and stay for days at a time. In a hired
car, I’d travel the local roads, often going out to Cinn Mhara, Kinvara, on the shore. One day, on August 21,
1982, in the castle called Dunguaire, I bought the book, White Sheeted Fort, subtitled ‘A history of Guaire the
Hospitable, King of Connaught and his descendants’. I marked the date in the book. I picked up Monsignor
Jerome Fahey’s book about the history and antiquities of Kilmacduagh around that time too.
It was from these two books and from my visits that I got to know the area that used to be Aidhne.
Now it is known as Kilmacduagh. Fr. Fahey says the Diocese of Kilmacduagh was established during the
papacy of Honorius I (625-638). This was an early form of ‘diocese’, possibly little more that a church district
or territory marked out along the boundaries of the still existing Aidhne, which was definitely not a mere
‘district’ or ‘territory’ under some other jurisdiction. Aidhne was a ‘tuath’.
I had a general idea of what a tuath was already back then, and I sensed that Aidhne had a long
history. These are notions I had before I did any charts on the O’Clerys or Irish history. I’d say the tuath and
Aidhne were part of that slant I had, so I should say more about these two subjects.
7. The ancientness of Aidhne:
I read about the tuath in general and about Aidhne in particular. James Hynes, in his book, says little
more than that ‘Ui Fiachrach Aidhne’ was a tuath and that there were about 150 tuatha in ‘early Ireland’. By
‘early Ireland’, he probably meant Ireland about the time of St. Patrick in the A.D. 400s.
Monsignor Jerome Fahey, mentions places in Aidhne earlier than Patrick, which were named after
‘Firbolgs’ who migrated into the area in the time of Maeve (Medb), as he says, “a little before the period of the
Incarnation of our Lord.” H.T. Knox, in his book, listed above, gives a line of Fir Craíbe kings beginning with
Fiach in the generation of Medb’s father, Eochaidh Feidlech, a line later including Conall Cruachna, foster
father of Conn Cédcatach, and ending with Aid, the last king of this earlier Aidhne. Aid lived in the generation
of Art, Conn’s son. This suggests that Aidhne was a significant place at least for about ten generations, or if
you wish, from about the first century B.C. to the third or fourth century A.D.
Aidhne was older still than that. Fahey mentions entries in the medieval annals about a king named
Ugaine Mór “who gave the territory of Aidhne to Orb, one of his sons.” I’ve read about this Ugaine. I think he
may have been newly arrived, or at least a ‘stranger’, because he was taken in as a foster son by Cimbaeth and
Macha who shared the rule in Ulaid. John O’Donovan in his introduction to the annals of the Four Masters says
Cimbaeth began his reign in 305 B.C. If we think that is about right, we can get an idea about the time of
Ugaine when some years later he avenged the slaying of his foster mother and became king himself. It may
have been around 270 B.C. His son Orb – in Lebar na Núachongbála, he’s called both Oce and Ord – may
have become a chief or king in Aidhne by 260 B.C.
There is a peculiar story that goes along with Ugaine Mór. He is said to have had 25 children, 22 boys
and 3 girls. They were often squabbling and had armed followers. So, they say, Ugaine Mór divided Ireland up
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into 25 ‘districts’ and placed each of his children over one of them. For the sake of peace! That’s how Orb (Oce
or Ord) became a chief in Aidhne. Instead of these being adjacent districts, as in our modern countries, suppose
they were pre-existing settlement lands, fairly isolated places with woods, lakes, bogs, or mountains separating
them. Ireland, around the year 260 B.C., might have had 25 tuatha – not 150, as later, but just 25. The story
itself may have been a way of noting the tuath geography.
I looked for Aidhne in my copy of the Four Masters , that is, in the Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland,
7 Vols, De Burca Rare Books, Dublin, 1990. It mentions the ‘clearing of the Plain of Aidhne’ between 1474 and
1454 B.C., during the reign of a king named Eochaidh Faebharghlas, son of Conmael. This is the earliest
‘dated’ mention of Aidhne I can find. The clearing of a forest would be a necessary act for the founding of a
settlement, or at least for the change-over of an older community from a livelihood of mostly fishing, hunting
and gathering to major farming. That Conmael above is one of the last listed on my Hittite-Egyptian chart in
the generation of Jehoram, who reigned from 851-843 B.C. Neither of those approximate datings for Conmael
can be relied upon. The best we can say here is that Aidhne was thought by the annalists to have been around
for a long time.
In an old story that comes down to us in several confusing versions, Aidhne is listed first among the
ten daughters of Partholon, a legendary early settler. I can add to the confusion by saying the ‘daughters’ may
stand for ten early tuatha. Even if that is not the case, we can say that the tuath Aidhne may have been named
for a woman – an ancestral mother, perhaps? I looked the word up in the Dictionary of the Irish Language,
Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, 1998. It seems Aidhne may be related to “adna(e), a word of doubtful status and
meaning. Perhaps also aidne. Taken by native glossators as meaning age(d)”. We come back again to ‘old’ for
Aidhne.
8. Thoughts about the tuath:
I was reading about Aidhne because of the O’Clerys, but when I began to read about the tuath in
general I didn’t think about the O’Clerys at all. I can remember the sentence that started me off, but I can’t
remember the book I was reading. There’s a sentence like it in another book I bought since: Irish Kings and
High Kings by Francis John Byrne, London, 1973. On page 27, he writes “each little tuath had its own sacred
site where the tribal king was inaugurated”. However, Byrne’s passage leaves out one part I remember from my
previous reading and he adds a word I’m sure was not in the sentence I remember.
What I had read was like this: ‘In many tuatha the new chief was inaugurated on the site of the tuath
burial ground.’ There was a burial ground involved and not just any burial ground of unrelated people from the
distant past. It was the tuath burial ground, the ground of their own kindred who had died. The added word in
Byrne, ‘sacred’, doesn’t belong in this setting. It’s a religious term – extraneous to the burial-ground setting.
Sacred is where the celestial gods from on high touch the ground and make it holy. Rather than a touch
coming from above, it was a coming from below. It was coming from the fathers and mothers, the ancestors
below in the graves. Better to say, it was coming from within – from within the kindred that is continuous on
both sides of the grave, back and forth from the other world to this world.
This was more ‘earthly’, closer to ‘secular’ and ‘civic’ than to ‘sacred’ and ‘holy’. It was the basis for
order in the society – a kinship order. And that’s what I saw in it immediately. I suppose it brought me back to
the ancient history I studied in college, the long period of time before the aristocrats arose among the Greeks.
There was order in the pre-aristocratic societies all around the world for tens of thousands of years – that same
kinship order. How would we have survived otherwise?. This order was older than Partholon, older than
Abraham, older than Noah – older than the taught doctrine about ground sites that are sacred.
This was the ancestral society. The father and/or mother were the ‘sovereigns’, the children were the
‘subjects’ or objects of that sovereignty in the way of kinship obligation This became continuous above ground
too, as new generations of children came and the old were laid below.
It’s ancient and yet it’s not entirely gone. Or, maybe we today are not entirely gone from it. We still
have family oriented societies concerned with the well-being of all, the inclusion of all, and the common good.
And like the early Greeks we have the over-takers out there, those who push for an aristocratic form of society,
the warlords of wealth, power, and neo-feudalism. Some give lip service to ‘founding fathers’, others
occasionally give scraps from their luxurious tables to starving children and call themselves from the Greek,
‘philanthropists’. The traces and flavors of ancient times are still with us.
We have actual ancestral societies, too, surviving today, the so-called indigenous societies. On the
radio recently I heard and listened intently to a long talk about a group representing indigenous peoples from
all around the world asking for help from the United Nations in obtaining titles to their subsistence land in their
effort just to hold on against the gobbling up waves of global economy.
In thinking about Ireland it occurs to me that we have effects of the tuatha people that are still with us.
I read somewhere that Christianity was accepted in Ireland ‘easily’. Perhaps, the tuatha that Patrick and earlier
missionaries found in Ireland had something to do with this ease of acceptance. When the word came that the
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Father had sent his only Son to die on a cross so that those who bonded with him in this world would be one
kindred with him in the other world, maybe the tuatha people in Ireland found this easy to understand. Some
may have caught the vision of a great and final tuath, made up of one lasting generation, not under an ancestral
father, but under an ever-present Father.
I don’t know if that’s true, but it is true that, in Irish today, Heaven is referred to as ‘na Flaithis’, that
is, ‘the Principalities’ or ‘the Sovereignties’ – or, if you will, ‘the Tuatha’.
I wrote a few words about the tuath that I attached to a chart in 2005 and it can serve as an introduction
to the O’Clery charts now: “The term tuath (plural tuatha) comes from an early Celtic root-word indicating ‘a
people’. In Ireland, it indicated both a people and their living-ground. It was a people and a place, a land-home
made ‘of the people, by the people, and for the people’. [I was thinking of Lincoln.] In very early times the
tuatha likely came about naturally, centered around ancestral burial sites, in thinly populated and isolated
settlements.”
“Over the centuries new kindreds were assimilated through marriage and the temporary fostering of
children among unrelated mothers. Kinship laws and obligations were eventually developed by a professional
class. Each tuath had its own selected chief or king, often inaugurated at the tuath burial ground. By Cléireach’s
time in the 800s [the tuatha] were under varying degrees of pressure from expanding overlords and internal
stress among stronger and weaker kindreds. But significantly, it was still clearly understood that the tuath was
not established from the outside, or from above. No king, emperor, or even Pope, gave entitlement to the tuath.
It was not a feudal dukedom.” [Cléireach, I should explain, was the grandfather of the O’Clerys]
I’ll add now that there are two old laws about the tuath I think I knew before I came across them again
the other day in F. J. Byrne’s book : ‘No tuath without a king’ and ‘No stranger in sovereignty’. They are little
laws but they reflect a lot about order. The tuath recognizes the concept of a self-contained society with a
leadership in residence. I suppose that in early Irish thinking the opposite of a tuath would be a concept I’ve
come across here and there called ‘swordland’. I haven’t got a full grasp of this concept yet, but I’d say that
swordland would be more than unoccupied land, there would be people living on it, kindreds, even tuatha that
had once been independent, but now they would be ‘controlled’ from the outside. The ultimate sovereign would
be a ‘stranger’.
9. Charts on Cléireach and his Early Descendants:
I suppose I could say that these charts on the O’Clerys were a combination of a vertical genealogy list and family
diagrams, spreading out horizontally from it here and there. I took the liberty of adding in several contemporary names of
O’Clerys at certain generation horizontals. Fr. Walsh’s book gave several of these additional names with death dates on
page 25, and I found a few more in the other books. I’m not
certain about some of these placements. At times I made (1) A Trial Arrangement of Cléireach and His Early Descendants
various arrangements
Moving down from Cléireach to sons of his son, Cléireach
MaolfabhailI, I added Tighernach Ó Cléirigh and Eochagán fl.| 850
Ó Cléirigh, called a ‘lawgiver’, as grandsons beside Cléireach’s Maolfabhaill
one sure grandson as given in the genealogy: Maolcherarda d. | .890_______________________
(?Maol-ciar) O Cléirigh, also called by what may be a familiar | | ?|
name,‘Flann Ó Cléirigh’, slain 952, by “Munstermen” Maol-ciar / Flann Tighernach Eochagán
As great grandsons, I included Maolmacduagh Ó Cléirigh Ó Cléirigh Ó Cléirigh
(Maolmicduaic) Ó Cléirigh , slain 922, by Danes, possibly sl. | 952 sl. | .917 d. | 950
defending Limerick on Aidhne’s old southern boundary. “He | ?| ?|
may have been a son of Tighernach” (Fahey, p. 116). I added Comhaltan Maolmacduagh Eoghan
Eoghan Ó Cléirigh, a ‘bishop of Connaught’, as maybe a son Ó Cléirigh Ó Cléirigh Ó Cléirigh
of Eochagán. These would be in the same generation and cousins d. | 978_________ sl. 922 d. 968
of Cléireach’s listed great grandson, Comhaltan Ó Cléirigh. | |
Fahey gave Muireadhach Ó Cléirigh as son of Giolla Ceallaigh Muireadhach
Comhaltan so I put him in the generation of Cléireach’s listed Ó Cléirigh Ó Cléirigh
great great grandson, Giolla Ceallaigh Ó Cléirigh. sl. 1003 d. 988 ® Oct. 2009
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As I did above, I’ve decided that putting sample charts on the pages here, so they can be seen, is better
than lots of words about charts in my house that the reader can’t see. I’ll be able to show samples of the general
things I do with the charts and at the same time show several spectacular things I came across in doing them.
Along the way, I’ll be looking through my books to find things that may support the charts. Up to now I was
just making the charts. I wasn’t trying to explain them. Some of the ‘supports’ I find might have no credit
among those who have trained in the discipline of Ireland’s history. I realize this. But that’s the way history
studies go. Some make mistakes and others correct them. And we’re all the better for that.
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On chart (1) above, I may not have the fathers of Eochagán, Maolmacduagh and Eoghan right, but I
think the generations are right. There may be other sons, and of course daughters, who are not mentioned in
books, so we can’t be certain about the number of O’Clery descendants down the generations.
The books that do mention the early O’Clerys say they were chieftains in Aidhne. Except for
Cléireach, Eochagan, and Eoghan, each of the family members I named are described either as a ‘lord’ of
Aidhne, or, in the one case of Flann, as ‘king’ of south Connacht. In the notice of his death in the Annals of the
Four Masters for the year 950 (i.e.952), Flann Ó Cléirigh is called “tighearna Deisceirt Connacht agus
righdhamhna Connacht uile” (lord of South Connacht and royal heir to all Connacht).
Francis John Byrne, in his book on the Irish Kings and High Kings, says “ in the early seventeenth
century the Four Masters, in their great compilation The annals of the kingdom of Ireland (Annála Righachta
Éireann), consistently downgrade the kings of petty tuatha to the status of ‘lord’ or ‘chieftain’ – tighearna or
taoiseach…” because the “multiplication of monarchies caused some embarrassment to patriotic Irishmen
who had been brought up to believe in the glories of the high-kingship of Ireland centered in Tara.” (p.41)
On the same page, Byrne says “In the Old Irish period… the rí tuaithe [the king of a tuath] , however
insignificant on the national scale, was the true king. Even the most powerful of high-kings was basically ruler
of a single tuath, and exercised no real authority outside it.” I myself have gotten into the habit of calling the
‘kings of a tuath’ chiefs – including the O’Clerys and others. I will continue in my habit. However, I recognize
that in Irish law they were sovereigns, the only lawful sovereigns, in the ‘civic’ order of old Ireland.
10. The Royal Heirs Take a Surname:
Its important to note that Flann’s brother Tighernach Ó Cléirigh, at his death in 916 as recorded in the
Four Masters, was the first to be listed with the surname Ó Cléirigh and this is said to be the earliest record of a
modern-type surname in Ireland and probably in Europe. [ See Sloinnte Gaedheal is Gall, Irish Names and
Surnames, by Rev. Patrick Woulfe, Gill &Son, Dublin, 1923, pp. xv-xvi ].
Why would ‘royal heirs’ take a surname? Didn’t they have name enough? I’ve come to believe that
this change to a surname by the grandsons of Cléireach was a kind of ‘declaration of independence’, not only
for their family but for the tuath of Aidhne that they were expected to lead and provide for as accepted chiefs.
To deal with the significance of ‘royal heir’ here, we have to consider another group of Irish historians,
not our modern ones but those who were writing in and around the monasteries in Ireland from about the 1100s
into the 1600s. I will call them ‘the dynasty historians’. They were interested in using the lines of genealogy to
determine dynastic eligibility for a kind of ‘mainland-European-style’ hierarchy of kingship in Ireland,
ultimately centralized in the high-kingship of Tara.
In order to make the necessary dynasty line connections, these earlier historians had to go back to the
centuries before St.Patrick. They went further back too, all the way to Noah as we know, but historians today
seem to be particularly concerned with the genealogical connections made during the period from the AD 400s
to AD 100s. There is little or no secondary support for the dates and there are certain inconsistences in the
genealogies here and there. In regard to Connacht specifically, the dynastic eligibility lines can be traced back
to Brión and to Fiachra, brothers and sons of Eochu Mugmedon, who lived in the A.D. 300s.
From my reading of Knox and then Byrne, I get the idea that they suspect the dynasty lines represent
separate ‘peoples’ (branches of the Firbolgs?) with an earlier history in Connacht artificially joined in this later
time as if descending from Eochu Mugmedon’s sons. It occurs to me that the separate peoples part seems
correct, but instead of artificially joined to one family, on monastery parchment, the feat may have been
accomplished by artfully selected marriages into these separate kindred peoples.
I don’t know how tomorrow’s historians will work it all out. But I am wondering now whether Flann
O’Clery, was aware of his eligibility as a ‘royal heir’, since he lived during the 900s, two hundred years before
the records of the dynasty historians were written. To answer this, we can refer to Byrne (p. 232), where he
mentions that a certain kindred centered in Aí in Mayo “acquired a spurious descent from Brión” by the time
the Vita Triparta was written in the late 800s. The kindred later became known as the Uí Briúin Aí. However,
it’s the date of the Vita Tríparta that is important here. This would indicate that the dynastic scheme was
significant before the 900s, at least, and that Flann O’Clery (b. ca. 890, d. 952) likely would have been aware of
it.
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A chart I made in 2005 shows three (2) The Uí Fiachrach Aidhne, Uí Fiachrach Muaidhe, and Uí Briúin Ai Lines
‘dynasty-historian’ lines down to the times of Eochu Mugmedon generation 1
Flann O’Clery. I’ll copy from it and, where I can, _____________!_______________________
include information taken from Knox (K), | |
Byrne (B), Annals of Ulster (AU), Book of [2] Fiachra Kg. Conn. (K): [1] Brión 2
of Leinster (LL), Four Masters (FM), and | |
maybe from O’Connor’s Keating (O/K). [3] Dathí / Nath Í [4] Duach Galach ? (B) 3
Connacht king numbers Æ[ ] |______________________ |
come from (K). There are other varieties mothers (O/K): Fial Eithne Ruadh |
but these were on my 2005 chart. It’s the Fir Bolgs (K): Fir Craíbe | Gamanry |
order that helps with ‘synchronizing’. || | |
(K)’s association of the two sons : Eochu Breac [6]Ailill Molt Fiachna Elgach [7] Eogan Sriab ? (B) 4
Uí Fiachraí with Firbolg peoples is sig- || | |
nificant. It extends the Fir Bolg history later lines: Uí Fiachrach Fer Chera Uí Fiachrach ? Connachta
in a way and hints at how their common Aidhne] (K) of Carra] (B) Muaide] (K) | (K)
outlook would differ from the Uí Briúin | _|_ | |
Aí, which (K) associates with the Connachta, a Eogan Aidhne Maeldub Muiredach Mal ? (B) 5
newer expansionary force. [See his chart, p.373] | \ [fostered in Aidhne] | _________|
(B) suspects all the names on the line Conall _?_(K) Cathal Fergus ? (B) 6
above the Uí Briúin Aí and under Brión. That’s | Tuatha Taiden | ||
why I put in the question marks followed by (B). Goibnend | _?_(K) Fogartach [8] Eochaid 7
He also mentions (p. 245) that AU records that -[ 538 Aidhne – Uí Maine allies]- (B) | | Tirmcharna ? (B)
the ‘Hu Briuin’ killed Aed [the father of their | | | dep. | 492 (K)
own Uatu in the genealogy] back in 577. On Cobthach Tipraite [15] Aid [13] Aed 8
another of (K)’s charts (p.382), I noticed a later | d. | 575 (K) r. | 584-90 r. | 557-76 (K)
Aed, or Aid, I thought more likely to be killed | | ? sl. by Uatu ® |
by them – he was the king [15] that Uatu replaced [17] Colman _?_(K) [16] Uatu / Uada 9
as [16]. I put a little ® next to it, since it’s only a r. | 603-622 (K) | r. | [591?]- 602 (K)
guess that I, ®, made. This would supply a suitable sl. | by Rogallach | Uí Briúin Aí
date, 591, for the beginning of Uatu’s reign, | ||
which is missing in (K)’s list (p. 387). [20] Guaire Aidhne Maeldub (Maelduin) [18] Rogallach 10
(B) mentions Goibnend’s assertion of Uí r. |_653-662 (K)__________, | ____________ r. | 623-646 (K)
Maine ties to south Connacht [Aidhne] in 538 | | dau | |
(pp. 92, 239). (K) associates Uí Maine with the Artghal [22] Dunchad Creide == Muirgheas 11
Tuatha Taiden, the third main Fir Bolg people in | Muiriscí sl..| 654 by Aidhne
pre-Connacht Ol nEcmacht (p.373). The mutual | ____ r. | (681)-682 (K) |
allegiance might not have been dynastic, but [23] Fergal Aidhne Ailill [26] Indrechtach [24] Muiredach Mullethan 12
rather the long memory of kindred peoples. r. | 683-695 (K ) | r. | 705-07 r. | 695-701 (K)
During Guaire’s reign, Aidhne reached Torpaid Cathal [32] Ailill Medraige [27] Indrechtach 13
a high point and began a decline. Fergal Aidhne | | r. _|_ 756-63 __r. ! 707-22 (K)
was the last listed king of Connacht in the Uí -[743 Aidhne –Uí Maine alliance weakened]- | |
Fiachrach Aidhne line. Meanwhile, the Uí Fiachrach Cathmog [34] Donn-chothaid Tadg Murgal 14
Muaide of the north came forward to contest | r. | 768-72 (K) | |
the rise of the various branches of Uí Briúin. || Siol Muireadhaigh
Ailill Medraige defeated them in battle in 758. | | ||
Donn-cothaid was their last dynasty king. In Cummascach Conmac [ 37] Tipraite Tomaltach 15
784-785, the battle of the dynasties in Connacht | | r._!_ 783-85 (K) |
came to an end. Uí Briúin Aí, now the Siol -[784 Uí Fiachrach Aidhne defeated by Tipraite]- d. | 774 (B)
Muireadhaigh (Silmurray), were the winners. | –[785 Uí Fiachrach Muaide defeated by Tipraite]- |
(B) writes this about it: “Tipraite Cétadach _?_ ® [38] Muirgius 16
mac Taidg… ranged both south and north to | | r. | 786-814
inflict severe blows on Uí Fiachrach Aidne at the Cléireach Dubda Tadg Mór 17
historic battlefield of Carn Conaill in 784 and on fl. | 850 | sl. | 810 (B)
their northern cousins at the Moy the following Maol Fabhaill Cellach [44] Conchobar 18
year. In 783 his accession was marked by the d. | 890 (AU) | r. | 843-79
visit of Dub-dá-Leithe, abbot of Armagh: king Flann Ó Cléirigh Aed “O Dubda” (K) [47] Cathal 19
and abbot established the Law of Patrick at d. | 950 FM = 952 d.| .981 FM = 982 r. | 896-923
Cruachu. The choice of site marked the mutual Comhaltan Ó Cléirigh Creassa ===[48] Tadh in Túr 20
recognition of the claims of Armagh and of the d. | 976 (FM) = 978 / r. | 924-954 (K)
Uí Briúin in Connacht…[Tipraite’s] short reign [Creassa was a sister of Bé Bhionn, mother of Brian Ború]
-- he died in 786 – can be seen to have marked ® Nov. 2008
the final acceptance of the Uí Briúin as the natural heirs to the kingship of Connacht in perpetuity.” (p.250)
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I’ve noticed that in the Four Masters the years or order of the two battles are reversed, but it doesn’t matter.
Knox passes by 784 –785 without any notice of the ‘severe blows’ that Tipraite inflicted on the two Uí Fiachraí and
its dynastic significance. He does tell us that after “Donncothaigh, who died in 772 (AU)…the Hy Fiachrach Muaidhe
never again attained to the sovereignty of Connaught.” (p. 34). But on the same page he makes this observation: “The
beginning of the seventh century [ the 600s] was marked by the establishment of great monasteries, and the complete
organization of the church upon the native system.” He could have said that earlier in his book but he waited until
after he passed the 780s to say it. Were the territorial gains of the Uí Briúin part of this newly organized system?
Knox has many charts in the back of his book. They are excellent. His first chart, on page 373, Revised
View of Early Tribal Relations, associates the three main Firbolg peoples of Ol nEcmacht with the lines of the Uí
Fiachrach Aidhne, the Uí Fiachrach Muaidhe, and the Uí Maine – and associates the newer Connachta with the Uí
Briúin. The gradual defeat of those three lines by the Connachta or “Hy Briuin” ending in the 780s is running in
parallel with what he calls ‘the complete organization of the church upon the native system’. By ‘reading into’ and
‘further contemplating’ this, I can imagine more than the end of a dynastic battle in these years of 784 and 785.
I think I see the end of the organized history of the Fir Bolgs.
Flann O Clery was probably born in the late 880s, shortly before his father Maolfabhaill died in 890,
perhaps just a century after the battles of 784 and 785. It’s hard to put ourselves into his mindset and to guess
what his thinking was. He was of the seventh generation removed from the last ‘king of all Connacht’ from their
line, Fergal Aidhne (r. 683-695). The entry written centuries later in the annals calling him ‘righdhamhna’ for all
Connacht implies that the eligibility for being a ‘royal heir’ had lasted for seven generations. I’m not sure, but
maybe the eligibility would be considered lapsed in the eighth generation. Whether this is so or not, there is no
indication that Flann Ó Cléirigh made any attempt to claim the kingship of all Connacht.
I noticed in making the chart that Aed, the last-named in the Uí Fiachrach Muaide line, has the surname
“O’Dubda” (the quotes are from Knox). Aed “O’Dubda” would have been a near contemporary of Flann O’Clery,
perhaps born a decade or so later. I checked the O’Donovan list of early surnames in Woulfe again and sure
enough I found Tadhg Ó Ceallaigh (O’Kelly), as the first of the Uí Maine line with a surname.He actually killed
Flann’s grandson Giolla Ceallaigh Ó Cléirigh in 1003. I’m sorry to have to mention that but what I wanted to say
was that it’s remarkable and worth noting that perhaps the three earliest surnames in Ireland were each from a line
that Knox associated with Firbolg peoples. This may be an historical clue.
Flann O’Clery’s other distinction as ‘king of south Connacht’ was still in effect. ‘South Connacht’ once
was an alternate phrase for the ‘kingdom of the Fir Craíbe’, which may have extended south beside the
Shannon to the bend at Limerick (Knox, p.6) The
southern stretch, especially after the 400s, was
occupied by migrants from Munster and further
north, most prominently the Déis Becc, who became
the Dál gCais. In the 900s, ‘south Connacht’ may still
have included the extents of land directly west of
Aidhne over the Burren to the sea and east through
the Sliab nEchtge (mountains) to the Shannon.
After the death of the last Fir Craíbe king,
Aid, in the 200s, not much seems to have been said
about Aidhne until the fostering of Eogan there.
Fahey mentions a poem allegedly written by Finn
Mac Cumhal where he claims “he defeated the
chieftain Uinche in a battle at Ceann Mara, now
known as Kinvara on the Bay of Galway.” (p.9). That
would have been after the time of Aid. However that
may be, the distinction given to Flann O’Clery was
still historically significant. And it would have been
currently significant too, for although the Silmurray
were now called kings of Connacht, and may have
been overlords in central and even northern
Connacht, they wouldn’t have been ‘kings of
south Connacht’ if that’s what Flann O’Clery was.
Eogan Aidhne was fostered as a youth into one of the three kindreds then in Aidhne and I assume he
remained there as a resident chief (or king) later. He was accepted by Aidhne and it seems this was an agreed
variation in the really old tuath ways or laws. Since Eogan, all the kings in Aidhne down to Flann O’Clery were
accepted and resident. When the Silmurray begin ‘overlording’, I don’t read of any fostering or residence.
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I’d say the Simurray were reducing the portions of Connacht they controlled to the status of swordland.
They were ‘strangers in sovereignty’ over various tuatha. It wasn’t the old times any more. This may be why new
conventions like the Law of Patrick were needed.
Byrne says of Muirgius’ reign (786 to 814) that ‘his aggression against the subject tribes’ shows that the Uí
Briúin supremacy ‘involved the active occupation of land’ (p25). Although the Silmurray hadn’t taken over Aidhne,
they would have been a worry to the O’Clery grandsons. Aidhne was being isolated in Connacht. This wasn’t the tuath
isolation of ancient times when they were surrounded by forests. This was isolation by surrounding ‘swordlands’, or
‘district-like territories’. It wasn’t the willing association of independent tuatha. Could it be that Aidhne was about to
lose her independence?
Flann Ó Cléirigh didn’t seek the ‘crown’ of Connacht and I think the grandsons were satisfied being the
chiefs of Aidhne. They had been accepted by the tuath kindreds. Perhaps, the tuath still had a sense of its old self.
They may have recognized this and tried to build on it.
Like other tuath chiefs here and there around Ireland, the grandsons of Cléireach must have had a sense of
what was happening. The remaining tuath chiefs must have seen the pattern of the battles. They must have sensed that
they were close, very near, to the end of an old order.
I’m thinking too about what Byrne said about the king and the abbot at Cruachu. See quote beside Chart (2).
In O’Connor’s Keating, which reflects many of the old stories, it says “Meidhbh, who was called queen of Conacht,
made a present of the palace of Rath Eochaidh to her mother, whose name was Cruachan Crodhearg; from whom that
royal structure changed its name and is called Rath Cruachan to this day.” (p. 128). It seems the abbot and the king in
783 were ‘cashing in’ on a bit of pre-Connacht lore in selecting that site to proclaim their reorganization of Connacht
under the Law of Patrick. And, the fact that they were an abbot and a king reminded me of something I vaguely
remembered about the history of Roman Gaul. As Yogi Bera used to say, ‘it was like déjà vu all over again’.
11. A New Order in Old Gaul:
Here is something I got from my old World Encyclopedia by reading lines and between lines: In the mid-
600s, the Franks, who had settled in Roman Gaul two centuries earlier, were now adherents to the Church of
Rome. Under a series of weakened kings, palace advisors, beginning with Bishop Arnulf and Pepin of Landen,
designed a new order for the lands of the Franks. (Not an abbot and a king, but a bishop and a mayor, an ancestor
of kings).
Adopting the model of the Roman civitas, the ‘old clan and tribal’ entities, remnants of the old Gallic
kindreds, as well as the more recent Frankish settlements were placed under comes or counts. Miltary leaders of
larger districts became duces or dukes. This seems to be the early stage of what later becomes known as
feudalism.
It was an ordering of land from the top down. Ancestral time on land had nothing to do with it. Ancient
burial sites I’m sure were ignored, except perhaps as an occasional site for a church. It doesn’t say how much
resistance came from the kindred chieftaincies.of old Gaul. You’d have to turn many pages of the World
Encyclopedia before coming to a massive ground swell from the bottom up against structures of feudalism in
France. In the real world that means turning years, not pages – more than 1100 years, until you reach 1789 and the
French Revolution.
The Gallic kindreds didn’t have the continuity of history and the clearly developed law that the tuatha in
Ireland had. Some modern writers say that the numerous battles of the Irish among themselves were ‘irrational’.
I’d say no. In many, many battles among the Irish, one side was trying to hold on to independence and the other
side was trying to take it away. This had been going on for centuries. The memory of an independence older than
they knew was the rationality on at least one side of many an Irish battle.
What we, with our modern minds, would consider the rational objective on the other side of the
battlefield, ‘a centralized nation under a high king’, would appear irrational to the early tuatha people. Byrne
mentioned the downgrading of the term tuath ‘king’ to ‘lord’ by patriots in the 1600s, but the change in
wording probably began long before that. You can think ‘lord and overlord’ without much mental struggle,
but to think ‘king and over king’ becomes irrational. The king under an over king is no longer a king at all,
because he loses sovereignty. You can’t have a king and then an over king. I think that’s what the old Irish
would have said. And they would have been ‘patriots’ too, in the sense that the word comes from ‘pater’ or
‘father’.
I’d say we should be careful also about thinking of the ‘national state’ as a goal for the peoples of the
600s to the 900s. The concept of the city state came early in Phoenicia, Greece, and the Mediterranean, but I
don’t think the concept of the nation state had developed in Europe yet. What the bishop and the mayor were
thinking of was not to establish a Frankish nation state but a Frankish civitas – that is, an administrative
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system. In the old Roman empire, the function of the civitas, I believe, was to supply and support Italy and
Rome. I doubt the abbot from Armagh and the king of the Uí Briúin were thinking of establishing an
independent nation state in Ireland either. It’s more likely they were thinking of making a larger kingdom to
become another part or portion of the support system of Christendom in a kind of holy Roman empire.
We can have an even longer historical view of it. We know about the French revolution and about
the solution offered by democracy in Greece, but these are endings of stories. In Ireland we may be privileged
to see the first part of stories that begin with ‘Once upon a time there were kindred societies…’ Then the
aristocrats came and began the taking over and redefining of land, and the casting aside of ancestral
traditions… et cetera. As if we were looking back at the dawn of European history, we can witness the
original resistance to the loss of ages-old independence by looking in Ireland.
We may have liked to see a blending of the tuath system and the high king system, the latter, an idea,
it seems, already being hatched in monasteries. The fading tuath had much to offer, not only a sense of local
independence, but ideals, such as ‘mutual obligation’, ‘inclusive kinship’, ‘gift exchanging’, and others not
remembered today, by which they maintained societies without walls through time immemorial in Ireland. There
were certain principles of society underlining this.
In regard to Europe in general, a wider perception of the ‘social contract’ reflecting the entire long
ancestral history of Europe would have provided a better model for the rising monarchy among the Franks than
‘feudalism’, a system based on distributing a feud (cattle-land) in return for a contract of military service. There
was no contract of service or obligation to the people living on the feud. They became like the cattle.
The narrative of the story in Ireland was rudely interrupted during the 800s. We don’t know how it might
have ended if was allowed to continue. The Uí Fiachrach Muaidhe, at their home place beside the river Moy, and
the Uí Fiachrach Aidhne, on the historic Aidhne battlefield of Carn Conaill, were severely set back in 784-785 –
and maybe the last hurrah of the Firbolg Gamanraid and Fir Craíbe was heard in those battles. A mere ten years
later, in 795, Norwegian Vikings raided a church on Lambey Island off the eastern coast of Ireland.
These Gaill, ‘foreigners’, had begun their invasions of Ireland. This is the time to bring into the story and
to shed a little light on the grandfather of Flann O’Clery, Cléireach, who may have been born as early as that very
year, 795, or perhaps, up to another ten years or so later.
I remember thinking that Cléireach was born between two worlds. It was when I first read in Woulfe that
his name was used as the earliest recorded modern-style surname in Europe. Before Cléireach then, there was an
‘old-style’ world, and after him, a ‘modern-style’ world. It was a handy notion, too simple I suppose. Later, I also
noted the coronation of Charlemagne as ‘Emperor of the Romas’ in 800 and the beginning of the Viking attacks
on Ireland in 795 as more obvious marks of changing times.
Now, after learning about the tuath, I can see Cléireach as being born between the falling away in Ireland
of an old order and the rising of a new order. It is a time when the new ordering of land was being learned and the
old ordering was not yet forgotten.
The Vikings who attacked Ireland were Norwegians and Danes. The Danes had united under a single
kingdom in 811 after a treaty was signed with Charlemagne marking their southern border. It’s my view that their
raids in Ireland may have had the effect of reviving and revitalizing some of the tuatha – mainly because the
haughty posing of overlords was revealed. What do they say, ‘the king has no clothes’. The overlord kings did
not defend their ‘provinces’, their pretended realms. The tuatha, especially those near a major river or beside the
sea, had to defend themselves. This could have been an awakening moment for many a tuath inhabitant whose
wisdom had been napping.
12. Cléireach of Aidhne:
Here is why I think the grandsons of Cléireach took his name for a surname and not some other
ancestor’s name. Cléireach was not a famous man, a great king or a great scholar. Yet he must have done
something outstanding. I believe Cléireach organized an independent defence of Aidhne against the ravages
of the Danes – without any help from ‘Connacht’ or the Síol Muireadhaigh. Why do I think he did that?
I think he did it because he was at the right place at the right time and he was angry.
The first known attack on Aidhne by the Danes came from the sea in 816 and it probably was a
devastation. This attack was not listed by the early annalists, according to Fahey (p.117). He found a
reference to it on a ‘valuable map’ included in Early Christian Architecture, Ireland by ‘Miss Stokes’.The two
centuries old monastery complex of Kilmacduagh in Aidhne was the obvious attraction. In 816, Cléireach
was either a child or in his teens. Perhaps his family members were all killed or carried off. There is no record
of his brothers or sisters. He may have been away from home being schooled, intended for the church, as his
name might suggest. He survived the attack, we know, and he didn’t go into the church.
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Cléireach was alive, a member of the leading family of Aidhne who lived a full life after 816, until 850 at least, and
likely after that. I’ll make a chart to show his family, as far as I can make it out, including his cousins, descendants of his
grandfather’s grandfather Fergal Aidhne, the last recognized
king of Connacht in the Uí Fiachrach Aidhne line. I found (4) Fergal Aidhne’s Line to Cléireach and his Cousins
no dates for some family members. The Four Masters has
Conchubhar (died 763 = 767 AU) as ‘son of Cumasgach, lord king Connacht
of Aidhne’. Considering the date of death of his son, Anluan, in Fergal Aidhne
810, I make Conchubhar a son of Cathmog. The ‘lord of Aidhne’ _______________r. | 683-695 (K)_____
phrase may apply to Cumasgach, not Conchubhar. This ? chief | Aidhne abbot | Tuaim Gréine |
arrangement leaves one chief of Aidhne in each generation, Torpaid Reachtabrad Flaithnia
until the generation of Cléireach. |___(MF)____ d. | 744 (AT) |
Anluan, the chief of Aidhne, died six years before | | chief |
the Viking raid that Miss Stokes assigns to 816. Cléireach’s Cathmog Aodh Art (-gal)
father Cétadach may have been the next chief but his death | | sl._|_ 767 (FM) =? 771
is not recorded and we don’t know. He may have been taken |____®___ |____________________
captive in the raid. ? chief | ?| mother abbot | Tuaim Gréine
Cléireach’s third cousin Lonan, son of a scribe and Cumasgach Conchubhar Burbotha == Caithnia
married to the poetess Laitheog, may have been the chief after ?r. | 771 d. | 763 (FM)=767(AU) d. | 794 (B) [p.242]
Anluan. There is an indication of this in that his son Aodh x | 784 chief | scribe | Cluain-mic-Nois
is listed as ‘tanist’, a ‘second’ or ‘expected’ chief, though Cétadach Anluan Connmhac
a tanist is not always a son of a chief. If Lonan was chief | d._|_ .810 (AU) d. | 793 (FM) = 798
from 810 to 816, abduction in the raid is also a possibility | poetess |
in his case. Cléireach Laitheog == Lonán
A Viking raid would have been a first of its kind for fl. | 850 ____(FM)______|
them. Aidhne had known man-to-man battles and raids for chief | tanist | poet |
cattle or harvest stores, but here, the old were killed, women Maolfabhaill Aodh / ‘Aed’ Flann mac Lonáin *
and children were carried away, along with church books, d. | 890 (AU) d._|_ 920 (FM) sl._|_ 895 (AU)
ornaments, and sacramentals. It was a devastation of the hearth, |_________________®__________
the heart, and the spirit. It was a new thing chief | chief | lawgiver |
. I find it odd that there should be no record of a chief Flann Ó Cléirigh Tighernach Ó Cl. Eochagán Ó Cl.
in just this one generation, Cléireach’s generation. Maybe sl. | 952 (AU) +1 d. | 917 (AU) d. | 948 (FM) = 950
confusion did reign. If there was no chief after the raid, you can
see from the chart that the kindreds would have selected a leader * Flann mac Lonáin was called “chief poet of all the Gaeidhil,
from the lines of Fergus Aidhne. Cléireach was of that line and the best poet that was in Ireland in his time” FM-891
we know he was alive. Maybe he was too young in 816, but I have K = Knox, MF = MacFhirbhisigh, AT = Annals of Tigernach
a feeling that eventually he was accepted as the leader in Aidhne. FM = Four Masters, AU= Annals of Ulster, B = Byrne
As the years went by, Cléireach may have dedicated x = a battle ® Mar. 2009
himself to providing defenses for Aidhne, such as coastal look-out
posts and horsemen bands for rapid responses. He may have had church walls and round towers repaired for the saving of
books and valuables – earning in the praise of the people another sense of the name Cléireach: ‘church guardian’.
Who knows for sure what he did? All we know is that he was of the leading Aidhne family in that generation. The
books tell us that much. If Miss Stokes is right and there was a Viking attack in 816, the people would have expected someone
in his family to lead in preparing a defense against other attacks. It’s harder to think he wasn’t that leader than to think he was
– especially, when we know that his son and two of his grandsons became chiefs later.
There were at least two earlier Viking raids on the west coast of Ireland. The dates vary within a few
years in various sources. In the period from 807 to 812, there was a raid on the coast of Clew Bay in Mayo and
another, from 810 to 812, on the north shore of Galway Bay and into Lough Corrib. If Miss Stokes was wrong
about 816, a side attack into nearby Aidhne around 812, would be sufficient also to explain what the chart seems
to show us, namely, that the rise of the O’Clerys as chiefs in Aidhne had its source in the generation of Cléireach.
I only add, that such a Viking raid may help to explain other things, too. As I said above, I think it
explains why his grandsons adopted ‘Cléireach’ as the basis for a family surname. It gives us a hint of some
outstanding things that Cléireach may have done. In turn, the example of Cléireach’s defense, I believe, may have
contributed to the commitment to independence that became characteristic of the O’Clery chieftainship in Aidhne.
This helps to explain their history as chieftains through the generations, even to offering a likely reason for their
expulsion from Aidhne as a family in the late 1200s.
Today, when I think of my family name ‘Clarke’, I think of ‘Cléireach’, which sounds like it, rather than
thinking of O’Clery, the adopted surname. I connect him with the Danes and the Viking raids. Cléireach as a
figure in history stands out for me. And so, I find it easy to see his grandsons taking ‘Ó Cléirigh’ as a surname for
their generations of descendants to come.
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III. Pages for Aidhne’s History Not Written
13. Cléireach and his Family in the Independent Struggle to Defend Aidhne:
I think at least a page in Ireland’s history, if not a chapter, should be written about this. Even with my
many books, I don’t have all the material needed to do it, but I can make a start.
Whether the first Viking raid directed toward the churches and monastic settlement in Kilmacduagh
occurred in 812 or 816, we don’t know, but whenever a first attack came, we know it wasn’t the last. There are
other references to Viking attacks in the south Connacht area during the mid-800s, one mentioning Kinvara in
Aidhne and a number in which Aidhne might well have been included. Since there are no references at all to any
force coming to the aid of Aidhne during the 800s and into the 900s, we are left with the yet untold story of a
century-long, independent struggle of a tuath to survive.
We know this independent defense of Aidhne continued into the mid-900s because of a dramatic story
that is often told. In 958 or so, a young warrior rode in with a band of men and offered to help Aidhne fight the
Danes – as if they didn’t know how. This is the first record we have of aid for Aidhne. Better late than never.
The young warrior became known in history as Brian Boru. He didn’t come from the Silmurray kings of
Connacht to the north. He came from the Dál gCais people to the south of Aidhne, newly-styled kings of
Thomond. This event would eventually put Aidhne in the middle of another two centuries of war between the
O’Connors and O’Briens. Aidhne thought the Danes had been the danger to independence. We live and learn.
But we have to go back to the beginning. If Cléireach was born in 795, he’d be age 25 in 820. If born in
805, he’d be 25 in 830. Knox tells us: “In 831 Turgesius [Turgeis, a Norwegian]… put a fleet on Lough Ree for
the devastation and subjugation of Connaught. The Annals record in 835 (AU, FM) a cruel oppression and
desolation of all Connaught… Other notes are made of battles between Danes and Connaughtmen about this time,
showing that they moved about freely and had the upper hand in these countries in spite of occasional
reverses.”(p. 39). Other historians might adjust the dates and circumstances slightly, but I think we would remain
in the 830s.
In a shiny and colorful new book a friend gave me, I see a purple arrow on a map representing Danes
coming up the Shannon to attack Clonfert and Clonmacnoise, monastery settlements east of Aidhne. They came
more than once, in 836 and 837, as well as later, in 845 and 866. On the way up, they also attacked other
monasteries along the river and around Lough Derg, little triangles that are not named.— probably Inis Celtra,
Tír-dá-Glass, and Lothra. There’s no triangle for Kilmacduagh. A little to the north of Aidhne though, there’s a
triangle named Rosecram [Roscram], just north of Galway Bay. It was attacked in 836. Crossed swords near it
mark a battle in 846. (Haywood, Historical Atlas of the Vikings, Penquin 1995, map, p.73)
What can we make of records such as these? Well, either the men of Aidhne went to defend these places
or they didn’t. If they went, they either gained the upper hand or they didn’t. As for the ‘cruel oppression and
desolation of all Connaught’, we know the tuath of Aidhne survived. No triangle for Kilmacduagh, might mean
that the defense measures and the leadership of Cléireach prevailed. They may have been sorely pressed at times,
‘occasional reverses’ go both ways. Or, the Vikings may have felt it wiser to steer clear of Aidhne. One thing we
know, Cléireach married and had son, Maelfabhaill, born – probably in the 830s.
There’s also a pair of mixed-up records that Fahey mentions in his book on page 117. In 833, the Annals
of Clonmacnoise records the slaying of the ‘King of the Danes of Limerick’ in Connaught at Ratheyney, which
Fahey says was in Aidhne. We know that 833 is too early for there to be a Danish King of Limerick. The other
record is from 938 in the Four Masters where the grandson of that same king was said to be killed in Connaught
[at some unnamed site] by the Caenraigh of Aidhne.
Fahey says O’Donovan [the great historian] “distinctly states that the event recorded by the Four Masters
is identical with that recorded by the Annals of Clonmacnoise, notwithstanding a difference in chronology” This
implies that one date is wrong, though O’Donovan is not reported as saying which date is wrong. Fahey proceeds
as though the 833 record has no value, except perhaps to make a case for assigning the battle in 938 to the site
Ratheyney mentioned in 833. This seems to be the reason he brought up the matter of the two records in the first
place.
There is no call in all this to think that the record of a battle or skirmish won in 833 is of no value. The
name of the Viking killed is not essential. He may have been the mere leader of a band of Danes who came to
Aidhne by way of Limerick. The important thing is that a Viking force may have been defeated in Aidhne in 833.
Word of this might have got around among the Danes. This could help to explain why there is no triangle for
Kilmacduagh on that map. And if a small but important victory was won by Aidhne in 833, I would give
Cléireach some of the credit.
There’s a page for you.
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J. P. Hynes, in his book, writes: “The Danes attacked Kinvara in 866 and the various monasteries in the
west of Ireland were raided by them including Kilmacduagh.” (p.40) Cléireach might have been from age 61 to
age 71 in 866. Maybe he wasn’t alive to see this. If he was alive, he may have gone out with sword in hand, even
as an old man. That would have been his last defense of Aidhne.
Cléireach’s son Maolfabhaill (‘Maol fabhaill mac Cléirigh, tigerna Aidhne’) would have been from age
31 to age 41 in the year 866, if he was born from 825 to 835. I’d guess he’d be more likely 31, or closer to that
than 41. He may have already been accepted as ‘rí’, or ‘chief’ as I say, but we wouldn’t be far off assigning him a
‘reign’ beginning in 866 with a question mark. A hard beginning, perhaps. By this time, he may have had his first
son, Tigernach, who could have seemed ‘lordly’, as his name suggests.
I have found nothing in my books about events in Maolfabhaill’s life. The threat of raids by the Danes
would have been there for a while. Haywood writes: “When Olaf’s successor Ivar died in 873, the Dublin
kingdom entered a period of political instability. Many Vikings left Ireland to raid in England or Francia or [to]
settle in Iceland, and for the next 40 years Ireland saw little Viking activity. The long respite from Viking raids
which Ireland enjoyed between 874 and 914 became known as the “Forty Years’ Rest” (pp. 73-74).
Maolfabhaill lived to experience 16 years of that ‘rest’, of course never knowing that a raiding party of
Danes would not suddenly come in from the sea or over the mountains from the Shannon. His death is listed in the
Four Masters at the year 887. This is the equivalent of 890 in the Annals of Ulster, which has “Maeilfavuill, mac
Cleri, Kinge of Aigne, mortuus est.” He may have been from age 55 to 65 when he died. Fahey merely says:
“Maelfavail had two sons, Tighernach and Flan. Tighernach succeeded to the chieftaincy” (p. 116). I proposed,
without any authority, that Maolfabhaill may have had a third son, Eochacán Ua Cléirigh, a lawgiver, whose
death is recorded in FM at 948, but O’Donovan’s note says the true year is 950.
Another fine old book I have: History of the Irish Church by Rev. Thomas Walsh, New York, 1876, on
page 260, has “Eugene Mac Clerig, called bishop of Connaught, died A.D. 969.” He is not likely a brother of
Maolfabhaill, a second son of Cléireach, unless he lived to over a hundred years. On my trial chart above – all
charts are really trials – I have Eugene as Eoghan Ó Cléirigh, died 968 (FM-967), and as a great grandson.
The ‘O’ makes him at least a grandson. So, it’s
possible he was a fourth son of Maolfabhaill. (5) Births and Ages of Maolfabhaill’s Children – plus ?Eoghan
We can be sure Eoghan is descended b. | ? 835
from Cléireach because he is listed with Maolfabhaill
the O’Clerys in Fr. Paul Walsh’s book _________________ d. | 890, age 55_____________(?)_____
on the family. As you can see, even if he b. | ? 870 | | | ? b. | ? 884 b. | ? 887 ? b. | ?? 890
was born in the last year of Maolfabhaill’s Tigernach [daughters ?] Eochacán Flann /Maolcherada Eoghan
life, he’d be 78, quite old, when he died. sl. | 917, age 47 d. | 950, age 66 sl. | 952, age 65 d. | 968, age 78
If Eoghan belongs in the next generation, ® Mar. 2009
where I put him, then we can allow Flann to have been born as late as that last year of his father’s life, making
him age 62 when he was slain. To be a son of Maolfabhaill, which the genealogy makes him out to be, Flann
would have had to be very old when he was killed. That makes his death at the hands of “Munstermen” seem
malicious. We shall see.
After the Forty Year’s Rest from 874 to 914, the Vikings reappeared to harass Aidhne. Fr. Paul Walsh
cites one instance: “ 916 [=917]. Tighernach Ó Cléirigh, king of Aidhne, died, after having slain Raghnall O
hIomhair.” I haven’t been able to identify this Raghnall. There was a Ragnald, thought to be the grandson of Ivar,
king of Dublin, who ‘campaigned’ in Munster from 914 to 918, but he died in 921, according to Haywood,
Encyclopedia of the Viking Age , New York, 2000. Names of Viking combatants can be mistaken. The Viking
combat, without any of their names, remains important to history if the date approximates, as it may in this case, a
defensive action by a king of Aidhne.
The Four Masters for 916, in translation, says simply: “Tighearnach Ua Cleirigh, lord of Aidhne, died”
This doesn’t contradict what Fr. Paul wrote. Time could have lapsed between the slaying and the dying. I have
taken his words as implying that Tigernach died as a result of this hand-to-hand combat, though perhaps later, in
917, from wounds. That’s why I put ‘sl.’, for ‘slain’, on my charts in Tigernach’s case.
It’s Fahey who says: “the successor of Tighernach in the chieftaincy was Maolmacduagh… The Four
Masters tell us he was slain by the foreigners, A.D. 920. He may have been a son of Tighernach, but of this we
have no historical evidence.” (p. 116). Concerning the date in FM, O’Donovan’s note says: “The year 920 …
corresponds with 921, alias 922, of the Annals of Ulster, and 918 of the Annals of Clonmacnoise.”
The annals say the Danes came from Limerick to plunder Clonmacnoise and Lough Ree.Yet, here we
have two kings of Aidhne killed by Danes in five years. The year 922 brings us in line with the traditional date
given for the ‘founding of Limerick’ by the Danes. Since no attack on Aidhne is mentioned, I suspect that these
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two kings may have died in defense of what they considered a ‘borderland’ which, still in those times, was a
traditional concern of Aidhne. The Danes were at the borders of the old kingdom of the Fir Craíbe
Two kings slain. Flann O’Clery, in his early to mid-thirties, was the next chief. It’s A.D. 922, what can
we say about it. We can say that up to A.D. 922, at least, Aidhne was independent – independent de facto. The
tuath was following its own independent way. There was no other superior king from outside directing it.
14. ‘Tulach Aidhne’ and the Arrival of ‘Thomond’
In 917, the king Tighernach who was thought to be ‘lordly’ and, in 922, the young king Maolmacduagh,
likely his son, whose name suggests ‘service’ (Maol-) to the churches of Kilmacduagh in Aidhne, may have been
slain at Limerick defending a stretch of land south of Aidhne which once, some say, was part of ‘the kingdom of
the Fir Craíbe’. Whether that was exactly the way of it or not, we should talk about it.
We should have a name for that piece of land. A good name for it would be Tullagh. That’s the name
used in Clare even today for the former ‘baronies’ – upper and lower Tullagh – south of Galway’s Slieve Aughty
Mountains, along Lough Derg and the Shannon to Limerick. Tullagh might actually represent the Fir Craíbe land.
Or we could call it Tulach Aidhne. I saw this in an old poem given in my worn copy of O’Connor’s
Keating (p. 198). Queen Medb was said to have changed the name of Rath Eochaidh in central Ol nEcmacht to
‘Rath Cruachan’ in honor of her mother. The poem mentioned two older names for the site: ‘Druim Druagh’ and
‘Tuluig Aidhne’. Tuluig Aidhne might have meant simply ‘old hill’. As we know, ‘adna’ or ‘aidne’, which
became ‘aidhne’, meant ‘aged’. The early word ‘tulach’ meant ‘hill’, ‘hillock’ or ‘mound’ and seems to have had
associations with the convening of assemblies on a hill, or at a mound.
There is an ancient mound near the village of Tulla, an inauguration site called Magh Adhair after Adhar,
a son of the Firbolg king Umhor. It may be just outside or at the border of the present-day area known as
Tullagh. The word Tullagh might even have something to do with that mound. I think Tulach Aidne would be an
excellent name for that part of the Fir Craíbe kingdom. It might even be right.
This helps us avoid using the term ‘Thomond’ too early in history, as many do. Thomond, or
Tuadmumain (North Munster) was never a tuath. ‘Thomond’ is an invented name, too, part of the general notion
of reorganizing land into administrative territories, as in Roman Gaul, though, in Ireland, there was no central
administrative authority yet. Thomond didn’t appear in history as a recognized ‘king’s territory’ until about 920.
Even though young Maolmacduach died shortly after that, we would be very wrong even to imagine that he was
killed defending Thomond.
The idea of recognizing such a kingdom in Munster may have been incubated near the end of the reign
of the ‘high-king’ Flann Sinna in 916 and hatched when his son Donnchadh Donn began his reign in 919. These
kings were of the Clann Cholmain, one of the dynastic lines remotely descended from Niall, half-brother of
Fiachra and Brion. They were comfortable in their dynastic position around Meath, in east central Ireland, and
didn’t want any trouble from Munster.
Roger Newman, in his book Brian Boru, King of Ireland , Dublin, 1883, tries to put himself in the mind of Clann
Cholmain: Their “best method lay in weakening the ruling house in Munster. There is no proof that this is what the Uí Néill
tried to do, but I offer it as a possible theory to explain the rise of the Dál gCais… The Dál gCais were suitably obscure in
origin for Uí Néill purposes.” (pp. 50-51) Lorcan
was the first king of Thomond. He was also the (6) The Two-Generation Rise of the Dál gCais
grandfather of Brian Boru. ( a mixed generation and chronological chart)
Lorcan was likely styled a king before Uí Fiachrach Aidhne Dál gCais Uí Briúin Uí Néill
his son Cennétig married Bé Bhionn in 919 or 920. Cléireach Lonan = Laitheog Lachtan Maonach * Mael Ruanaid
She was the daughter of Earca (Urchad), the son fl. | 850 | | d. | d. | 843B
of Murchad, a king in ‘West Connacht’ of the line Maolfabhaill Flann Lorcan Murchad Mael Sechnaill
of the Uí Briúin Seola, later to be the O’Flahertys. d. | 890 mac Lonáin d. | c. 923-9 ® d. | 896 K r. | 846 - 862B
The marriage might not have taken place if Lorcan | sl._|_ 895 AU | ||
wasn’t a ‘king’. It would have been a prestige lift Flann Ó Cléirigh Cennédig Earca (Urchad) Flann Sinna
for the Dál gCais, though I wonder if either Lorcan sl. | 952 | d. | 944 ** r. | 879 - 916B
or Earca were tuath kings. I’m as suspicious of the Comhaltan Ó Cléirigh one |======Bé Bhionn Donnchad Donn
term ‘West Connacht’ as I am of ‘North Munster’. d. | 976 ______d. | 951B_______ r. | 919 - 944
I don’t think ‘geography names’ like that would b. | 941 b. | c. 921 |
represent tuatha. They’d be swordlands of one Brian two Orlaith ====== |
kind or another. sl. | 1014 sl. | 940
In the next generation, Orlaith, daughter * Bé Bhionn’s line is ‘synchronized’ from family death years here
of Cennédig was married to Donnchad Donn of ** O’Ferrall’s pedigree, O’Flaherty’s Iar Connaught, 1846, chart.
Clann Cholmáin of the Uí Néill, king of Míde, and ® Mar. 2009
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reputed ‘high king’ in Ireland. However, in 940 she was put to death, allegedly ‘for adultery’. Orlaith would have been barely
age 19 in 940. She became Donnchadh’s fourth wife, I believe. Death for adultery would have been very unusual in Ireland. I
haven’t come across an other instance of it in my reading. Newman writes: “We can surmise that it was due, in part, to a
decision of the Uí Néill no longer to support their Dalcassian protogés” (p. 54). Killed for her kin, not for her sin?
Tulach Aidhne was gone. It had never been so clear. A ‘high king’ had supported the extension of formal
kingship status into what for centuries had been questionable land. It was a brilliant move, though they may have
regretted it later. Nothing was taken away from the traditional Munster kingship in Cashel. I haven’t read that the
Eoganacht kings of Cashel cried out about the loss of part of their kingdom. I think this is the best proof that the
Dál gCais, until 920 or so, had been chiefs or kings over swordland.
Did anyone think to consult the Silmurray of Connacht about this new Munster kingdom? I haven’t read
that anywhere, either. We ‘surmise’ that the Uí Néill kings of Míde thought up the idea. The Dál gCais gladly
accepted. The Eoganachts of Caisil were in a weakened position and couldn’t do much about it. But, the
Silmurray, like the Dál gCais were on the rise too. I wonder if Flann O’Clery, when he became king of Aidhne in
922, had any premonitions about this. Aidhne is located right in the middle between the Silmurray and the Dál
gCais Would Aidhne become their battlefield?
15. ‘Tulach Aidhne’ and Mag Adhair from the 200s to 800s.
I’ve spent some time looking around in Aidhne, but I’ve haven’t seen much of Tulach Aidhne. My paths
through Clare went to the west to hear the music or to visit the Ennistimon area where my father’s mother was
born. I’ve often visited the south of Clare aound Kilrush where my mother’s grandmother came from. Even the
main road from Limerick to Galway, that I’ve traveled so often, skirts to the west of Tulach Aidhne.
Tulach Aidhne and the land to the west of it from the Shannon Estuary north to Galway Bay, facing the
sea, had once been part of Connacht. That must have been remembered. And of course it was known that for
centuries various peoples and kindreds had migrated or pushed their way in to the area.
Even if I knew the area well today, it wouldn’t be like seeing it in the old times. I imagine then it was
mostly primeval woodland, with game for hunting, mast for gathering, and streams or lakes for fishing. There
might have been hunting lodges and camping sites here and there. And, if this was around the time of the
Incarnation, there might have been a few isolated tuatha of the Firbolg people.
I have a set of fading pages from a magazine or book that I’ve held onto since the 1970s. A women I met in Clare,
with a lot of poetry and lore, had held on to the pages for a long time too, since she was a school girl. Her early attempts
at lettering can be seen in the margins. Because
I showed an interest in them, she let me take the (7) The Takings of ‘Clare’ (following Gaynor)
pages to have them photocopied. It’s an article Times Peoples Areas Occupied
or essay about early times and peoples in Clare: FIRBOLGS [entering from north] ®
“Inagh, Prior to its Union with Kilnamona” by 1. prehistory desc. of Ceanann [= Genand], “Fir na -north and east
Very Reverend P. Gaynor, P.P. (published in Craoibhe, the most ancient of these”
? Limerick, 1942). 2. prehistory desc. of Seangann. Of these, the Tuath -south west and
Father Gaynor begins this way: “The Fer Ruidi survive in Corcomodhruadh west coast
Gaels did not attempt the conquest of Clare until until 1390s (Book of Ballymote)
the third century [the 200s] of our era – 550 years 3. c. 100 BC Tuath mac n-Umhoir, Clann Umhoir, -[south central]
after their arrival in Ireland – and did not complete [or AD 1- 100] who were invited by “ Queen Maeve.”
it, in the sense of actual occupancy, until the ninth GAELS [entering from south and east]
century [the 800s].” I’ve tried to summarize his de- 4. c. AD 200 The Mairtini (? Earnai, “desc. from -southwest
tailed work in the table at the right, so I can just Eremon”), led by Cairbre Bascain. [across estuary]
focus on a few of the asides he puts in. I never 5. c. 350 Tuath Luimnigh, Uí Cedfada, and -southeast
thought these pages would come in handy so Uí hAmraidh, led by Lughaidh Meann. [across river
many years later. [He was of the Eoganacht line.] bend]
When Fr. Gaynor mentioned Lughaidh 6. [?c. 400 ] Uí Bloid, led by Cas, or his son Blod -southeast,
Meann (a descendant of Eogan Mor, that is, an mac Cais. [Déisí ? or Eoganachta ?] by Killaloe
Eoganacht, now king of Caisil in Munster), he 7. during reign The ‘Corca Moruadh’, Ciarraige, and -northwest
said he named the annexed land “Gairbh-fhearann of Niall Arodh, ‘northern tribes’, expelled by
Luighdheach” (Lughaidh’s Rugged Region). That [? 379-405] the Ulaid, were offered land in Clare by
tells us two things: The land was wild and uncult-, Caisil to hold border against Connaught.
ivated, primarily hunting ground. And, it had been 8. early 800s Uí gCormaic, Eoganacht people, who -lower central
outside his kingdom in Munster, so now was his sailed up the Fergus to Clarecastle and
personal domain, or ferann fognama (‘service land’) established themselves in Magh Adhair
In describing the descendants of Cas [ i.e. the Plain of Adhar, Umhor’s son] ® April 2009
(later ‘Dalcassians’ or ‘Dál gCais’), Fr. Gaynor says:
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“…east Clare was the stronghold and refuge of the Uí Bloid race, but their eyes were toward Munster…” Here, he is
clearly making a distinction between Clare and Munster. If you are standing in east Clare looking toward Munster, Munster
must not be in east Clare. So, Fr. Gaynor knew what probably everyone in his diocese knew: There was a time that Clare was
not a part of Munster. And he is saying that the Uí Bloid, who became the Dál gCais, knew that too.
In talking about the ‘three northern tribes’ expelled by the Ulaid between 379 and 405, during the reign
of Niall of the Nine Hostages (who was not of the Ulaid), Fr. Gaynor uses the traditionally accepted dates for
Niall’s reign. These events may have occurred about 47 years later, around the 450s [For Niall’s reign, see Byrne,
p. 81]. However, after speaking of the A.D. 400s, Fr. Gaynor continues: “Four hundred years later [that is, in the
800s], the ancient Firbolg tribe, Clan Umhoir, still held central Clare, Drumcliff, Kilnamona, Dysert, Corofin,
Crusheen, and Clooney; and the Tuath Fer Ruidi were still in north Clare.” (p.29)
Fr. Gaynor’s reference note for the above at the bottom of the page gives his sources and adds an
observation of his own about the 400-800 period:
“Co. an Cl. [Sean Ó hÓgáin’s Conndae an Chláir], pp. 6-7; Book of Ballymote, 154; L[eabhar] Leacain,
253. Evidently Clann Umhoir and the Connacians [men of Connacht] did not submit tamely to the Dal gCais
invasion; the theory that Cas and his sons took instant possession of the entire region from Kincora to Mount
Callan appears untenable.”
Now, since it might be hard for you to locate this work by Fr. Gaynor, I’ll give most of what he writes
about the ‘final Gaelic invasion’:
“The final Gaelic invasion, and the occupancy of the remaining key point in the country, did not take
place until the early part of the ninth century. The migrants on this occasion were the Eoganacht tribes from
Limerick who sailed up the Fergus to [the later-day area of] Clarecastle in search of living space and established
themselves in Drumcliff Uí gCormaic, Inch, and the eastern part of Kilmaley (still known as Uí gCormaic) and
Clooney ( Magh Adhair territory…)”
“Beyond any doubt, Cineal Cormaic were Eoganachta; the date of their arrival in Clare may be inferred
from the poetic lament which they addressed to Feidhlimidh mac Criomhthainn, A.D. 818-845. The complaint that
they were being harassed by Corca Baiscinn and their salutation : ‘venerable father, renowned king of the
Eoganacht’, suggest that they still regarded themselves as exiles and looked on Feidhlimidh as their natural
protector. Their occupancy of Drumcliffe and of Magh Adhair implies that neither the Clan Culein advance from
Tradraighe or the Dalcassian expansion in east Clare had reached thus far in A.D. 800.”
“It seems fairly certain, then, that not alone Cineal Cormaic but all the Gaelic clans in mid Clare,
Cineal Baoith of Kilnamona, Cineal Fermaic of Dysert, Clan Ifernan and Neachtain of Corofin, and Clan Cathail
of Rath, were of the Eoganacht race and took part in the ninth-century migration from Limerick to Clare.” (pp29-
30, bracketed words are mine).
The significance of these events south of Aidhne to the story of the O’Clerys is that Cléireach, who was a
young man in the early 800s, would have been aware of many of them. It would have been part of his world and
his mindset or outlook. He would have been aware, too, of events to the north of Aidhne, like the steady rise of the
Siol Muiredaigh, (Silmurray). And we must recognize also that Cléireach wouldn’t have known much, if anything
at all, about the rise of the Dál gCais. It didn’t really happen until the 900s. Here we have at least one difference
between Cléireach and his grandson Flann Ó Cléirigh, who couldn’t avoid knowing about the Dál gCais.
16. The Poet Flann mac Lonáin and Lorcan :
I have before me another few pages that point to what may be the earliest indication of a relationship
between a member of the leading family in Aidhne and a leader of the Dál gCais. They are pages 122 to 125 in
Father Fahey’s book about Kilmacduagh, listed above, where he writes about the poems of ‘Flan mac Lonan’.
A critical examination of the implications in these (8) Flann mac Lonáin in the Middle
pages is very important to the history of the O’Clerys.
Fahey doesn’t tie Flann mac Lonáin into the Uí Fiachrach Aidhne Dál gCais Uí Néill
O’Clery family at all. But we know he was a fourth Cléireach Lonán == Laitheog Lachtan Mael Ruanaid
cousin of Maolfabhaill, Cléireach’s son. He was in fl. | 850 | | d | 843
the generation between Cléireach, who may not Maolfabhaill Flann Lorcan Maelseachnaill
have known about the rise of the Dál gCais, and his | mac Lonáin | r. | 846-862 B
grandson Flann Ó Cléirigh, who knew well about d. | 890 sl._ |_ 895 d. | 923-9® d. | 862
their rise in the 920s. Flann mac Lonáin died in 895, Flann Ó Cléirigh Cennédig Flann Sinna
so we can be surprised by the poems he was writing sl | 952 d. | 951B b. | 848 MG p.266
about the Dál gCais. r. | 879-916 B
B = Byrne, MG = MacGoeghegan ® April 2009
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From a mindset point of view, Flann mac Lonáin is important to the O’Clerys if only because he is said
to have written poems in praise of the Dalcassian chief, Lorcan, and his ‘fort’ at Kincora, sometime before his
death in 895 – and at least a quarter century before Lorcan became king of Thomond. Between Cléireach who
didn’t know about the rise of the Dál gCais and Flann O’Clery who knew about it, Flann mac Lonáin was in the
‘thought-stage’ from where he might have been predicting, or prophesying, the rising. Was he a seer, or did he
only jeer at some pompous pretentions that he suspected? – that is the question.
About this, Fahey’s pages tell us simply that three poems are described in the book Irish Writers by
O’Riely [possibly Edward O’Rielly (1765-1830)] who claims they were written by Flann mac Lonáin:
(1) a poem of eighty-eight verses on the defeat of Flann Sionna by Lorcan, King of Munster,
(2) a poem of forty-eight verses in praise of the action of Lorcan, and
(3) a poem of forty-five verses on the fortress of Ceann Coradh enclosure of harvest stores.
I wish I could see the poems themselves. Then, I’d know better what to say. But, going just by these descriptions
above, I’ll have to say it doesn’t look right.
The ‘King of Munster’ title for Lorcan might be O’Riely’s idea and not Flann mac Lonan’s. I think
it’s generally accepted now that Lorcan, son of Lachtan,
was never a king of Munster in the Caisil line. I’ve put (9) Kings of Caisil and Munster
a list of the Caisil kings I took from Byrne’s book, (adapted from Byrne, p.278)
so you can see them. I ‘adapted’ it by guessing reign king
at the reign spans from the death dates he gives and 820- 847 Feidlimid mac Crimthainn +
I took the liberty of inserting in the list what might 847-851 Ólchobar mac Cináeda +
be a span when the kingship was vacant after 908, 851-853 Áilgenán mac Donngaile
when Caisil was defeated in a significant battle, until 853-859 Mael Gualae mac Donngaile
Flaithbertach was elected in 914. You’ll notice there 859-872 Cenn Fáelad hua Mugthigirn +
was a king named Lorcan after Flaithbertach, but his 872-888 Dúnchad mac Duib-dá-Bairenn
father was Coinlígán, not Lachtan. 888-895 Dub Lachtna mac Mael Gualae
Newman writes: “It may be that Lorcán called 895-902 Finguine Cenn nGécán mac Loegairi
himself king [of Munster] with Uí Néill backing, Flaith- 902-908 Cormac mac Cuilenáin +
bheartach being for the moment in Danish hands.” (p.53) 908-914 ? vacant ?
This would be like the Roman generals declaring them- ?914-922 / d.944 Flaithbertach mac Inmainén B-215 +
selves emperor, and not be acceptable by tuath law. But ?922-?944 Lorcan mac Coinlígáin
back in the 200s the Eoganachta flooded into Munster as ?944- 954 Cellachán Caisil mac Buadacháin
migrants and maybe reduced the old tuatha there to small 954-957 Mael Fathardaig mac Flainn
enclaves and ignored them and their ways. Whatever the 957-959 Dub-dá-Bairenn mac Domnaill
case about Lorcan being a king of Munster, it wouldn’t 959-961 Fer Gráid mac Clérig
have happened until after Flann mac Lonáin died in 895, 961-963 Donnchad mac Cellacháin
and he wouldn’t have known about it. 964-976 Mathgaman mac Cennétig /Dál gCais
Another big difficulty I have is with the phrase
in the description of the first poem saying that Flann mac [ The + is a cross for a ‘cleric king’ or holy scholar ]
Lonáin wrote about ‘the defeat of Flann Sionna by Lorcan’. ® April 2009
I’ve looked and looked in my books and I can find no mention of that, and I can’t imagine it. Flann Sionna, in the
end, became a supporter of the Dál gCais, of ‘Thomond’, and probably a supporter of Lorcan himself as a future
king of Thomond. Would that have happened if he had been defeated by Lorcan?
I can’t imagine it, but maybe mac Lonain could create such an unlikely defeat in his imagination – as an
illusory vision for Lorcan, a puff of fantasy without substance, never to be. What else is there to think, if the
defeat never happened. Then, there’s his third poem, forty-five verses on the pride of the Dál gCais, the fortress of
Ceann Coradh (Kincora), as an ‘enclosure of harvest stores’. There could be a lot of spice in there.
Do you know that Flann mac Lonáin was secretly murdered? I’ll give the full report as it is translated
from the annals of the Four Masters: “Flann, son of Lonan, the Virgil of the race of Scota, chief poet of all the
Gaeidhil, the best poet that was in Ireland in his time, was secretly murdered by the sons of Corrbuidhe (who
were of the Uí Fothaith), at Loch-Dachaech, in Deisi-Mumhan [Waterford area].”
O’Donovan, in his notes to the Four Masters, says ‘Loch-Dachaech’ was the ancient name of Waterford
harbor. He says there were three ‘tribes’ called Uí Fothaith, one in the barony of Iffa and Offa West in Tipperary
[a barony adjacent to Waterford in Munster] and the other two in Connacht. The Annals of Ulster at 895 reported
“Flann mac Lonain O’Guaire, [was] wounded by Mounstermen of the Desyes.” The reports make it look like it
was ‘wise guys’or ‘hit men’, brothers from Iffa and Offa in Deisi-Mumhan, who did it. I tried to get a line on
these ‘perpetrators’ (a genealogy line), but couldn’t. So, they got away with it.
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It may have nothing to do with this but Byrne makes a connection between the Deisi and the Dál gCais.
He says first that the Déis Becc were a branch of the Déisi in the southeast [that is, the Deisi-Mumhan in the
Waterford region]. Then he says: “ …the Déis Becc are said to have conquered Thomond from Connacht in the
fifth century [400s] and by the tenth century [900s] their ruling dynasty, the Dál gCais, were able to seize the
kingdom of Munster almost painlessly from the enfeebled grasp of the Eoganachta. They justified their success on
the patently false grounds that they were not Déisi at all but of common descent with the Eoganachta with whom
they had anciently enjoyed alternate rights to the kingship.” (p.180)
The plot thickens. Or, maybe not. But, at least, the suspicion mounts. Maybe there is some connection
between the Déisi in Iffa and Offa, the Dál gCais, and the murder of the ‘best poet that was in Ireland in his time’,
Flann mac Lonáin. Perhaps his verses created adversaries, powerfully connected, who secretly wanted to silence
him. There you have a possible motive for the crime.
The next morning after I wrote the above, as if guided to it I read the following in Byrne: “Cormac
mac Mothla, king of the Déisi Muman, was also abbot of Cell Mo-Laise (Kilmolash in county Waterford ) as well
as bishop and vice-abbot (secnap) of Lismore and ‘chief counsellor of Munster’. His death at the hands of the
Déisi sept of Uí Fothaid Aichid in county Tipperary (baronies of Iffa and Offa) is described as ‘martyrdom’ … in
the Annals of Inisfallen at 920.” (pp. 214-215). That was 25 years after Flann mac Lonáin was ‘secretly murdered’
and just about the time when Lorcan was becoming king of the new Thomond. Were these both selected
assassinations? I don’t know what to make of it all. I’ll just leave it there.
17. Other Poems by Flann mac Lonain and his Mother?
Maybe Flann mac Lonáin didn’t write the three poems O’Riely described at all. That would explain the
factual and timing difficulties. Also, on Fr. Fahey’s pages, O’Riely is quoted as saying that the poems “are not
possessed of any extraordinary beauties.” (Irish Writers, p.59). That doesn’t sound like the work of the best poet
in Ireland in his time. (But of course we can say that the poems weren’t meant to be beautiful.)
However, Fahey tells us about other poems. He cites Eugene O’Curry (1794 –1862) who praises the
work of Flan and Laitheog as poets in his famous book, Manners and Customs of Ancient Erin, vol. ii, p. 98.
Of Laitheog’s works, “O’Curry tells us that there is only a fragment extant, which is addressed to her
son. It exhorts him to liberality and generosity such as became a distinguished poet and scholar as he was…” Her
poem has forty-eight lines, some of which at least he thought were ‘beautiful’, and he informs us that they were
quoted centuries afterwards, in 1452, by the poet Brian Ruadh mac Conmhidhe, adding that Laitheog was referred
to then as the ‘nurse of the learned’.
Fahey has Laitheog’s opening lines in an English translation as follows:
“Blessing upon thee, O Flann of Aidhne
Receive from thy mother counsel ;
Let not thy noble career be without hospitality
Since to thee is granted whatever thou seekest”
I don’t know who made that translation. I get the kernel of the thought. Let me put it this way:
A word, O Son, from Mother heed
At work be giving with your hand
For worth was given in your need
A world of talent at command.
But we still don’t know what it was in the Irish language.
“O’Curry obtained copies of four other poems attributed in ancient manuscripts to Mac Lonan, of which
O’Riely had no knowledge.” Fahey mentions two of them, one, of sixty-four stanzas, which O’Curry says,
“presents to us a very interesting glimpse of the mode of life at the court of Eignechan”, a chief of Tirconnell. It
includes a description of how the chief and his warriors were able to rid themselves of an occupation of their land
by “Danish pirates”.
The only trouble I have with O’Curry’s account of this poem is that he calls it an elegy on the death of
Eignechan and then states that Eignechan died in 902. Something’s wrong there, because mac Lonáin himself was
seven years dead in 902. The poem may have been composed before his death and later recited as an elegy when
he died. Why didn’t O’Curry tell us that? Maybe, he did and Fahey left that out.
18. A Diversion in the Mountains and Fin mac Cumhail
It seems the only poem it’s safe for me to say was mac Lonáin’s is the second one Fahey describes. “It
consists of one hundred and thirty-two lines. It’s opening line – ‘Delightful, delightful, lofty Echte’ – indicates
the subject with which it deals – the mountain ranges which form the eastern boundary of the diocese of
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Kilmacduagh.” At some point in earlier times these mountains, Sliab nEchtge, were likely considered to be a part
of Aidhne. But they wouldn’t have been a part of the later-formed ‘diocese of Kilmacduagh’.
“The poet goes on then in a vigorous and clear style to give some account of the history of the mountain,
and the tribes and warriors who in succession occupied it, made it their hunting ground, and left their names on
some parts of it, among whom he mentioned Fin Mac Cumhail and his warriors.” (p. 124)
Which ‘tribes’ and other ‘warriors’ does he mention and what was their ‘succession’ – who came early
and who came later? Tribe lines, names, and succession are the stuff of chartmaking. If I ever do get to see this
poem, maybe I could make a chart to fit alongside it.
About ‘Fin Mac Cumhail’, or Find mac Umaill, and his warriors, the Fianna – we still hear talk about the Fianna, their
skills in the forests, their comradship in battle, as I remember hearing it as a boy, not in any school, but in the living rooms of
neighbors’ homes, hearing it, not reading it.
But here, more than a thousand years before (10) When Find mac Umail Could Have Come to Aidhne
we heard such stories, the poet Flann mac Lonáin
is composing and then reciting his lines about Fir na Craíbe* Míde
remembered tales of Fin mac Cumhail and the | king |
Fianna in Aidhne.This is certainly an early record Clann n-Umoir Fiac Eochaidh
of the Fin mac Cumhaill lore and should be valued | | Feidlech Tuatha Taiden Lagin
if only for that. __?__ king | Aidhne dau | | |
We don’t have Flann’s poem before us, Umhor Cutra Fidach Medb == Ailill Nuadat
but he might have mentioned Cutra, who lived |_______ | | Mor (K-8) Necht
beside Loch Cutra in Aidhne, and Conall Caol, | | |_____ dau | _______|
over whom Carn Conaill was raised after he was Aongus Adhar Ailill Fraech ==Findabair Fergus Bascan
allegedly slain by Cú Chulainn. The carn is not | Dub | Fairce |
far from Loch Cutra and it is beside or on land |______ || ||
where I believe the O’Clerys later lived. Flann | | (K-374)- \ ? / bro __|___sis | |
did not likely mention Aongus, whose name is on Conall Iorgus Domnall Ailill Mata == Ross Eltan
Dún Aongusa in the Aran Islands, or his brother Caol | Find Muirisce Ruadh |
Adhar, from whom we get Magh Adhair in Clare. (GT- A151-3) | | ||
You can find all four on this chart, which is part Oengus Find Ailill Cairbre Suallt
of the one I’m preparing for the end. | mac Mata Nia Fer |
The chart will stir up historical dust, Oengus Fert Trenmor
but that’s good. Knox’s opinion that Medb’s ||
Ailill Mor was of Tuatha Taiden, not of Lagin, Conall Cruachna (fosterfather Umall
clears the way for Find mac Umaill’s short line ________|____ of Conn) |
to be applied reasonably well., though that also Míde Muma | | | |
brings Cairbre Nia Fer into Medb’s old age. Conn Mug Feradach Eochu Cédghin Find
. Fahey, following O’Curry, tells about Cétchathach Lama | (Baicidh) ? ‘mac Cumhail’
two incursions of Fin Mac Cumhail into Aidhne | | dau | | | | ___|___
on page 9. Fin defeated the chieftain Uinche in a Art |=== Baill == Forgna Aid Uinche | Oisin
battle at Ceann Mara [Kinvara] He doesn’t say | Gheal (Fiansa) (Álain) (of Kinvara) dau | |
what the battle was about. Uinche escaped with a Cormac | Cormac == Samuir Oscar
few faithful followers “who immediately marched mac Airt | Cas
to Leinster, and, attacking Fin’s residence in his dau | [elopement] | |
absence, succeeded in destroying it completely.” Seachnad =======(?)======== | (GT-A137 ) Modh Corp
Fin, finding his residence destroyed, “went with
his son Oisin and his cousin Cuilte in pursuit of --- K= Knox, History of Mayo; GT= Genealogical Tracts ---
the enemy, whom he overtook and slew at a ford, * MacFhirbhisigh calls them ‘Gamhanraidh’, MacGoeghegan calls them
called ever since ‘Uinche’s Ford’.” ‘Firdomnians’, Knox calls them ‘Fir Craibe’, which I follow.
“In the well-known prose epic, The Mac Fhirbhisigh, Great Book of Irish Genealogies, 7 Vol., Dublin, 2003
Pursuit of Diarmaid and Graine, we find the name Mac-Goeghegan, History of Ireland, New York, 1868 ® April 2009
of Fin again mentioned in connection with the
territory of Hy Fiachrach Aidhne. He had pursued the errant pair to the woods of Doire Da Bhoth [‘the oakgrove of two
booths’], where they had taken shelter. The wood referred to was situated within a valley of the Echtge ranges, which is
identified as the present valley of ‘Chevy Chase’. It is in our day a well-wooded valley, about equidistant from Lough Cutra
and Lough Graney ‘of the bright salmon’.” -- there, Father Fahey trails off, telling us about other place names. He doesn’t tell
us what happened to the errant pair. I never read the story, so I can’t tell you either.
The Fin incidents that Fahey recounts are not like the kind I heard in my youth. These accounts have to do with
homes and their destruction, and in Fin’s case family is mentioned – a son and a cousin, and in the other story, I believe Graine
was his youthful wife, while he was old. Aidhne didn’t get the best of it in it’s family squabbles with Fin. They’re not dynasty
stories. I wonder what Flann mac Lonáin was really saying in his poem. ??
Anyway, Flann’s mention of Fin mac Cumhail served as a diversion for us and I was able to include another chart.
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19. Flann mac Lonáin Meets a Dalcassian Coming Home.
Going ahead again to page 124, where Fahey is telling us about this poem in question, beginning
‘Delightful, delightful, lofty Echte’, he continues: [Flan] “then enumerates by name all the remarkable places, the
hills, peaks, lakes, rivers, fords, woods, etc.; and he concludes with a vigorous eulogium on the Dalcassians of
Clare, their munificence and loftiness of soul, of which the poet gives a very curious specimen.” – and here’s the
curious specimen: – “He relates that on one occasion he met a Dalcassian at Magh Fine, in the county of Galway,
who had just completed a service of twelve months to a man of that country…” and was on his way home. Flan
himself then tells us:
“He said to me in prudent words,
sing to me the history of my country,
it is sweet to my soul to hear it.
Thereupon I sang for him the poem.
Nor then did he show aught of loth:
All that he had earned not mean or meager
to me he gave without deduction.”
This is hard for me to deal with. First to consider are a few of the words in that account. Of course, we all
know that ‘Clare’ and ‘Galway’ did not exist in the 880s or early 890s when Flann composed the poem. We can
accept that it’s difficult to inform today’s reader about locations without using present-day names for places. Is
that also why Fahey said that the eulogium was about ‘Dalcassians of Clare’ and that Flan met a ‘Dalcassian’–
merely, to inform the reader about geography, or to emphasize that the man’s home, his ‘home country’, was
south of Kilmacduagh, that is, south of Aidhne? Many people know that ‘Dalcassian’ today is often used merely
as an alternate word for a person from Clare. Did Fahey mean it that way?
It’s another matter altogether if Fahey is implying or actually has a record before him saying that Flan
mac Lonan used a term in Irish equivalent to ‘Dalcassian’, which would likely have been ‘Dál gCais’. The term
was connected to claiming the right of kingship in Eoganacht Caisil, that is, the kingship of all Munster. It is not
easy from reading the historical narratives we have today to determine whether such a claim would have been
made by Lorcan before 895, the year mac Lonáin died. Following Byrne, I say it would not.
‘Dál gCais’ means ‘the sept of Cass’ or ‘the sept-land of Cass’. I haven’t worked my way through certain
confusing places in the genealogy line of this sept. One line I’ve found goes through a man named Cass ‘Mac
Tháil’, meaning Cass, ‘a worker in wood, a wright’ (from tál = adze). In other sources, it goes through a man
named Tál, who was also called ‘Cass’.
Bypassing all that, however, the line (of both) leads back to Cormac Cas, the son, or alleged son, of Ailill
or Oilill Olum and Sadb, a daughter of Conn Cétchathach. This makes Cormac Cas the brother of Eogan Mor, the
eponymic ancestor of the Eoganachta – which is the basis for the claim.
The authenticity of the term ‘Dál gCais’ is still in question. I mentioned above the historian Francis J.
Byrne, in his Irish Kings and High Kings writing that the Dál gCais “justified their success on the patently false
grounds that they were not Déisi at all but of common descent with the Eoganachta with whom they had anciently
enjoyed alternate rights to the kingship.” (p.180) It seems ‘patently false’ because it is so obviously connected
with the rather sudden decision to claim a right to the dynastic kingship of Munster.
In general, today’s historians are suspicious about most, if not all, of the junctures of genealogical lines
that take place, say, before the A.D. 400s. This is a matter that concerns the dynastic kingship lines not the tuatha
kingships which are based on familiar kinship. To get into the mindset of the A.D. 900s, we have to consider
which of these dynastic lines did the tuatha people trust and which of them were they suspicous of. I have a
feeling that the people of that time may have recognized the Dál gCais as ‘usurpers’ in Munster, and that some in
Connacht, saw the Silmurray in a similar way, though they were at it longer.
Figuring out the authenticity of genealogy lines is the job of the historian. As a maker of charts, I am
mostly concerned with plotting the consistency, or lack of it, in these lines, especially as they are compared
separately with other lines. It seems to me it would be pretty hard to falsify a long line of generations without a
mistake showing up somewhere. So, maybe chartmakers can help the historians with the problem of authenticity.
If I have time, I’ll try to make a chart including the Dal gCais line at the end.
You might have noticed on my last chart above that I put Cormac Cas as the husband of Samuir, or
Samhaoir, Find mac Umail’s daughter. It doesn’t say one way or another whether he was or wasn’t a brother of
Eogan and a son of Oilill Olum. For all we know, without further charting, Cormac Cas could have been one of
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‘Finn mac Umhail’s Fianna’, who happened to marry his daughter. And, because he may have had no recorded
‘genealogy’, it could have been said later that he was a son of Oilill, and no one was around to challenge it.
By the way, I found Cormac Cas’s marriage in the Abbé MacGeoghegan’s History of Ireland, New
York, 1868, a massive volume with a finely decorated wooden cover given to me by army sergeant Joseph
Domain a few months before he died. Joe was a quiet, pipe-smoking man who had a longtime interest in Irish
history and the Irish language. In handing me the book, he said ‘ I want you to have it because I know you’ll value
it’. Later, I realized he must have known he was dying.
20. When Did the Dál gCais Become the Dál gCais?
The issue as it concerns Flann mac Lonáin’s poem is not so much the authenticity of the Dál gCais line,
it’s more the timing of its announcement as a line. Here is what Byrne the historian says:
“The Déis Becc of the county Limerick were hard pressed by the Uí Fidgenti from the west, and after the
Viking settlement at Limerick their northern branch, Déis Tuaiscirt, lost their lands south of the Shannon and
were confined to east Clare, whence they were shortly to emerge victorious over Danes, Uí Fidgenti and
Eóganachta as the Dál Cais under Mathgamain mac Cennétig and his brother Brian Bóruma.” (p. 181)
The traditional date for the Viking settlement in Limerick is 922. Byrne puts this resettling of the Déis
Becc from south of the Shannon among their kindreds long-settled north of the Shannon [in old Tulach Aidhne]
as happening after the Viking settlement – let’s say, in the mid-920s. Byrne might also be implying there that the
formulation of the Dál gCais genealogy line back to Cormac Cas was ‘invented’ after that again.
Whether the migration of the southern Déis Becc across the Shannon took place after the ‘founding’ of
Viking Limerick as Byrne says, after 922, or a few years before that, around 916, as I have tentatively proposed in
my time-table at the right, I think this large
increase of population in ‘Tulach Aidhne’ fits in well (11) A Proposed Date-Line for the Dál gCais Line ®
with the creation of the kingdom of Thomond in this
period. I think it’s also reasonable to say that thoughts c.820-840 -the Eoganacht Uí gCormaic, pressed by Danes,
about the taking of the kingship of Munster came to sail up the Fergus to settle on Mag Adhair
the fore after the creation of a kingdom of Thomond, 908 -major defeat of Eoganachta by Flann Sinna,
with Uí Néill backing, around or shortly before 919. one of the Uí Néill kings
This would put the creation of the Dál gCais 914 -end of ‘Forty Year Rest’. Danes begin raiding
line back to Cormac Cas, the brother of the ‘Eoganacht’ Limerick again.
Eógan Mór, the basis for the claim to the dynastic c..916 -earliest likely date for moving of Déis Becc
right of Munster kingship, into a time-frame of perhaps north across Shannon under pressure from Danes
925-940, as I again ‘tentatively’ suggest. This doesn’t to settle with kindred in ‘old Tulach Aidhne’.
bode well for Flann mac Lonáin’s poems about the 919 -kingdom of Thomond conceived, supported by
‘Dalcassians’ before he died in 895. the Uí Néill king Donnchadh. Likely marriage
The only alternative I can offer that would of Lorcan’s son Cennétig to Bé Bhionn.
allow mac Lonáin to have known these Déisi people as 920 -Lorcan, king of Thomond, alleged reign from 18
Dál gCais as early as the 880s or 890s is that there was months to 9 years. May have died 929.
a significant ancestor named Cas in their own Déisi line 922 -traditional date, settlement of Danes in Limerick
by whom they described themselves back then – a Cas c. 922- 925 -a later time for move of Déis Becc to north.
having nothing to do with the Cormac Cas line. 925-940 -a possible time for ‘invention’ of Dál gCais line to
The Déisi claimed to be descendants of Conn’s Cormac Cas, or, the extention of a previous line
brother Fiachu Suigde. In the Book of Leinster version through a ‘Tál, qui fuit Cass’, as a son of Conall
of the Déisi line, there’s a ‘Mac-Tháil’ listed only one Echluaith, to Cormac Cas – the object being
generation before the ‘Tál, qui fuit Cass’ through which to make a claim for the kingship of Munster
the Dál gCais trace themselves to Cormac Cas, alleged 940 -execution of Cennétig’s daughter Orlaith by Uí
brother of Eogan Mor, ancestor of the Eoganachta. Néill, and end of their support for Thomond.
The word ‘tál’ means ‘adze’ and ‘mac Táil’ 941 -birth of Brian Ború. ® April 2009
means ‘a son (or follower) of the adze’, that is, a
craftsman who uses and is skilled with the adze, such as a carpenter, a cooper, or a wright. I’d say there was
something important in the lore of the Dál gCais concerning the ‘tál’. In Dineen’s English-Irish Dictionary, under
‘tál’, I found that the Dalcassians also called themselves ‘Clann Táil’, the ‘Sept of the Adze’.
It’s peculiar that the tál turns up in both a Déisi line and the Dál gCais line only a generation apart, but I
don’t know what to make of it. And why the strange phrase ‘Tál qui fuit Cass’ ( ? Tál, who Cass was) in the Dál
gCais line? I don’t understand it. But if somehow it could mean that this Cass was once in that Déisi line which
seems to end with ‘Mac-Tháil’, then Flann mac Lonáin may have heard the Déis Becc called also ‘Dáil gCais’.
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If that was the case, Flann mac Lonáin could have guessed something about the ambitions of these ‘early
Déisi-descended’ Dalcassians. He couldn’t have known that 25 years or more in the future they would make
themselves out to be not Déisi at all but Eoganachta – all for the sake of claiming a kingdom. Though he never
knew that much, he may have written all these poems as a satire on their ambitions. He was saying: Lorcan never
could defeat the like of Flann Sinna. Kincora was nothing but a place for storing grain. And the Dalcassian who
would give his twelve-month earnings for the sake of hearing a poem, could never be.
However, the Mac-Tháil in the Déisi line may have no connection here. In M. A. O’Brien’s Corpus
Genealogiarum Hiberniae, he is given no descendants (p. 397). There may be no way of showing an earlier ‘Déisi
stage’ in the Dál gCais sept name. For me, the alternative is to say that Flann mac Lonáin didn’t compose those
poems. The subject matter makes me think they were composed at a later time by someone who knew things that
Flann wouldn’t have known in his life-time.
By saying that, I suppose I’m saying Fahey and O’Curry are not right in accepting the poems as his. Or,
if the poems are by mac Lonáin and he did know of a Dál gCais claiming to be of ‘common descent with the
Eoganachta’, others might say Byrne is not right even to imply that the Dál gCais weren’t seeking the kingship of
Munster as a hereditary privilege until after 920. It would be nice if the proposal for a two-stage interpretation of
the Dál gCais sept name turned out to be right, so all three of these historians could be right as well.
21. Free Allegiance in Aidhne:
The reason I brought up the poems of Flann mac Lonáin in the first place was because I wanted to get
around to mentioning him as a possible influence within Aidhne that would add to the complexity facing Flann Ó
Cléirigh and the chiefs that follow him. Because we couldn’t see the poems we got caught up in a few diversions,
but no harm done. The question of the significance of Flann mac Lonáin’s influence within Aidhne is still there.
If Flann’s poems are not satires or mockeries, then he represents an early, if not the earliest, indication of
favorable opinion in regard to the Dál gCais within Aidhne. Not only is this an opinion within Aidhne, it’s an
opinion within the greater family of Cléireach. Flann mac Lonáin is a cousin of Flann O’Clery’s father. The
showing of favor or partiality in regard to the Dál gCais and then toward the family of Brian Ború later becomes a
problem for both Aidhne and the O’Clerys.
James Patrick Hynes in his book, White Sheeted Fort, mentions something that happened two hundred
years previous to this which has bearing on it. He writes: “By the year 707, the Uí Briúin were well on their way
to increased power with their representative – Indrechtach mac Muiredaig – in the kingship of Connaught.
During his reign some of the minor tribes moved their allegiance from the Uí Fiachrach Aidhne to the Uí Briúin.”
(p. 39). This, of course, was one of the causes of the weakening of Aidhne. The key word there is allegiance.
Just last year I wrote a piece about allegiance that I intended to attach as an appendix to a larger piece I
wrote about my father’s Clarke and Kennedy family in Limerick and New York. Some day I might actually attach
it. The occasion that sparked my writing happened back in the 1880s when three Joseph Clarkes in the family
renounced their allegiance to Queen Victoria and swore allegiance to the Constitution of the United States. That
made me muse about what allegiances the Clarke family might have had through the centuries. Indeed, they had
many, and I didn’t find them all.
As far as I can tell, back in the A.D. 700s to A.D. 900s in Aidhne, there was no renouncing or swearing
of allegiance ceremony, but the tuath Aidhne was all about allegiance. All the kindreds within Aidhne were there
‘voluntarily’, as it were. They were ‘free agents’ in regard to their participation in tuath affairs, especially external
affairs. I’m only talking about Aidhne now, not all tuatha. Some were not as well off.
In Aidhne, they freely gave their allegiance and they were free to renounce it. There were no sedition or
treason laws against it. There were no police, constables, or cops, no jails or federal prisons for ‘traitors’. Of
course, in Aidhne there were constraints. You could be ‘exiled’ for a ‘kin-slaying’, and there were ‘fines’ for all
sorts of offences. There were many kinship obligations. However, allegiance was not even an obligation.
I’d say that the holding on to kindred allegiances would be one of the complexities in Aidhne. Flann
O’Clery, as tuath king or chief, would have to deal with this. It would be a concern for any tuath king. If some
‘minor’ kindreds began moving their allegiance to the Silmurray and others to the Dál gCais, soon there would be
no tuath at all to be king of. Or, if most kindreds went one way, then the tuath would become a subject tuath and
the king a subject king, with influence over internal kindred matters only.
I think this was in fact the condition of most tuatha by the 900s. But, I believe the tuath Aidhne was still
independent – with a century or more of resistance struggle and self-defense now behind it. And under the
O’Clerys at least, it would try to remain independent in the face of attacks from outside. But the freedom of
allegiance within the tuath could not be resisted. It was ancient custom, perhaps even law.
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As to law in general, from the reading I’ve done, most recently in Byrne, I get the sense that the tuath
itself was the foundation, or original source, of law in Ireland. It was the law of families and relations between
families. The law did not descend from the larger entity of the cóiced, the ‘fifth’, downward to the tuath. On the
contrary, it seems the law was being drawn upward from the tuath to the cóiced. As for the ‘whole’ that the
concept ‘fifth’ implies – the whole nation – there wasn’t any ‘national law’in Ireland either.
I think historians generally agree that the concept of the ‘national state’ hadn’t been thought of by A.D.
900. This would be so in northern Europe, outside Ireland as well as inside Ireland.
For outside Ireland in A.D. 900, in those lands that had been under Rome until the 400s, I have my own
imagined picture. In regard to law, I’d say that a secondary process was in effect for them.
Long ago the law of all those peoples began, as in Ireland, with the family and relations between
families. Then, in various places and times, the powerful chieftains or aristocrats rose and took over large
swordlands. The old law was taken up with them but now it concerned the powerful family and relations between
powerful families. That’s an important difference.
In their courts, they had dreamers who sang their praises and imagined high places, like Mount Olympus,
where there were gods just like the aristocrats – quite an unruly bunch. I knew I got that picture from reading
about the ancient Greeks a few years ago. I’ve spent some time looking and I finally found the book I got it from.
It’s an old school book of mine: Selections from Early Greek Philosophy, edited by Milton C. Nahm, New York,
1947. In one place in the introduction Nahm writes:
“The gods were fashioned by the nobles after the pattern of their own existence, as they acquired more
and more self-esteem, more and more security. Olympus became a mirror of heroic experience, and its gorgeous
and frequently tumultuous features were faithfully reproduced. Gods and men approached each other with a
familiarity never since repeated. Men wore no little of divine dignity; the gods took no mean share of human
weakness. The virtues ascribed to the gods were the virtues dearest to those warriors – qualities of valour and
pride, and steadfastness in friendship and hate” (pp. 34-35)
Over thousands of years of civilizations in the Near East and the Greco-Roman swordlands, these laws
suitable for powerful families, and relations between powerful families, were distributed downward by kings,
pharaohs, or emperors, down to provinces and districts, smaller and smaller. It’s what I think of as the secondary
process. But that’s not the only way to recognize the ‘secondary laws’ – by the fact that they are ‘coming down’.
They also contain the notion of betrayal, punishable by death. It’s coming from that ‘steadfastness in friendship
and hate’ suitable and necessary for the powerful. It’s a relic of the law’s temporary visit with the gods.
So, the absence of this notion of betrayal punishable by death in Aidhne is a sign of the vast difference
between the old law of Ireland and the law coming into Ireland as a remnant of Rome and ancient Greece. Even a
kin-slaying, the worst offense in the old law, was dealt with by exile, not punishable by death. The old law was
based on kinship obligation and acceptance, rather than power.
But by A.D. 900, the new, secondary, law of the powerful had been intruding itself into Ireland gradually
for centuries. In one of the stories about Cú Chullain in the time of Medb, which I hope to illustrate on a chart at
the end, he acts as a ‘security’ on a contract that Clann n-Umhoir broke. To carry out his duty, Cú Chullain slays
Conall Caol, son of Aonghus, in combat at a site to be long remembered in Aidhne as Carn Conaill. And, the
increasingly general practice of taking hostages under threat of death is another aspect of the law of power. Soon,
kin-slaying itself will become common.
22. New Learning in Aidhne::
I’d really be missing something if I talked about ancient strains of tuath law remaining in Aidhne until
the 900s, without mentioning a relatively new influence not only on Aidhne but on the concept of the tuath itself.
It’s the revolution in schooling that took place in Ireland from the 600s to 900.
This was the period of the overflow and flood of Ireland’s teaching missionaries to the island of Britain
and the continent. In these pre-feudalism years, this watering of learning helped prepare the soil of northern
Europe for the growth of the universities.
When you think of it, Charlemagne was still illiterate in 800 when Pope Leo II crowned him Emperor of
the Romans. Though he didn’t take up that role – which came later with the rise of the Holy Roman Empire
among the German kingdoms – Charlemagne’s court became the center for the rise of schools and literacy among
the Franks, to which scholars from Ireland made major contributions. And with that, we must also think about the
fact that Ireland had its ‘rise in schools and literacy’ at least two centuries before the heady days of Charlemagne.
One of those Irish scholars, the great John Scotus Eriugena, who at the age of about thirty went to the
court of Charlemagne’s grandson Charles the Bald, was almost an exact contemporary of Cléireach of Aidhne.
Eriugena lived from about 810 to about 880. “He translated [ from Greek] the writings of the Areopagite, wrote
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against Gottshchalk the treatise De Praedestinatione [in Latin], and put his own theories into his main work, De
Divisione Naturae”. That’s from one of my favorite school books: A History of Philosophy, by Dr. W.
Windelbrand, translated by James H. Tufts, Ph.D., New York, 1901.
Laitheog and Cléireach might have been at school together. She showed her learning through poetry. Later, she
married Cléireach’s third cousin Lonáin, who was likely in school with them. They grew up in a community where many
attended school. Schooling wasn’t ‘mandated’ but I’d say it
was open to many kindreds rather than the preserve of the few. (12) Cléireach’s Family Line with Saints and Scholars
There was a great interest and excitement about learning. During
the 500s and 600s, for example the Irish language was codifed -[ 400s, time of Saint Patrick]-
as a written language and studied for its own sake. It had an
equal place with Latin as a vehicle for teaching. Classic Greek -[Aidhne]- Eogan
was taught so literature from ancient times could be absorbed. \ Aidhne
I understand that the schools were free, books were _____________________________ |
provided, and students were fed. This was the ‘golden age dau | | (?) | |
of learning’ in Ireland. It was certainly in advance of what was Saint Séanach Aedh == Cuilena Conall == Feidelm
going on in Britain and northern Europe during these centuries. Ailinn | _____|_____ |___(?)_____ ®
I’ve made a chart here playing on the often heard -[500s]- ____| | dau | | | |
phrase ‘Ireland, the land of saints and scholars’. It’s just for Aodh Saint Saint Saint Goibnend Ainmhire
Cléireach’s family line, but I’m sure something similar could | Colga Foila Aidus | |
be made for other family lines. It puts the notion of ‘saints and dau | ||
scholars’ into a family setting and a tradition stretching back Saint Cobhthach ? Duach ®
over centuries. And, you can see it all at once. Sarnait ||
However, what I’ve been thinking of most about -[ 600s, KilmacDuagh]- ||
this golden age of learning is how it is incidently tied up Dima == Cumianea == Colmán Saint
with the ancient kindred tradition of Ireland. I see this tie ________| ___________| Colmán
as pulling the tradition from one place to another. | | ?| sl | 622 K mac Duach *
In Ireland, for a few thousand years and more, Saint Saint Saint Guaire d. | 632 FY
order was based on the ancestrally definable family, a Cumian Caimin Marbhan Aidhne
‘physical’ kindred. It drew in the stranger. It was the way d. | 663 B
people wanted to live, as family together. After Patrick, Artgal
with the wide world in view through books and learning, |
there comes this good-news kindred of all mankind under Fergal
the Father, a ‘spiritual’ kindred, that springs from the Aidhne
written word of the gospels. It’s another kindred choice. -[ 700s]- ________________|
It’s new to Ireland, attractive and exciting. ||
I have a feeling it drew strangers from different Abbot Tuaim Gréine |
kindreds into monasteries and cloisters to learn, write, and Reachtabrad Torpad
work together as new families. I think it drew others to seek d._|_ 744 AT |
out the kinship of mankind across the seas as missionaries. _______________ |
There was a great draw into the society of the church and ||
incidentally, unintentionally, a great drawing away from the Aodh Cathmog
society of the tuath. ||
There was a similar to and fro movement in regard Abbot Tuaim Gréine |
to the new school men and clerics. They were brought into Burbotha == Caithnia Cumasgach
the kindred society as the equivalent of the filid. Many of the d. | 794 B |
filid themselves became clerics. scribe Cluain mic Nois |
The filid were members of the oral school of -[ 800s]- Connmhac Cétadach
learning who from ancient times had formalized obligations ||
within kindreds and between kindreds, tuatha, and chiefs or | poet |
kings. They set the terms of mutual respect that preserved Lonáin ==Laitheog Cléireach
the independence of the tuatha. You could say, they were
the arbiters of comitas, the ‘courtesy’ of sovereignty. * Colman mac Duach’s line is just my guess. Fahey has
By the 600s, or 700s, it was clear that clerics were him 3 generations from a Conall, son of Cobhtach –
also members of a vast outside administration centered in the too late for the death date Fahey also gives.
city of Rome, the church – a ‘physical’ as well as ‘spiritual’ K, Knox; FY, Fahey; B, Byrne; AT, Annals of Tigernach
entity in the larger world. The question is: In whose hands ® April 2009
now would the sovereignty of the tuath lie? In the hands of the fili, the seer or poet, or in the hands of the cleric, the
churchman? Or, maybe the swordlander would cut his way through the whole matter.
Also, I see a drawing-in of tuath kings, attracted by the excitement of new learning and the desire to
facilitate it within the tuath. The tuath king from ancient times was expected to be the best provider to the
kindreds. This was seen in terms of cattle, farming, food, and living conditions. With the arrival of this learning,
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during the 500s and 600s, some tuath kings likely felt it was proper for them to provide schooling for the kindreds.
It became a new function for the tuath king. In these early times in Ireland at least, I’d say, it was a sincere kingly
act – not a pose or façade, as it often became in Ireland after the 900s and later in feudal times. I’m thinking of
Shakespearean-like lords and Machiavellian princes who would use school-foundings to enhance their power.
In Aidhne, probably in the reign of Colman from 603 to 622, churches and a monastery settlement were
provided for the tuath kindreds. Colman is listed among the kings of Connacht, by later historians of course, but
he was the tuath king in Aidhne. Every king in Ireland, especially in earlier times, was a tuath king, or as Byrne
put it, “was basically a ruler of a single tuath” (p. 41).
After Colman’s death, his son Guaire became the next tuath king in 622. He is listed as a king of
Connacht from 653 to 662. However, he was Guaire Aidhne, a tuatha king, from 622 to 662, for forty years. Now,
it was during the papal reign of Honorius from 625 to 638 when the ‘diocese of Kilmacduagh’ was established, as
Fahey tells us. This may be the earliest diocese in Ireland, I don’t know. But it’s important to recognize here that
the establishing of the monastery complex was not the idea of the Pope. Nor, was it the idea of a high king, an
emperor, or pharaoh. It was the idea of Guaire Aidhne, or his father Colman. It was a tuath king’s idea, undirected
by a superior.
Guaire Aidhne goes down in history as an almost impossibly generous king. I think the stories about him may be
mocking him. They have hundreds of sponging poets coming in and lingering for months to test the limits of his generosity.
Even when he is facing death at the point of a sword, he takes time out to give the shirt off his back to a poor man who asks for
it. After his death, his hand comes up from the grave with gold for a poor passer-by. You’ll have to read the stories yourself.
He’s not a ‘Saint’, so it’s not hagiography – it may be mockery.
Guaire Aidhne is also reported by some historians (13) Guaire Aidhne, Not Guilty of Saint-Killing
as ordering the killing of a saint. I’ve been waiting for the chance
to exonerate this man. Guaire Aidhne is not guilty. Here is Eochu Mugmedon
where a chart comes in handy. It can show that the victim, Mongfind ==|==== Carenn
Saint Cellach, lived in the generation-time of Guaire Aidhne’s |/ \ |
great grandfather Goibnend. If that’s not enough, it shows that Fiachra \|
that there was another man named Guaire, born a generation | \|
before but still a contemporary of the victim. Dathí / Nath Í Niall
The only ‘witness’ in the trial who testifies to the _____________________| |
existence of this second Guaire, earlier in time, is Knox in Ailill Eochaidh ? Conall
his history of Mayo. Dubhaltach MacFhirbhisigh, the great Molt Breac [ Gulban / Crimthainne]
historian in the 1600s, in his Leabhar Mór na nGenealach, at d. | 482 B _____(?)_____| |B
(252.3), attributes the murder plot to ‘Guaire, s. Colmán’, but Cellach Colman K-380 Eogan (?)
doesn’t say ‘Guaire Aidhne’. However, in his naming of | or Aedh K-438 Aidhne |
Eochaidh Breac’s four children (252.4), he doesn’t include || | |
a ‘Colman’ or ‘Aedh’. So, I put a question mark there. Eogan Bel Guaire Conall Fergus Cerrbel
But even without the testimony about the second | ||
Guaire, the timing of the murder, if about the year 550, d. | 543/7 B | ______|
would argue in the defense of the accused Guaire Aidhne, Saint Cellach Goibnend -vs- Maine * Diarmait
who was not near to being born yet – unless he was well sl. | c. 550 K-33 X - | -538 B / mac Cerrbail
over 112 years old when he died in 662. So, let you all be -[slain by order of Guaire]- | d. | 565 B
be the jury. Let us finally free the tuath king Guaire Aidhne Cobhthach Aed Sláine
from the shadow of this crime that follows him even | d. | 604 B
to our own day. Dima == Cumianea == Colman Diarmait
This gets me thinking that there is more to be done _______| r. | 603 d. | 665 B
than restoring the reputation of a single tuath king. It seems || sl | 622 K
to me that this period from the late 400s to the end of the 600s St. Cumian St Caimin Guaire Aidhne
in Ireland was not only a golden age for saints and scholars, r. | 653 – d. 662 K
and for Irish missionaries in Europe, it was also a golden age * Maine and Diarmait may have been of the next generation(?)
for tuath kings. B = Byrne, K= Knox, X-538 = battle of Cáenloch, where Maine
Books I read that mention kings during the 500s was slain and the alliance of Uí Maine and Aidhne was saved.
and 600s seem to focus on ‘provincial kings’, with an eye ® April 2009
to events that lead up to the 1100s and the coming of the feudal Normans into Ireland.They are passing by something very
important, I think. They are neglecting many, many, ‘little Charlemagnes’.
History gives such praise and credit to the big Charlemagne, who established a center of learning in the
kingdom of the Franks. Long before Charles the Great was born, tuath kings, one by one, were setting up learning
centers throughout Ireland. It was tuath law that accommodated these centers, not ‘province law’ or ‘high king
law’ Such law did not exist in Ireland. This was as much a golden age for the tuath kings as it was for the saints
and scholars.
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23. Guaire Aidhne’s Two Defeats in Battles for Aidhne:
After bringing the tuath Aidhne to a new height, as I see it, by facilitating St. Colmán mac Duach’s
efforts to establish a center for Christian learning and prayer within the tuath, in 622, king Colmán is slain in
battle by another kind of leader from outside, Rogallach of the Uí Briúin. The perceptive historian Byrne says of
the Uí Briúin in this period that they were ‘intruders’ into ‘territories’ and had a “new policy of territorial
lordship” (p. 247). Five years after his father was slain, in 627, Guaire Aidhne, still a young man, was called upon
to go into battle assisted by Aidhne’s allies, the Uí Maine. Byrne has a paragraph about this battle which I’ll quote
from at length.
Guaire ‘Aidne’ is “one of the most prominent figures (14) The Battle of Carn Feradaigh in ‘Limerick’ in 627
in the Irish king sagas, and under his rule the Uí Fiachrach
Aidne reached the height of their power in Connacht. Although Uí Maine Aidhne Caisil
the Munster conquest of Thomond was dated by tradition to
the fifth century [ the 400s], it may be that the real expansion Dallan Goibnend Feidelmid
of the Déis Tuaiscirt into east Clare is marked by the battle of | -won x | 538 vs Uí Néill |
Carn Feradaigh in 627. Carn Feradaigh (Cahernarry in Limerick) | -saved | Uí Maine |
later marked the border between the northern and southern Lugdach Cobthach Crimthand
branches of the Déis Becc.” || |
“Guaire Aidhne was put to flight by Failbe Fland, king Feradach _ Colmán Aed Dubh
of Caisil, and the king of Uí Maine was slain. We remember sl. | 627 \ sl. | 622 by Rogallach |
that in 538 Goibnenn mac Conaill, king of Uí Fiachrach Aidne, | allies | |
had vindicated the right of his dynasty to the allegiance of Uí Cormac \_ Guaire -lost x 627 vs- Failbe Fland
Maine against Maine mac Cerbaill of the Southern Uí Néill. | Aidhne r. | 628
Guaire must have been quite young in 627, and the reverse he | d. | 662 d. | 637-9
suffered may have paved the way for the succession to the high Coirpre Artgal Colga
kingship of Connacht of Ragallach mac Uatach, who reigned | | d. | 678
until his death in 649 and was the true founder of the Uí Briúin Dícoll Fergal Aidne Nad-Fraích
fortunes.” (Byrne, Irish Kings and High Kings, p.239).
The chart I made here could be said to be of a type [ LL ]
intended to illustrate and complement a text. It’s a synchronism, [ O-.172 ] [B- 216 ]
not a genealogy chart, because it has no common ancestor. It
complements the text in at least two ways: It hints that Failbe LL = Book of Leinster, O- 172 = page in Corpus
Fland was also young, since he didn’t become king in Caisil until Genealogiarum Hiberniae, ed. by M.A. O’Brien,
628, the year after his victory. Byrne doesn’t name the king of Uí B-216 = page in Byrne, and x = a battle ® May 2009
Maine who was slain. I didn’t do any research on it, but I’ll bet his
name was Feradach. Perhaps he was the battle leader of the allied side. His burial in a carn after the battle gives the name to
the battle, Carn Feradaigh, and marks the site of the defeat. His death might also explain why Guaire was ‘put to flight’. He
wasn’t the battle-leader. Guessing at Feradach’s status also helped me synchronize him as of the previous generation.
I would add to Byrne’s excellent comments a little more concerning the suggestion he makes that the battle of Carn
Feradaigh was connected to the movement of the Déis Becc [later to be Dál gCais] into ‘east Clare’. What concern is ‘east
Clare’ to Guaire and the tuath Aidhne [in ‘south Galway’]? It seems to me this shows us that in Guaire Aidhne’s time the old
kingdom of the Fir Craíbe was not forgotten.
What Byrne can call ‘east Clare’, we can call ‘Tulach Aidhne’—the old hill of burials. The Déis Becc were
occupying and making swordland out of an ingredient of the tuath Aidhne, as Guaire saw it. And the king of the Uí Maine
agreed with him. Otherwise, why did they risk their lives in battle way down in ‘Limerick’? What was their motive? We’d
have to say they were no different than the Uí Briúin – ‘intruders’, part of the ‘new policy of territorial lordship’.
These men, like Guaire Aidhne and Feradach, knew the land and its ancestral connections. This was no quaint
antiquarian interest in the past. It was their here and now, every day. We have praiseworthy national patriots in later times.
This was earlier than all that. It wasn’t loyalty to a dynasty of kings, a matter of the heart, or the duty of citizenship, an ideal of
the mind, it was something in their very bones that connected them to their fathers’ fathers and the earth they were buried in,
which now provided life for them.
I sometimes get a notion or inkling of the way tuath people thought when I listen to American Indians talk about the
earth they depend on and the wild animals who speak and share their survival wisdom with them. It’s probably not the same,
but it’s similar. It’s hard for people in the modern world of states to grasp the non-state attitude toward land.
The changing rate of time has effected our thinking. It’s difficult for us to think back more than a thousand years
about the ways of the tuath people in the 600s, because there have been so many changes in life style since then. In a sense,
they were able to look back four thousand years and more to the ways that their ancestors lived – because there was less of a
change. Those times had almost reached theirs – little changed. They still could glimpse a way of life that was older than the
pyramids. Tulach Aidhne, though maybe not nearly that old, might have been a brief step back along Time’s way.
We don’t know where Guaire Aidhne is buried, but we might be able to find the carn of Feradach in Cahernarry,
Limerick. We could go there occasionally to ‘pay our respects’. Knox, in his Mayo book, says one of the ‘tribes’ in Uí Maine
was called the ‘Sencheneoil’ – the ‘Old Kind’. Maybe Feradach was one of the Old Kind.
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The second defeat of Guaire Aidhne is called the battle of Carn Conaill in Aidhne, near today’s Gort. No man
named Conall from this battle was buried there. This was the already historic site in Aidhne named after the carn (or cairn)
where Conall Caol was lain. He was a son of the ‘Firbolg’ king Aongus, son of Umor. Carn Conaill was one of several place-
names in Aidhne, like nearby Loch Cutra, commemorating Firbolgs. The carn seems to have been held in high regard.
The stories in the Tain Bo Cuailnge say that Conall was killed in combat by Cú Chulainn over a heavy ‘tribute’ that
his father hadn’t ‘paid’ to a king over on the east coast– one of many aristocratic embroideries in the tale. It’s no surprise that
there would be aristocrats here and there in the midst of the tuath societies in Ireland at this early time, but the story makes this
debt collection happen very soon after Conaill’s people arrived in Aidhne at the invitation of Queen Medb. If Conall’s people
were new-comers, I can’t see why the carn would have been so significant to Aidhne’s later descendants..
The high regard for the carn makes me think that the Firbolgs or Clann nUmoir might have been residents in Aidhne
long before Medb and Cú Chulainn existed, whether in the flesh or merely in story. Medb and Cú Chulainn may have been
actual people, but the invitation-and-combat story might have been a mere invention to explain the origin of the place-names
‘Carn Conaill’ and ‘Loch Cutra’ (named after Conaill’s granduncle?), place-names that otherwise didn’t fit into the story-
teller’s idea of things.
However, if Cú Chulainn and Conall Caol were contemporaries – and that might have been the case or else the story
wouldn’t have been convincing to early listeners – then the carn may date from the decades leading up to A.D. 100.
Well, anyway, 550 years later, or so, another combat is going to take place at this site within Aidhne in the year 649.
It’s called the battle of Carn Conaill. The historian Byrne writes about this battle too, but this time he is not sure of a couple of
things. I’ll make a chart to go along with his text again, but instead of just illustrating and complementing, I’ll try to solve the
problems he raises. I often do charts like this. Sometimes I get nowhere, but other times I actually find an answer or two.
Maybe this kind of chart could be called a ‘fishing chart’.
On page 241, Byrne has been discussing a ‘saga’ about the battle he says was composed at the momastery of
Clonmacnoise. Near the end he writes: “The saga asserts that Guaire was aided in the battle of Carn Conaill by Munster
forces, led by Cúán mac Endaí, king of Caisil,
Cúán mac Conaill, king of Uí Fidgenti, and (15) The Battle of Carn Conaill in Aidhne in 649
Tolomnach, king of Uí Liatháin, who all fell.
This is improbable: such contingents are not ( Th e Southern A l l i e s ) v s (t h e E a s t )
mentioned in the early annals, which more- Uí Fidgeinti Uí Baiscinn Uí Fiachrach Ua nEnna Uí Néill
over record the death of Cúán mac Endaí | \ Corco Baiscind Aidhne Caisil Brega
in 641.” |\ | | | _____|
“The Uí Liatháin would hardly have Conall Araide Baítan Cobthach Endaí Maine Diarmait
been involved so far from home; the name | (Mac-Arda) | | ||
Tolomnach is unusual, though it occurs in the || | | | d. | 565
Corco Baiscind genealogies, and a Talamnach | | | | | |
mac Liadcind, king of Corco Baiscind, is ment- Cúán Brenand Laidcind Colmán Amalgad Aed Sláine
ioned as having been killed in 665 in a battle at sl. | 649 X | | ___|___ | d. | 604
Loch Fén (Loughfaine in county Limerick) be- || | | kg | | |
tween the Munstermen and the Connachta. It is Cuanach Nechtan Talam- Liad- Guaire Cúán Blathmac &
at least possible that he was on the Connacht || nach gnend Aidhne = | ÅXÆ Diarmait
side. But his son fell in 721 in a battle between | | sl. | 665 _____d. | 662 || sl. |_649_ d. | 665
the Corco Baiscind and the Connachta, which || | dau | | || dau | | |
may be symptomatic of the decline of the Uí Fergus Oengus Aithechdae Créide Artgal = Ornait Maele- Cernach
Fiachrach Aidhne and the extension of Munster | Cáech _, | ,___ / | umae Sotal
authority into all of Thomond.” | __|____ / | | _____ | d. | 668
“Relations between Guaire and the Uí | cf | ? | / sl.| 721 || |
Fidgenti (whose overlordship at times extended Dún- Don- Dínert- Rechtabrad Fergal Usnig Niall
north of the Shannon estuary) are reflected in agalach ennach | ach * Aidne _|_ d. | 701
a poem ascribed to Créide, daughter of Guaire, d.| 683 | d. | 696-7
supposedly a lament for the death of an Uí Fid-
genti prince Dínertach who had been wounded O- 365 O- 230 O-.380 O- 253 B- 281
‘in the battle of Aidne’. Carney would, however,
see the poem as a genuine seventh-century [600s] O = Corpus Genealogiarum Hiberniae, ed. by M.A. O’Brien, B= Byrne
composition written by Guaire’s court poet…” * In the index only (p.589), O’Brien lists Dínertach as son of Oengus,
[Byrne then continues discussing the poem] son of Nechtan. His genealogy list on page 230 doesn’t show it.
In constructing this chart I made much ® May 2009
use of M. A. O’Brien’s genealogy listings. The
introduction to the book indicates that Professor O’Brien worked conscientiously on these lists for many years and I’m sure he
would want people like you and me to make use of his work. I’ve ‘synchronized’ some of his lists with Guaire Aidhne’s line
trying to match the names given by Byrne as participants in this battle of Carn Conaill. The synchronized lines in charts (14)
and (15) all trace back consistently to the generation of Conn of the Hundred Battles but in so doing they call into question the
generation scheme of the Eochaidh Mugmedon family. This was a surprise to me. (See Appendix II.) This tends to support the
suspicions in Byrne (pp 80-81) that Eochaidh and his sons, especially Niall, have been ‘pre-dated’.
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In Hynes’ White Sheeted Fort, I found that Guaire Aidhne “is said to have been married to Ornait, daughter of
Cuan, a later king of Caisil” (p. 5). This could help explain why Guaire might have a Cuan of Caisil as an ally. But the Cúán
I found in O’Brien is a grandson of Endaí, not ‘Cúán mac Endaí’ as Byrne has.
In a Uí Fidgeinti line, I found another Cúán who was a son of Conall, like Byrne has. He seems to have been of the
generation before Guaire, though he could easily have been an active contemporary of Guaire and an ally of his in this battle.
Generation ‘time’ is not chronological ‘time’. In a branch of that same Uí Fidgeinti line, I might have found Dínertach, the
young prince whose loss was lamented in the poem attributed to Créide, Guaire’s daughter.
By the way, Créide later married Marcan, son of Tomán of the Uí Maine. Marcan was slain in battle soon after, in
653. She married a second time to Fergus or Muirgheas, a son of Rogallach who slew her grandfather Colman back in 622.
Fergus is said to have been killed the next year, in 654, by men from Aidhne. But in the meantime Créide may have become
the mother of Muiredach Muillethan, the namesake of Síl Muiredhaigh, or the Silmurray, who much later became a threat to
Aidhne. I have all that on one of my big charts but it’s another story, scéal eile, as they say.
As to the Corco Baiscind (of what is now southwest Clare) who Byrne suggests might have been allies of
Guaire in this battle (rather than the Uí Liatháin from southeast Munster), I found that Talamnach would be in the
generation equivalent to Guaire’s. Though he didn’t die in this battle, he may have fought in it and survived. I
think that the Corco Baiscind would have been likely allies of Guaire’s line for the following reason: There may
have been a kinship relationship through a marriage between Talamnach and Guaire’s families a few generations
earlier. This of course would make them cousins in some degree.
I notice a number of names that are common to both lines. See ‘Laidcind’ and ‘Laidgnen’ on the chart.
Also ‘Rechtabrad’ on the chart, similar to Reachtabrad, not on the chart, but a son of Fergal Aidhne. Later, the
Corco Baiscind Rechtabrad’s son is a ‘Fland’ and Fland’s grandson is a ‘Cléireach’, who would then be in the
generation of Cléireach of Aidhne’s grandparents. Some time ago, I was thinking that this Corco Baiscind
Cléireach may have been the father of the mother of Cléireach of Aidhne. She may have named her son after her
own father. It’s just a feeling I had. There’s no way to prove it.
Unless I missed it, Byrne gives no motive for this attack of Brega on Aidhne. In other books, but not in
Byrne, this attack by a king Diarmait (d. 665) on Guaire Aidhne (d. 662) is confused with the attack by Diarmait’s
grandfather, another king Diarmait, Diarmait mac Cerbaill (d. 565), on another Guaire in Moy in the north , the
one who was implicated in the murder of St. Cellach. Justice seems to be the motive there. But in this case, the
saga composed in Clonmacnoise (founded by the earlier Diarmait in 548), which Byrne uses, seems to mention
only that “Diarmait and Guaire vie in piety”. Surely, that can’t be the motive for this significant battle which is
said to have brought about a decline in the prestige of Aidhne. It couldn’t have been a battle over piety.
As to the alliance on Guaire’s side, Byrne thinks it is ‘improbable’, so naturally he wouldn’t offer a
possible motive for it. If there was such an alliance of the Uí Fidgeinti, the Uí Baiscind, and Ua n-Enna of Caisil
with Guaire of Aidhne in 649, I can only guess that it had some connection with Guaire’s defeat by Caisil in the
earlier battle of Carn Feradaigh in 627. Some time between 627 and 649, Guaire may have given up the very
thought of the ‘old kingdom of the Fir Craíbe’. He may have conceded to Caisil that he would fight no more
battles over what I’ve been calling ‘Tulach Aidhne’. He may have promised that his only interest now would be
in the monasteries and schools in that area. Thus, they could become allies.
Byrne says later, “It seems likely that Guaire gained much of his good reputation by patronizing that
curious expansion of West Munster saints up the Shannon which we have already noted. Inis Celtra on Lough
Derg was later closely associated with the Dál Cais of Thomond. St. Cáimmín’s foundation had itself displaced
the memory of the Leinster saint Colum mac Crimthannáin of Terryglass. Tuaim Gréine (Tomgraney), another
Dál Cais church, may have attracted Guaire’s interest, and he may have been the ancestor of two abbots,
Rechtabra Ua Guaire and Caithnia ua Guaire, who died in 752 and 794 respectively.” (p.242).
I believe St. Cáimmín there may have been Guaire’s half-brother. Rechtabra and Caithnia, as we know,
were descendants of Guaire. Caithnia, the abbot, was the poet Flann mac Lonán’s great grandfather and the
interest in the well-being of society in the old Tulach Aidhne may have continued in Guaire’s family to Flann mac
Lonáin’s time. It might explain his poems. Flann Ó Cléirigh came in the very next generation.
I still don’t understand the battle of Carn Conaill in 649. The answer doesn’t seem to be in the books
I have. I can’t see why Diarmait, the king of Brega, attacked Aidhne. What was the purpose? What was the
achievement? Maybe it had something to do with the defeat in 538 of Diarmait’s granduncle Maine mac Cerbaill
by Goibnend, Guaire’s great grandfather. Just the settling of an old score – generations old.
Or, maybe it had to do with the old kingdom of the Tuatha Taiden, which reached, as Knox says, “from the
Palace of Fidach towards Tara” (p.5), that is, from the border of Aidhne as far east – possibly – as Brega. The Uí
Néill king of Brega may have heard stories about a kingdom four or five centuries ago that reached from Brega to the
border of Aidhne in Connacht and he wanted that old kingdom to be his.new kingdom. When we look back at them,
we see the beginnings of our history, but when they looked back, they saw the endings of an older history.
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With that, I’ll conclude my attempt to collect some of the history surrounding Aidhne before the arrival
of the first O’Clerys on the scene. It gave me the chance to show a few kinds of charts. Now, we can continue
with Flann Ó Cléirigh, who began his reign as the new chief or tuath king in 922.
IV. Flann Ó Cléirigh, a Princess and a Prince
24. Flann O’Clery, Tuath King of Independent Aidhne and His End:
We’ve thought about what happened before Flann Ó Cléirigh and now we have to think carefully about what
happened during his life. It’s a bit of a mystery. I’m fairly sure no one has ever written a biographical sketch of his life. Now,
it’s too late to do it. I’ve laid out a table, it’s really a kind of chart matching years and age, to show just a few things that
happened or might have happened during his time. A chart always saves a lot of words. I’m showing his life according to what
I’ve said up to now, so you can judge whether it seems reasonable enough. Then later I have to show you something entirely
different that shows up in history.
I’m supposing that he was born in the last year of his father Maolfabhaill’s life, a late-born and youngest son. If he
was born earlier, then all the ages in the matches would be older of course. If born in 890 and married at age 24, that would
bring us to the year 914, and so on. This is just to see if it looks
reasonable. The year after that, his son Comhaltan Ó Cléirigh (16) A Time-line for the Life of Flann O’Clery
could have been born, leaving him age 61 at his death in 976,
a sensible life-span. In case Comhaltan was born later, I enter Age Year Occurrence
a ‘late birth-year’ for him at 925, when his father Flann would
be age 35. Comhaltan would then be age 51 when he died. Still - 890 -latest possible year of birth
sensible. That’s how the chart works. 24 914 -possible marriage to a woman
The years 917 and 922 would have brought sadness of his own generation
into the life of Flann, no matter what his age. His older brother 25 915 -an early birth-year for his son
Tigernach was slain by a Dane and then five years later Maol- Comhaltan, died 976 (? age 61)
macduach, likely his nephew, was slain by Danes too. They 27 917 -his brother Tigernach slain
both were ríthe tuaithe, or tuath kings, and Flann was chosen or by a Dane (? near Limerick)
accepted by the tuath as the new rí, probably in 922. He may 32 922 -his (?) nephew Maolmacduach
have been 32 years of age, or more. slain by Danes (? near Limerick)
The early years of Flann’s reign must have been taken -Flann himself selected as chief
up with concerns about the Danes and seeing to preparations for 35 925 -a late birth-year for Comhaltan,
defense of the tuath, its churches and the monastery. He hadn’t died 976 (? age 51)
long to wait. I’ve looked through my books again to find a few -an early birth-year for his son
raids or battles that are probably typical of others that were not Muiredach, d. 988 (? age 63)
noted by historians. In regard to the raid that occurred about 929 39 929 -approximate year ‘foreigners’ (FM)
Fahey says, “It is certain that in the territory of Aidhne the Danes or ‘Irish-Norse’ (HW) raid from
met, not merely with determined opposition, but with crushing Galway Bay and are defeated by
defeat” (p. 117). Haywood has that the raiders were ‘Irish-Norse’ ‘the Connaughtmen’ (FM)
In 937, the fleet of the Limerick Danes was destroyed 45 935 -a late birth-year for Muiredach.,
by Dublin ‘Norse’ (or Norwegians) on Loch Ríb on the Shannon d. 988 (? age 53)
north of Aidhne, which must have begun to take pressure off 47 937 -“Olaf Guthfrithsson, king of Dublin,
Flann as tuath leader. In 938, the year after that, we have the destroys Limerick Vikings’ fleet”
report about Aralt, a king or leader of the Limerick Danes, being (HW) on Loch Ree.
slain by the Caenraighi in the center of Aidhne. It seems that 48 938 -approximate year “Aralt, son of
while Flann was king, Aidhne was doing well in defending itself. Imhar, … was killed in Connaught
There’s not a word about any other king coming to help. Aidhne by the Caenraighi of Aidhne” (FM)
was an independent tuath still, while Flann Ó Cléirigh was king. 50 940 -if Flann marries again in or after
By 940, Flann was at least age 50. It is likely that his this year, it would probably be to
wife had died around this time or a few years earlier. There is no a woman of the next generation.
record of her death. Such a record would be unusual. But it would 52 942 -the likely birth-year of “the Princess
also be unusual if she were living and having children after the Mor, daughter of Flan”, a chieftain
age of 50. And yes, we must talk about another child. of Aidhne (FY-127).
It seems that Flann O’Cléirigh had a daughter named 62 952 -death of Flann O’Clery. “Flann Ua
Mor, born about 942. He may also have had two sons born after Cléirigh, lord of South Connaught,
that. It’s more than likely that Flann’s second wife was young and royal heir to all Connaught, was
enough to be considered of the next generation. slain by the men of Munster” (FM)
Mor is often mentioned on history’s pages. Fr. Fahey calls
her “Princess Mor, daughter of Flan” (p.127) He calls her ‘princess’ FM = Four Masters, HW = Haywood, Atlas of the
because her father ‘Flan’ was a king in Aidhne. Who was the Vikings, p.74, FY = Fahey, Kilmacduagh, p.118
king named ‘Flan’ about the time Mor was born? It was Flann ® May 2009
Ó Cléirigh of course. A tuath only has one king at a time.
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It certainly looks like Mor was Flann Ó Cléirigh’s daughter. He reigned as the only chief or king in Aidhne until
‘Princess Mor’ would have been about ten years old. Does that bit about Mor seem right? That’s all I’m asking now. Is
there anything impossible on the chart? You think not. Well, just wait. Later we find that ‘history’ says Mor was
not Flann Ó Cléirigh’s daughter.
25. Who Killed Flann O’Clery, and Why?
Making charts tends to give you careful eyes when reading over the historical narrative. I’ve already
made many charts on the early O’Clerys and while reading the history again I’ve seen a few small things which
become larger when I think about them. I’ve already mentioned one of them, the taking of a surname by the
grandsons of Cléireach. I’ve tried to delve into what that could mean. Another relatively small item that could
easily be overlooked is the killing of Flann O’Clery in 950FM, that is, in 952.
So far, with this killing, three of the early O’Clerys we know about have been slain. We have this
information only because Cúcoigcríche, or Cucogry O’Clery, in his book of genealogies, took the rather unusual
step of writing a preface to his own genealogy in the book and he noted the circumstances of eleven family deaths.
I didn’t look through the whole book but it’s not likely that he included a preface in any other place. I think he
may have been giving us some hints about the troubled history of his early family here, especially in the case of
Flann O’Clery because of the choice of words he used.
The first to be killed was Tighernach O’Clery in 916FM = 917. Cugogry has “do ecc iar marbhadh
Raghnaill Uí Iomhair lais” (expired after Raghnaill Uí Iomhair was killed by him). The second to be killed was
Maolmacduagh, ‘lord’ of Aidhne. Cucogry doesn’t mention him in the genealogies, but his death circumstances
are given in the Four Masters, which Cucogry helped write. There it says he “was slain by the foreigners” (the
Danes) in 920, which is 921 or 922.
So now, the first two O’Clerys were killed in the struggles against the Danish Vikings. Who would you
guess the third, Flann O’Clery, was killed by? The Danes? Or, maybe the Silmurray? No, it was not the Danes or
the Silmurray. In the year 952, at the age of at least 62 years, Flann was slain, by ‘the men of Munster’. As
Cucogry says “do mharbhadh la Muimhneachaibh”. That phrase is all we have but it might be a give-away. When
someone is slain in battle, that fact is usually stated. No battle is mentioned here. And, considering Flann’s age,
it’s not likely he was killed in a battle. Small things, but I think they point to a mystery.
Why? Why was he killed? Why would the men of Munster kill this elderly king? About seven years
later, a daughter of a king of Aidhne named Flann marries a leader of the men of Munster. Could that have
anything to do with this? Are these small things or large things?
26. A Young Prince Arrives in Aidhne
It must have been in the year 958, six years after Flann was slain, when Mor was about 16, that the
traditional story of the meeting of the princess and a young prince takes place. Fr. Fahey, writing in 1893, used
the ‘royal’ language popular in his Victorian times in referring to Mor as a ‘princess’. It would suit the Middle
Ages too, I suppose, but maybe not the late tuath period of the 900s. The Irish ‘banfhlaith’ might fit and we can
think of it as meaning ‘sovereign lady’, if we wish. However, it’s a romantic story and I can picture it like one of
the old silent films with the interrupting word-captions appearing on the screen, and all the trappings.
‘A young prince’, about a year older than Mor, comes through the forest and mountains from the south
on, say, a white horse and at the head of a band of battle-hardened men of ‘his own kindred’ They ride up to a
gathering of the ‘men of Aidhne, brave but weary’ in their struggle against ‘the fierce Limerick Danes’, with
their horned-helmets and axes. ‘I have come to help’, shouts the young prince.
Never mind that Aidhne has maintained itself against these Danes for more than a century without
outside help and under their own leadership – and, that they have their own king, Comhaltan Ó Cléirigh, the son
of Flann, for a leader. This offer of assistance has to be there to provide a plausible entrance for the young prince
into the scene.
The romance must come to the fore. There wouldn’t be any forethought to it. The prince spies the
princess and the princess spies the prince. The caption reads: ‘love at first sight’. They seem to be hurriedly
married. Now the prince is shown as ‘one of the Aidhne kindred’ – but he never thought of that, he married for
love. Then ‘ the men of Aidhne willingly follow’ this young kindred prince and ‘his older brother, a king in the
south’, into ‘battle after battle’ –very exciting scenes – to rid the forests and Limerick itself of ‘the no-longer
dangerous Danes’ who are shown cowering on their haunches. ‘Finis’.
The end of the story is not like in Hollywood where ‘they get married and live happily ever after’. The end,
and the reason in the beginning for telling the story, is not the marriage, it’s the alliance. In reflecting about the
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prince, Fr. Fahey says that “ his marriage alliance with the chieftains of Aidhne, by espousing the Princess Mor,
daughter of Flan, [made] his connection with the western province [Connacht] still more intimate.” (p. 127).
If we were there, instead of wishing a happy marriage, we could wish a happy alliance.
The prince, we know of course, was Brian, the son of Cennétig, later Brian Boru. Above, Fahey says
‘still more intimate’ because he had just mentioned that Brian “was indeed already connected with the western
province by a very near and dear tie. His mother Beibhionn was daughter of the King of West Connaught.”
Fahey doesn’t reflect about why that alliance may have been made. The marriage of Cennétig and Bé
Bhionn around 919 probably came about as a result of Cennétig’s father Lorcán being declared the king of
Thomond by the Uí Néill of Míde, as part of their scheme to weaken the Caisil kings of Munster. Another happy
alliance?. Maybe. Then, around 939, Cennétig’s young daughter Orlaith is married to Donnchad, the king of
Míde, by some considered the high king. A happy alliance?. No way, she was executed the next year.
The sons and daughters of many tuath kings, I’m sure, married daughters and sons of nearby tuath kings.
It was a kind of marriage of equals. If the marriages were happy, I’d say they were also happy alliances of tuatha
as well. But there seems to be a kind of ‘marrying-upwards’ pattern to these Dál gCais ‘alliances’. Notice how
Fahey uses the phrase ‘connection with the western province’ when describing the marriages. It’s not humble
tuath connecting with humble tuath. These marriages are connections with ‘provinces’ and ‘high kings’ Perhaps,
some would say that’s what a happy alliance should be – a move up.
Was this alliance a happy one? Whether it was an alliance between Thomond and Aidhne or, as Fahey
suggests, between the provinces of Munster and Connaught, did it work out happily? .Well, no, it didn’t. For the
next two centuries Aidhne is caught in the middle of warfare between men of Connaught, the Silmurray, who
become O’Connors, and men of Munster, the Dál gCais, who become O’Briens.
The historians I’ve been reading, the best of them at least, seem to agree that what Ireland needed in the
900s was unity. I can’t disagree with that. But what seems to have happened is that the attempt to reach unity was
creating disunity by the way it was being attempted. The underlying tuath law, based on mutual obligations and
respect, might have been used to create another kind of unity, not imposed by the sword.
It was the sword that prevailed. Brian is portrayed in history as the hope of Ireland. He was for ‘national
unity’. Brian is the hero in what Byrne refers to as “a brutal new age” which “demanded kings whose dynastic
power rested on compact and strategically placed territorial lordship” (p. 266). A flaw only showed up after
Brian: In earlier history, Thomond had not been ‘strategically placed’ as a territory. Thomond became the flaw.
Alliance through marriage, unity through dynasties – genealogy is tied up with the political history of the
900s. Remember the ancient Greeks, aristocracy rose out of the substance of ancestral society. The whole history
of Europe was going this way – unity under a central kingship, then royal nations, eventually nation states. It’s
no wonder that the books are slanted toward the most powerful dynasties and the most powerful leaders, like
Brian Boru. That history reflects what happened, but only part of it. The slant I have here is toward the tuath. I
think that’s the way the O’Clerys were looking. This is part of what happened too.
In the year 952, the O’Clerys had now seen three of their family killed, three tuath kings of Aidhne in a
row, one after another. The first two were killed by Danes, the third by ‘Munstermen’. There is no story told about
why Flann Ó Cléirigh was slain by these Munstermen or about who they were. Could they have been kindred of
Brian? It’s hard to imagine that Flann’s slaying had anything to do with princess Mor, who was only about ten at
the time. But seven years later, her marriage to a Munsterman, an alliance, and troubles began to pile up.
27. The ‘Princess Mor’ and Her Place in the Family:
In 1987, when I began drawing charts of the early O’Clerys, I used the genealogy I found in Fr. Paul
Walsh’s The O Cléirigh Family of Tír Conaill, which is a translation from the Irish as found in Séamus Pender’s
edited report on The O’Clery Book of Genealogy in the Analecta Hibernica, Dublin, 1961. I received a copy of
that from a friend later. In his introduction Pender states: “The scribe appears to have been Cú Choigríche Ó
Cléirigh, one of the Four Masters.” (p.1) Cú Choigríche, or Cucogry, who died likely between 1664 and 1669,
was a direct descendant of the early O’Clerys. His genealogy of the family does not mention Mor.
Some time later, I happened to notice a note at the bottom of a page in O’Brien’s Corpus Genealogiarum
Hiberniae, Dublin, 1976. The note refers back to Cléireach m[ac] Cétadaich in the Húa Fiachrach Aidni genealogy
above and says: “m. Flaind m. Eidin ótáit Húi Eidin m. Cléirig ó táit Húi Cléirig, Lec. Is dó ba mac Eidean, add
BB” (p.174) I’d say it means: ‘Flann, son of Eidean, from whom the Uí hEidhin, son of Cléireach, from whom the
Uí Cléirigh, Book of Lecan. Eidean was a son to him [i.e. to Cléireach], add Book of Ballymote’.
The Book of Ballymote, dated 1400, and the Book of Lecan, dated 1416 may have been the sources used by
Fr. Fahey. The information about ‘Fland, the son of Eidean, the son of Cléireach’ may have originated with these
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books in the early 1400s. The reason O’Brien made the note was because the information wasn’t included in the
genealogy he had presented above, which was taken from the earlier Book of Leinster, dated 1152-1161.
However in another section of the Book of Leinster, concerned with the Dál Cais, this is written: “Sé
meic hic Brian mac Ceinnéitich, triar diib for-fácaib síl, i. Tadgc et Donnchad [et] Domnall. Trí mac dano ná
fárgaib síl, i. Murchad, Conchobor, Flann, i. meic ingine Edind meic Clérich.” (p.238). I take this to mean:
‘Brian son of Kennedy, had six sons, three of them left seed (descendants) , namely, Tadg, Donnchad, and
Domnall. In addition, three sons, didn’t ‘produce(?)’ seed, namely, Murchad, Conchobar, and Flann, namely, the
sons of the daughter of Edend son of Cléireach.’ The daughter of Edend isn’t named.
Long before Fr. Fahey was born, perhaps the most celebrated genealogist in Ireland’s history, Dubhaltach
MacFhirbhisigh, writing in the mid-1600s, had access to the sources naming Edend – later, ‘Eidhean’, genitve case ‘Eidhin’ –
as a son of Cleireach and telling about Edend’s unnamed daughter who married Brian. Later also, someone gave her name as
‘Mor’. Chart (17) shows the first part of Dubhaltach’s
genealogy of O hEidhin (O’Heyne), giving numbers to (17) Five Generations of the Family of Eidhean
to the generations that we can use to make comparisons (Book of Leinster, MacFhirbhisigh, Fahey)
to later charts. I’ll add the surname O’Heyne as Fahey
uses it [“ ” ] and fit in Mor and her three sons by Brian Cléireach 1
where the Book of Leinster [LL] would allow them. |
The genealogy as Dubhaltach copied it would Eidhean 2
raise no alarm. It didn’t have Mor and Brian in it. Once ___________|_______ [LL]
an element from outside – from another family line or Flann Mor == Brian 3
a date – is introduced, anachronisms can be noticed. | “O’Heyne” ______|___________
Things don’t match up together in the outside measure | | ||
of year-time. It was the dates for Mor and her marriage Maol Fabhaill Murchad Conchobor Flann 4
with Brian that became troubling to me | “O’Heyne”______________
So far, in this writing, I haven’t included Mor ||
on my charts. I wanted first to get the O’Clery line clear Cúgaola Maol Cúlard 5
as it is given in Cucogry’s work. However, Mor inserted | “O’Heyne” | ® June 2009
herself into my actual work on the O’Clerys early on as I
struggled to fit her on a chart. And now, my memory is refreshed. I believe I have in front of me the very page on which I first
caught sight of Mor. It’s that page 127 above from Fr. Fahey’s book on Kilmacduagh. On this one page he has two versions of
Mor’s paternal family. Both versions include
‘Eidhin’ as a second son of Cléireach. (18) Fr. Fahey’s First Version of Mor
Fr. Fahey, in his first version on the page, writes:
“A junior branch of the family had already risen to eminence, Cléireach 1
which was destined to retain for centuries the chieftaincy of ! ___ ________________
their native territory. It’s founder was Eidhin, second son of !!
Cleirigh [ Cléireach], whose death as chief of Aidhne is . Maelfavail FY-116/117 Eidhin 2
recorded, A.D. 887, and he [Eidhin] is regarded by the d. !__887FM__ d. !_887FY- 127
O’Heynes of Kilmacduagh as their common ancestor. He !! !!
had one son Flan, and one daughter Mor, who was the first Tighernach Flan Flan Mor 3
wife of Ireland’s supreme monarch, Brian of the Tributes.” sl. ! 916FM d.! 950FM ® June 2009
Chart (18) shows simply what
Fahey says at first on page 127. The next (19) Mor, as Daughter of Eidhean, Matched with Brian’s Family
chart (19) places what he says within the ( a mixed generation and chronological chart )
scheme of the O’Clery family and Brian’s Cléireach Lachtan Maonach * 1
family. You can see that Mor as a daughter fl. | 850 _____ ||
of this second son Eidhin is not likely the Maolfabhaill Eidhin Lorcan Murchad 2
teen-aged Mor who _______________________________________d. | 890 d. | 887_FY-127 ?d. | 923-9 d. | 896 K
married Brian in 959. | | | || | |
She’d have to be born ?Eochagán Ó Cléirigh Tighernach Ó Cléirigh Flann Ó Cléirigh Flann Mor Cennétic Earca (Urchad) 3
by 887 when her d. | 950 sl. | 917 sl. | 952 | d. | 944 OFE
father Eidhin died. ?Eoghan Ó Cléirigh Maolmacduagh Ó Cléirigh Comhaltan Ó Cléirigh | ===== Bé Bhionn 4
She’d be 72 in 959. d. | 968 sl. | 922 | ||
Father Fahey ____________________d. | 976 d. | 951 |
didn’t mention the source Muiredach Ó Cléirigh Giolla Cheallaigh Ó Cléirigh Brian 5
he had for saying Eidhin d. | 988 sl. | 1003 by Tadg Ó Ceallaigh sl.. | 1014
was a second son of
Cléireach, and I didn’t * Bé Bhionn’s line is ‘synchronized’ from the family death years. FY= Fahey, K= Knox, OFE = O’Ferrall
think about it. In my ® June 2009
early days, I didn’t pay much attention to sources.
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It’s not only Fr. Fahey’s first version of Mor as a daughter of Eidhin and wife of Brian that is out of
synch with year-time here. The Book of Leinster, the Book of Ballymote, and the Book of Lecan are out of synch
as well, at least, in regard to Brian marrying any daughter of Eidhean, likely a contemporary of his mother’s
grandfather. What do you say? Is it possible for a girl born before her father Eidhean dies in 887 to remain as an
unaging teenager for more than 70 years until about 959 when she presents herself as a bride for Brian who was
only born in 941? No, the biological clock within the human being doesn’t allow this history.
I’ve accepted that another of Cleireach’s grandchildren, Flann O’Clery, lived until 952 and was slain in his sixties.
I also accept that a granddaughter of Cleireach could have lived until 959 as an elderly lady. But I can’t see how the Mor who
married Brian and gave birth to the three
sons mentioned above, and a daughter (20) Fr. Fahey’s Second Version of Mor
as well, named Sadb, or Sadhbh, could ( a mixed generation and chronological chart )
be a granddaughter of Cléireach. Cléireach [the O’Heynes here are not how I see them] generations: 1
Maybe Fr. Fahey thought it |_ ________________
was wrong too because further down on | |
the page, without explaining it, he calls Maelfavail Eidhin 2
Mor, a “daughter of Flan”, not Eidhin d. |_887________ d. |. 887_FY- 127_______
It may have been his own idea, but he | || |
refers to a ‘p.398’ of O’Donovan’s Tighernach Flann Flan ( Mor ) [ignored now] 3
book on the Hy Fiachrach, so that | “Ua Cléirigh” “O’Heyne” *
may be where he got it. That would | x | 938 |___________________ [x = a battle ]
put the ‘source’ back to 1844, at d | 916 sl. | 950 | ||
least. I don’t know of an earlier Maelmacduagh Comhaltan Maelrunaidh Maelfavail Mor FY-127 === Brian 4
source for her as ‘daughter of Flan’. sl. | 920 “Ua Cléirigh” “na Padre” | |__________________
In chart (20), I’ve tried to __________d.| 976 | ||| |
represent Fahey’s second idea and Giolla Ceallaigh “Muirceadhach | | Murchad Conchobar Flan 5
other information he gives from page “O’Clery” Ua Cléirigh” | | “grandson of | |
116 to 131. Mor is now in the next x | 992 d. | 989 | | Flan O’Heyne” | |
generation, though we still don’t know x | 998 | / | x | 978 | |
whether her father lived into the 940s – sl. | 1003 (?) [too long] | | |
allowing her a ‘timely’ birth year. “ son of Giolla ‘first O’Heyne \ | | | |6
There are other things that Ceallaigh” (?) chief ’ | | | |
stand out here. (1) He calls the son of r. | [maybe not] ? r. | 1003-14 | sl._|_1014 sl. | 1014 sl. | 1014
Eidhin “O’Heyne”. It should be ‘mac | sl._|_1014 |
Eidhin’. Even so, is this saying that Cugeola O’Clery “Maelfavaill O’Heyne” 7
two surnames were established in “grandson of Giolla Ceallaigh” ?chief .| ?1025 -1048
that one family in one generation? r. | ? 1014-25 “last O’Clery chief” |
(2) A 4th generation son, Braon O’Clery Cugeola “O’Heyne” 8
‘prince’ Maelfavail, becomes chief in sl. | 1033 by the Élí “son of Maelfavail”
the 7th generation and then ‘reigns’ ‘O’Clerys lost chieftainship’ (p.161) chief | 1048 - ® June 2009
for another 23 long years. If he, like
his ‘sister’ (?) Mor, was born in the * The phrases in quotes (“ ” ) are from Fahey’s book on Kilmacduagh (pp. 116-131)
940s and only died in 1048, that
would make Maelfavail around age 100 when he died. You’d think some remark would be made about his great age. Fahey
does say the length of the 23-year “chieftaincy” was “unusual”, but that’s all.
A third thing (3) that stands out, at least for me, is the unnamed son of Giolla Ceallaigh Ó Cléirigh who would have
to be the father of “Cugeola O’Clery” so that Cugeola could be the “grandson of Giolla Ceallaigh” slain in 1003, who
“succeeded to the chieftaincy” after the first “lordship of Aidhne by one of the O’Heynes” in 1014. [Fahey, p. 118]. If this son
was not named, how was he discovered? Cucogry O’Clery in his genealogies, shows Cugaela as the son, not the grandson of
Giolla Ceallaigh [Walsh, p.25 &36-37].
The 3 rd generation adoption of a second surname, the apparently long life span of Maelfavail, and Cucogry’s
contrary record of the parentage of Cúgaela Ó Cléirigh made me suspicious about the accuracy here. Later on, I became
suspicious about the ‘politics’ of it when it dawned on me that the scheme behind it all may have been to establish that the
O’Heyne chieftainship of Aidhne began in 1003, eleven years before 1014 when Brian Boru fought the ‘Vikings’ at Clontarf.
As far as I can tell, no O’Clerys went to Clontarf, near Dublin, to support Brian. After the battle, his family supporters
seemed to be at pains to spread the idea that the tuath of Aidhne backed Brian in this battle. In history written after the battle, we
find that an alleged ‘chief’ of Aidhne fought and died heroically at Clontarf. He wasn’t an O’Clery, he was said to be an O’Heyne.
As Fahey says [ pp. 127-8 ], he was ‘a son of Flan’, Maelruanaidh “na Padre” [of the Pater (Noster)]. In accounts after the battle,
he is named ‘Maelruanaigh Ua hEidhin’ and later called a ‘Prince of Aidhne’. I believe now that the poor man, probably brave and
sincerely prayerful, never knew about his title and rank. It was awarded posthumously.
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On page 118, Fahey says about the also unnamed first O’Heyne chief of Aidhne who succeeded Giolla
Ceallaigh Ó Cléirigh in 1003, “We do not refer to him in this chapter, as we shall hereafter have occasion
to refer to him at some length”. I’ve looked in the later chapters and he doesn’t mention an O’Heyne who became
chief in 1003. He writes at length about Maelfavail O’Heyne who became chief in 1025 – after the death of Cugaela
Ó Cléirigh. On the chart, I’ve placed the unnamed first O’Heyne chief in Maelruanaidh na Padre’s space. I am
guessing that he is the O’Heyne Fahey meant – there were only the two brothers – and I suppose he would have
reigned from 1003 until 1014 when killed at Clontarf. That must have been the story that was being pushed.
On the chart also I have to assume that “Cugeola” O’Clery, the alleged grandson rather than son of Giolla
Ceallaigh Ó Cléirigh, took up the chieftainship after the death of ‘the first O’Heyne’ in 1014 and kept it until his
own death in 1025. Fahey remarks when citing Cugeola’s death that his “career must have been uneventful” and
that he was the “last of the O’Clery family who received the allegiance of the clans of Hy Fiachra Aidhne” [p.118]
Much later, almost contradicting that, he writes “the chieftainship of Aidhne had passed from the O’Clerys after
the death of Braon O’Clery, A.D. 1033” [p.161]. There’s obvious confusion there.
I am much indebted to Fr. Fahey for his book on Kilmacduagh, which I came upon early. He gives a
wealth of material about the O’Clerys in Aidhne that I haven’t seen anywhere else. However, he also introduced
me to the O’Heyne family which brought a lot of difficulty into my charts about the O’Clerys. I can say I spent or
maybe wasted a lot of hours trying to reconcile these two families – without figuring it all out. Yet, I knew it was
important to keep trying because, for a few centuries, you can’t really understand one family without the other.
Writing down and charting it all again here, I’m taking you through that experience in a way.
I don’t think I’m wasting your time showing how I tried to accept the history I was reading. Also, you
can’t make a judgement about the accuracy or inaccuracy of the scheme that some history presents unless you see
it tested. And, if it turns out wrong, you can begin to look for the motive behind its invention.
Before going back to Fr. Fahey’s book, I want to show something I found in another book around that same time. I
thought it was the solution. It wasn’t, but it led me to it. In James Hynes’ little book White Sheeted Fort, three times he refers
to Mor’s father as Mulroy O’Heyne(s). He writes,
“Brian Boru, son-in-law of Mulroy O’Hynes”
(p.18), “Brian Boru who had married Mor (21) Mulroy O’Heynes as a Possible Father of Mor
O’Heyne, daughter of Mulroy O’Heyne” (p.29) (a mixed generation and chronological chart)
and “One authority places Mor as daughter of Cléireach Lachtan Maonach 1
Mulroy O’Heynes, whereas another says she was d. | ? 850s-860s ||
the daughter of Eidhin, son of Cleireach who was | || |
ancestor of the O’Clerys” (p.41) Maelfabhaill Eidhean Lorcan Murchad, kg W.Conn. 2
I have objections to using the O’Heyne d. | 890 d. | 887 FY d. | 923-9 ? d. | 896 K
surname that early, but if we can say that his use Flann Ó Cléirigh Flan Cennéitic Earca, kg W.Conn 3
of the “O” means ‘grandson’, as it should, and that sl. | 952 (?) d. | 951 d. | 944 OFE
Mulroy was not the son of Eidhean, this puts his Comhaltan “Mulroy |======= Bé Bhionn 4
daughter Mor in the 5th generation as Cléireach’s Ó Cléirigh O’ Heyne” HY \ m. ? 919 |
great great granddaughter. This brings her into d. | 976 | |
the same generation I have tentatively assigned Giolla Ceallagh Mor ============== Brian 5
to Brian, by considering the death years of his Ó Cléirigh b. | ?942 \ m. ? 959 b. | 941
mother’s father and grandfather. In short, doing sl. | 1003 sl. | 1014
a lot of supposing, we have chart (21).
. The chart seems to work with Mulroy, FY= Fahey, K = Knox, OFE = O’Ferrall, HY = Hynes, m = married
a new 4th generation father, given to Mor. But ® Dec. 2008
there’s no mention in the text that Mulroy is the son of Flan. (?) That leaves a major flaw in the works. My resorting to the
author Hynes’ use of the ‘O’, which comes from ‘ua’, ordinarily meaning a ‘grandson’ or ‘any male descendant later than a
son’, is not enough to base the chart on. We’d have to know who his father was.
Unfortunately, Hynes did not give his source for Mulroy. It would probably have been Maolruadh, or
Maolruaidh, in Irish. It seems to be a name more common in the north than around Aidhne. As I said, I thought for
some time that Mulroy was the answer. But if you think about it, it’s only the placing Mor in that 5th generation
that makes the chart appear to be a ‘neat’ solution to the problem of Mor’s late birth-year of about 942. Placing
Mor in the 5th generation is the key.
Maelfavail remained a problem for me but let’s say Mulroy and biology gave me another idea of what to
do. The only two dated texts we have put Eidhean in the 2nd generation and support the placing of Mor in the 5th
generation. (1) Fahey says ‘Eidhin’ is a son of Cléireach and that he died in 887 [likely = 890]. And (2), Roger
Newman, in his book on Brian Boru, convinces us that Mor would have been born about 942. As for the 55 years
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in-between. (942 – 887 = 55), we can rely on the biological clock within the human being, which history hasn’t
changed. During 55 years, back then as now, we could fit two fathers, Flan, a father in the 3rd generation, and
another father (like Mulroy) in the 4th, leaving Mor born in the 5th generation from Cléireach.
28. Could Mor Be Child of a Next Generation Mother?
There’s another way to go with the ‘bio-clock’, however. We could have one father and two wives who
were mothers. That’s the way I went in doing the time-line for Flann Ó Cléirigh. See (16). Unlike with Flan, the
son of Eidhin, whose death date we don’t know, we do know that Flann Ó Cléirigh was slain in 952, at the age of
at least 62. As I said in chart (16), Flann could have been the father of Mor in 942, ten years earlier. She may have
been born of a second wife who was of the generation matching the 4th generation of Cléireach’s descendants.
As a last resort, can we say now the same sort of thing happened in the life of Dubhaltach’s Flan, the son
of Eidhean. (Let’s not say ‘a second wife’, just that in his later years, he married ‘a young wife’). Mor, then,
could have been the daughter of a 3rd generation Flan and a 4th generation mother and thereby be a child of the
5th generation. Genealogy charts, based on fathers, don’t show this up.
That is why I’ve been using ‘mixed generation and chronological charts’ which allow the inclusion of
additional next-generation mothers in trying to restore generation alignments. In Mor’s case, no such mother has
been recorded. It’s only by assuming such a mother, however, that the early O’Heyne records can be put ‘in their
best light’. Though I have suspicions about the origin of the surname O’Heyne, I do recognize that early persons
so-named, like Mor and her possible brothers, really existed. I’ll try another chart. Maybe I can get these once
living people closer to their actual time-frames and continue with my suspicions after that.
And I have a surprise for you. There was a second Mor from Aidhne that married into Brian’s family.
I might as well include her on the chart too. It’s only my best guess that she is Cugaela O’Clery’s daughter.
(22) Mor, as a Granddaughter of Eidhean, Matched with Brian’s Family
( a mixed generation and chronological chart, trying to put Dubhaltach and Fahey in best light)
Cléireach Lachtan Maonach * 1
fl. | 850 ___(?)______ ||
Maolfabhaill Eidhin Lorcan Murchad 2
______________________________d. | 890 d. | 887________________ ?d. | 923-9 d. | 896 K
|| || | ||
?Eochagán Tighernach Flann Ó Cléirigh Flan ? (Mor) Cennétic Earca (Urchad) 3
Ó Cléirigh Ó Cléirigh r. | 922- 952 | [ignored] d .| 951 d. | 944 OFE
d. | 950 r . | 890-917 x | 938 vs Danes | ||
| sl. | 917 sl. | 952 | ||
?Eoghan Ó Cl. Maolmacduagh Ó Cl. Comhaltan Ó Cl. (?) |=== young wife |==== Bé Bhionn 4
d | 968 r. | 917-922 r. | 952-976 | | (m. ? 919) /
sl. |_922 x | 964 vs Feargal | b. | 941 (12 th child Brian)
____________________| Ó Ruairc |______________________ |
| d. | 976 ( ?) | | / b. 942 |
Muiredach Giolla Cheallaigh Maelruanaid (?) Mor ====== Brian 5
O Cléirigh Ó Cléirigh na Padre [still a problem] | \ (m. ? 959) | ==== ? Eachraidh
r. | 976-988 r. | 988-1003 ? r | 1003-14 (?) | | (m. ? 979) /
d. | 988 sl. | 1003 sl.. | 1014 | | |
Cugaela O Cléirigh FY-118 Maelfavail Murchad Tadg (mac Briain ) 6
_________r. | ? 1014-25 _(?)___ “ O’Heyne” sl. | 1014 |
| d. | 1025 dau | r. | 1025-48 sl. | 1023 by the Élí
Aidhean Braon Mor Cugeola Toirdelbach (mac Taidg) 7
Ó Cléirigh Ó Cléirigh b.| 1007-9 “O’Heyne” b. | 1008 ODE
| r. | ? 1025-33 | r. | ?1048- 1056+ |—[Brian sl. 1014]
|| |==(?)====) | (=============(?)====|
| sl. | 1033 by the Élí x | 1056 slew Donell Roe r. | 1064-86
|| | O’Bryan AU-1055 |
Giolla Eogan . Giolla na Naomh |== Dervorgal 8
na Naomh Ó Cléirigh “O’Heyne” | nic GiollaPhadraig
| d. | 1063 FY-161 | d. | 1085, age 77 ODE
Flann Domnall Aodh Muircheartach 9
[1st] O hAidhin O Cléirigh ? [1st] Ó hEidhin [1st] Ó Briain
d.| 1100 d. | 1119
This chart is not meant to be my view. It is merely an attempt to take names given in the texts of early O’Clerys, O’Heynes, with Brian’s
family, and place them together by both generation and time. As you can see, there are still difficulties in placing Maelfavail “O’Heyne”
x = a battle, FY= Fahey, OFE = O’Ferrall, ODE= O’Donoghue, AU= Annals of Ulster ® June 2009
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29. A Second Mor from Aidhne Marries into Brian’s Dynasty:
I only came across a mention of this second Mor in one book I have. It was in Roger Newman’s Brian
Boru, King of Ireland, on page 185. In a section discussing Muircheartach O’Brien [d. 1119], Newman writes
“his father, Toirdhealbhach, had married Mór, daughter of the ruler of Uí Fhiachrach Aidhne – a princess who
bore the same name and blood as the first wife of Brian Boru?”. I believe this second Mor and her marriage to
Toirdelbach is very important to the history of the O’Clerys.
Newman doesn’t say whose daughter she was. All I have to go on is this one sentence, which I’ve
thought about a lot. The phrasing of it is peculiar. Why didn’t he mention her father’s name or , if the name of her
father is not known, why didn’t he tell us that? There seems to be a kind of studied vagueness in that phrasing.
The usual thing to say is : ‘the daughter of so-and-so, ruler of such-and-such’. It looks like there might
be some problem attached to mentioning the father’s name – as if he may be persona non grata. That makes me
think that this information (which Newman is faithfully transmitting to us) came originally from a very old text
or source. Once upon a time, such a ‘persona non grata’ situation for Mor’s father could have been the current
talk or gossip. It so happens that when this marriage likely took place there was, indeed, some question about
who was properly ‘ruling’ in Aidhne.
I have an earlier chart with side comments I wrote as I was trying to make up my mind about who the
second Mor’s father likely was. I’ll re-print it here, as it is, because I couldn’t otherwise capture the hesitant
progress of my thoughts as I came to my conclusion, namely, that the second Mor was likely a daughter of
Cúgaela O Cléirigh. You can see that I decided against Maelfavail even though I had placed him in a most favored
position to be considered as a possible father of a child born about 1007-9. MacFhirbhisigh would have had him
in the 4th generation from Cléireach, Fahey in the 5th. By putting Mor in the 5th generation and allowing her a
brother Flann (as Dubhaltach did in the 3rd generation), I maneuvered Maelfavail into the 6th generation:
[December 2008] “I’ll try to show the problem of rulership in Aidhne about the time Toirdelbach married Mor.
I have a feeling it may reveal something else.
It turns out to be not so simple. By a (23) Who is the Most Likely Father of the Second Mor ?
stroke of luck I found in O’Donoghue that ______
Toirdelbach was age 77 when he died in 1085 ||
(p.51), which would leave him born about 1008. Giolla Ceallaigh (Flann) Mor === Brian === Eachraidh 5
This helps. Mor’s birth can be estimated near Ó Cléirigh | (c.960) (c.977) |
that at about 1007-09. If Mor was born of a r. | 988-1003 |______ |
sitting chief, she’d have to be Cúgaela chief | ? chief | b. | (c.980)
Ó Cléirigh’s daughter. If born of a later chief, Cúgaela Maelfavaill Tadhg 6
she could be Maelfavail’s daughter. Ó Cléirigh ? r. | (1025-48) ? |
Some sources, e.g. Hynes (p.47), r. | 1003-1025 or r. | (1033-48) ? sl. | 1023
say the Ó Cléirigh family didn’t lose the ‘right _______|________b. (c.1007-9) | ______ |
of succession’ until after the killing of Braon chief | | ? | chief | ?| b. | 1008 Oe 7
in 1033. The marriage likely took place before Braon Aidhin (Mor) ===] Cúgaola [== (Mor) === Toirdelbach
1033, so Maelfavail may not have been Ó Cléirigh | [my choice] | | \ ( c.1025-33)
accepted as rightful chief yet. r. | 1025-33 |_____ ? r. | 1048-1092 |
By the way, both Braon and Toir- | | | Gormlaith == |
delbach’s father were killed by the Élí, who Eoghan Giolla Giolla |8
supported Brian’s son Donnchadh, trying to O Cléirigh na Naomh na Naomh Dervorgal == |
be a greater king. Did Maelfavail support d. | 1063Fy -161 | | d. | 1085/ 6
Donnchadh? If so, why would Toirdelbach, | | | [ 2 nd gen.] |
who was battling against his half-uncle, Domhnall Flann Aodh \ Muirchertach 9
marry Maolfabhail’s daughter? O Cléirigh O hAidhin O hEidhin O Briain
On the other hand, if Maolfabhaill
backed Toirdelbach, the marriage would [ 1093: Muirchertach O Briain imprisons Aed O Conchobhair in Limerick
strengthen the alliance. And, the sources and gives Silmurray patrinomy to “Gilla na Naem Ua hEidhin” – N.H.I. ]
would name Mor’s father without hemming N.H.I. = New History of Ireland, ed. Moody, et al.
and hawing. No, the more I look at it, I think Oe = O’Donoghue, Memoir of the O’Brien, p..51 ® Dec. 2008
the only name older sources would hesitate
to give would be Cúgaela Ó Cléirigh. It wouldn’t fit the stories they were fond of telling”. [December 2008]
In that reasoning last December, I neglected to consider the possibility that Mor could have been the daughter of
Maelruanaidh (sl. 1014) and therefore Maelfavail’s niece. But niece or daughter, it seems clear that Maelfavail’s ‘branch’ of
the family continued to support Donnchadh after the murder of Toirdelbach’s father in 1023.
It’s the history, the ‘politics’ of the period, or to say it more precisely, the ‘rivalry’ between the descendants of Brian,
that helps solve the genealogical dilemma here. Mor could be the daughter of either of the two branches in the family line but
the background history suggests that she would more likely be the daughter of Cúgaela Ó Cléirigh.
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V. Back to Square One: The Source Genealogies
30. The Problem of the Disappearance of the O’Clerys
My memory is getting a little clearer now. It helps that I happened to notice that I don’t have charts about
the O’Clerys in my collection with dates for the period from 1987, or so, until about 2005. I haven’t gone through
everything, but it seems that I was making charts about my family background mostly and a few concerning the
very early peoples, like the Tuatha Dé Danaan, but none about the O’Clery family.
It was only occasionally that I worked on charts, maybe once or twice a year and some years not at all.
I had a lot of other things to do in my life too. So, what probably happened is that I had run up against the problem
of fitting Mor onto the O’Clery charts and it stopped me from going further in that direction. I had no reason to
push on and keep struggling with something I couldn’t figure out.
Then in the summer of 2005, in Galway, I purchased the five-volumed edition of The Great Book of Irish
Genealogies by Dubhaltach MacFhirbhisigh, edited by Nollaig Ó Muraíle, Dublin, De Burca, 2003. It was
expensive but I decided to buy it to add to my library of books about Ireland. I didn’t know much about the author
MacFhirbhisigh, in fact I don’t think I heard about him before.
When I got to searching through the volumes back in New York, I was very surprised to find out that
Dubhaltach MacFhirbhisigh, had left the entire genealogy of the O’Clerys out of his extensive collection. Maybe
it’s tucked away someplace in the five volumes, but I didn’t see it
Dubhaltach simply lists Cléireach, “from whom are the Uí Cléirigh”, as the father of Eidhean and then
launches into the full genealogy of the Uí hEidhin (O’Heyne). Other genealogies of families in Aidhne are given:
the Uí Cathail (O’Cahill), Muintir Scanlain (Scanlan), Uí Seachnasaigh (O’Shaughnessy) and meic Giolla
Cheallaigh (MacGillakelly) but no O’Clerys. Were they left out intentionally? As I think I’ve said, it’s as if the
O’Clerys, and their early kingship in the tuath Aidhne, were being erased from history
About this time also, a good friend from Dublin generously gave me a copy of Nollaig Ó Muraíle’s The
Celebrated Antiquary Dubhaltach MacFhirbhisigh (c.1600-1671), An Sagart, Maynooth, 2002. I read this whole
book slowly. Ó Muraíle explains all sorts of things about Dubhaltach and his family. I realized that a lot of people
respect him because of his dedicated work on Ireland’s genealogies.
Ó Muraíle mentions a couple of times that Dubhaltach probably met Cú Choigcríche Ó Cléirigh, who
was a contemporary of his. I would say Cucogry was born around 1596. He died in the years from 1664 to 1669.
Why would Dubhaltach not include Cucogry’s genealogy of the O’Clerys in his vast collection? It baffled me.
These thoughts affected me I don’t know how exactly. It changed the approach I had toward the
O’Clerys. Before this, I was working on their genealogy I suppose, as I said above, simply because there was a
connection between the surname and my father’s surname, Clarke. I wanted to know more about them and
perhaps make some kind of huge ‘family’ chart. But this idea that someone may have tried to ‘erase’ a portion of
their family line and history really got to me.
After discovering what I did in MacFhirbhisigh’s great book, I began working on charts concerning the
early O’Clerys again. I realized it was right there in the first generation after Cléireach that the ‘disappearance’
began. MacFhirbhisigh mentioned a son Eidhin but he didn’t mention the son Maolfabhail that I knew about. I
took up the work again and this time I was more serious about it. You can see all the charts I’ve done here. These
are new charts of course that I’m making up as I go along, but they are samples of the kinds of things I’ve been
doing since 2005.
Among other things, I began doing those ‘mixed generation and chronology charts’ because I knew the
time was out of ‘synch’ here and there. I felt I had to get the solar calendar setting behind the genealogies
straight. I would have to ‘suppose’ second wives and next-generation mothers, if necessary, to fix things. The
first Mor would not be the last daughter and mother that I would have to bring into the picture..
I also did a lot of work on the O’Briens, De Burgos, and O’Connors, especially seizing on marriage
connections among them. I struggled with two different versions of the O’Shaughnessys, with the O’Cahills, and
other lines not easy to trace within Aidhne. I did some large charts with dozens of genealogies on them trying to
create a connected network of family lines up to, contemporary with, and beyond the early O’Clerys.
Some time later my feelings about Dubhaltach MacFhirbhisigh softened when I got the idea that he was
probably just copying from older material – doing his job. It’s likely that material he received about Aidhne came
through his friendship with the O’Shaughnessys – material that centuries ago may have omitted references to the
O’Clery kings.
It dawned on me that the causes of the omission of the O’Clerys in MacFhirbhisigh might lie further back
in history. This meant that I wasn’t going to get to the bottom of it simply by adjusting and matching genealogies.
I had to learn the history behind them. That brings me right up to now – learning more history..
41
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31. Ó hAidhin and Ó hEidhin :
If we go back to the source genealogies we have for the early O’Clery-O’Heyne line, we’ll see that there are two
different O’Heyne genealogies The genealogies of history show two distinct O’Heyne family branches in Aidhne breaking off
from the Cléireach stem-line at different places. Yet, this same history tells us there was only one O’Heyne family in Aidhne. I
think that’s amazing and a chart about it should be spectacular. And who knows what else it will show up?
Chart (24) compares the Cléireach genealogy left to us by Cucogry O’Clery around the 1630s side by side with the
Cléireach line featuring the O’Heyne genealogy
written by Dubhaltach MacFhirbhisigh around (24) A Comparison of Cúcoigcríche Ó Cléirigh and Dubhaltach MacFhirbhisig
the 1660s. These are history’s main sources
for the joint-family. I took Cucogry’s work Cúcoigcriche Ó Cléirigh’s Dubhaltach MacFhirbhisigh’s
from Paul Walsh’s The O Cléirigh Family of list from Cléireach, c. 1630s list from Cléireach, c. 1660s
Tír Conaill and Dubhaltach’s from his Great
Book of Irish Genealogies, edited by Nollaig Cléireach Cléireach 1
Ó Muraíle. I’ve adapted the lists by working | |
downward from earlier to later names and by Maolfhabhaill Eidhean 2
inserting surnames. | [mac Cléirigh] |
I spell the branch names differently, Maolcherarda, i. Fland Flann 3
as O hAidhin and O hEidhin, after the grand- | O Cléirigh | [“O’Heyne”] FY
fathers. I put “O’Heyne” for the first few Comhaltan Maol Fabhaill 4
generations where I’m less sure. These things | Ó Cléirigh ________ ____| “O’Heyne”__
are just for the chart. There’s only supposed to | | |
be one spelling. Giolla Ceallaigh Cú Gaola Maol Cúlard 5
When Father Walsh translated the | Ó Cléirigh |_ “O’Heyne” | “O’Heyne”
Irish ‘Geinelach Uí Aidhin’ into the English | | ||
‘Genealogy of O Heidhin’, he was thinking Cúgaela Giolla na Naomh Flaith- Comhaltan 6
of only one single O hEidhin family for _______|_Ó Cléirigh | na Foghla bheartach | “O’Heyne”
Aidhne, and Cucogry was thinking the | | | “O’Heyne” | “O’Heyne” |
same thing when he made the genealogy. Braon Aidhean Aodh Cú Gaola (+) Giolla Ceallaigh 7
When Dubhaltach made his genealogy of O Cléirigh Ó Cléirigh O hEidhin O hEidhin _ |_O hEidhin
Ó hEidhin, he was thinking of only one | | |____________ \ ______________
single family of that name in Aidhne. All | | |\ |
the books talk about one O’Heyne family | | || |
in Aidhne. Here, maybe for the first time, Eoghan Giolla na Naomh Giolla Ceallaigh Giolla na Naomh meic 8
you’re seeing two. Isn’t that peculiar? O Cléirigh ? Ó Cléirigh O hEidhin O hEidhin Conghaola
Why did this happen? || |_______________________
Now, look at the chart again | | | ||
and see maybe for the first time that Domhnall Flann Giolla na Naomh Aodh Cú Gaola 9
Dubhaltach’s genealogy is five gen- Ó Cléirigh Ó hAidhin O hEidhin Maol na mBo _!_ O hEidhin
erations shorter than Cucogry’s. || | | O hEidhin
They both end with the two brothers Giolla na Naomh Conchobhar Eoghan Aodh 10
joined by the word “and”, so they | Ó Cléirigh | Ó hAidhin Æ | O hEidhin _|_ O hEidhin
were obviously meant to be the same Tighernach Aodh Aodh 11
length. Why did this happen? | Ó Cléirigh | Ó hAidhne | O hEidhin
Look at generation 15 where Muireadhach Giolla Ceallaigh Donnchadh 12
I put the arrow pointing at Seaán Ó Ó Cléirigh Ó hAidhin O hEidhin________
hAidhne. If he was put over in Dubh- | | ||
altach’s list, the last five names in Tadhg Giolla na Naomh Eóghan “and” Muircheartach ` 13
both lists would be exactly the same. | Ó Cléirigh | Ó hAidhin O hEidhin O hEidhin
These two genealogies must have Giolla Íosa Eoghan 14
come from a common source. | Ó Cléirigh | Ó hAidhin
If we pull down Dubhaltach’s Domhnall Seaán Å 15
generation 13 to match Cucogry’s gen- | Ó Cléirigh | Ó hAidhin
eration 18, we’d have a number of name Seaan Aodh 16
matches – but it’s not as simple as that. Sgiamhach | Ó hAidhin
There are dated O’Heyne names in the | Ó Cléirigh |
earlier generations that have to be kept in Diarmaid Donnchadh ` 17
their historical place. It will take some Ó Cléirigh Ó hAidhin
doing. And it has to be done. | |_____________
It’s obvious that the genealogies | ||
of Cucogry and Dubhaltach have to be Cormac Eoghan “and” Muirchertach
reconciled – not because someone says it Ó Cléirigh Ó hAidhin Ó hAidhin 18
-- we can see it with our own eyes. (+) = plus 3 brothers ® June 2009
42
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Ti Tra Li My Charts Early O Clerys_and the End of Aidhne
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