It all seems very long ago now that my new book was published in February 2020 and I began to make tentative plans for a book-launch in the late spring. It is clear now that hoping to organise a book-launch for any time in the for-see-able future is not realistic. So I am hoping now that all going well The Kings of Aileach and the Vikings will be launched, hopefully somewhere in Inishowen in April 2021. This will be exactly 1 year later than envisaged, but considering all that is going on all around the world, a very small price to pay. Thankfully family and friends are safe so far from Covid 19 and all medical front-line staff have my greatest appreciation for their bravery and self-sacrifice. So too do the staff in my local supermarkets, the postmen still delivery our mail and the many other service providers who are still working and who we probably don’t even know about. Compared to this a delayed book-launch is no inconvenience at all.
Speaking activities postponed
Earlier this year local heritage and genealogical groups and societies very kindly had me penciled in to speak and promote my new book at events in Dún Laoghaire and Inishowen. With the global spread of the Corona virus these events must now be on the verge of cancellation or postponement. In any event I will not be giving any new talks until the virus crisis has passed which hopefully will be during the summer. So stay safe everyone and again hopefully we can pick up where we left off later in the year. That is the great thing about studying or writing about history – it will still be there when the crisis has passed and people can return to it! All the best, Darren
Carlingford Heritage Trust Lecture
Many thanks to Carlingford Lough Heritage Trust for inviting me to give a short presentation on my new book on the night of their AGM on Monday February 17th. The large number of attendees appeared to enjoy my talk about the Kings of Aileach and the Vikings. After a quick introduction to the Cenél nEógain population group and early Viking activity in Ulster from c.800 – 866 AD I was able to tailor my talk to Viking activity in the Carlingford and Annagassan region from the 850s to 920s. Members of the Heritage group in particular appeared to enjoy the piece concerning Muirchertach of the Leather Cloaks and his defeat of the Carlingford Vikings and later the combined force of Vikings from Strangford and Annagassan led by Hálfdan of Dublin in December 926. The survivors of this rout were besieged for a week at Áth Cruithne – the Ford of the Cruithin, located in modern-day Sheeptown townland, north-east of Newry. Members of the heritage group speculated whether the Crown Mound feature close to the Ford of the Cruithin played a part in the events of late 926/early 927. This would make this historical monument older than its previously suggested Anglo-Norman origin. Ancient pre-historic mounds located beside fords can sometimes be mistaken for later Anglo-Norman motte-type structures and this may well be the case here. I would like to express my appreciation to attendees of the AGM on the night, many of whom very kindly bought copies of my new book. Many thanks again.
New Book just published January 2020
Hello Everyone. I would like to use this blog to announce the publication of my new book The Kings of Aileach and the Vikings, AD 800-1060. The book is published by Four Courts Press and is available on their website for €22.45 (Normal retail price €24.95). The book tells two intertwined historical stories – the early medieval history of the Cenél nEógain population group – and Viking activity in the north of Ireland. The book grew out of a lot of background research into the Cenél nEógain people, my own family history since the McGettigans were a branch of the Cenél nEógain in early medieval times, and the history of Viking interaction with Ireland, particularly in the early Viking Age before the time of the great Irish high-king Brian Boru (d.1014). I learnt a great deal of new information while writing this book, in particular about some wonderful discoveries of Viking material dredged by archaeologists from Northern Ireland from the bed of the River Blackwater. I also very much enjoyed learning in detail for the first time about many of the Cenél nEógain kings, who were a remarkably talented group of people. I hope readers enjoy the resulting book accompanied as it is by sets of maps, genealogies and 16 pages of colour illustrations. Here is the link to my book on the Four Courts Press website.
Christmas in Early Modern Ireland
As promised I have now begun to transfer my Irish genealogy blog posts from my old website which is nearly ten years old now. I expect that this old website may not be online much longer as time passes and technology evolves. The first blog post that I have decided to transfer was a popular one I first wrote at Christmas-time 2011. This post deals with Christmas traditions in early modern Ireland – particularly a Christmas feast hosted by the O’Molloy chieftain, a Gaelic Irish lord from the Irish midlands, sometime towards the end of the Nine Years War c.1600-1602. The blog was quite popular at the time and given the time of year is a good choice I think, with which to begin the blog transfers. I hope to transfer most of the other blogs over the next few months.
When I posted earlier this week on my Facebook page that I would try and write a Christmas themed blog this week, one of my readers suggested that I write about the Christmas traditions of the Gaelic Irish around the year 1602. Unfortunately, it is sad to say that very few writers at the time recorded any cultural Christmas traditions of the ordinary people of the Gaelic lordships. Perhaps such evidence has survived and I just havn’t found it yet.
Some evidence of Christmas in Gaelic Ireland for the years 1600 to 1602, which was the time of the end of the Nine Years War (1594 – 1603), has survived however, in relation to the O’Molloy chieftain, Calvagh O’Molloy, who was the Gaelic lord of the territory of Fircall, a small Gaelic lordship in the Irish midlands, which is now part of the modern Irish county of Offaly. Calvagh O’Molloy became lord of Fircall in the spring of the year 1599 when his father, Conal O’Molloy, Lord of Fircall died. The Annals of the Four Masters record that Calvagh was appointed Lord of Fircall by Queen Elizabeth I, although ‘Some of the gentlemen of his tribe vied and contended with him (according to the custom of the Irish), for that name’.
Calvagh O’Molloy appears to have been a decent man, who tried to keep his lordship and family out of the major war being fought on the island of Ireland, between the English army of Queen Elizabeth and the forces of the Ulster chieftains, Hugh O’Neill, the lord of Tyrone, and Red Hugh O’Donnell, the lord of Tír Chonaill, who were determined to preserve their autonomy and perhaps drive English influence out of Ireland for good. However, try as he might, Calvagh O’Molloy could not keep the war out of Fircall. In the Spring of 1599, Hugh O’Neill sent his son Conn into the region ‘to ascertain who they were that were firm in their friendship and promises to O’Neill and the Irish’. One of O’Molloy’s neighbours, O’Carroll Lord of Ely treacherously killed a company of Hugh O’Neill’s mercenaries in the winter of 1599, which led Hugh O’Neill himself to march through Fircall in January 1600 on his famous expedition to Munster. Hugh O’Neill spent nine nights in the Fircall region and he did not leave until he had plundered Ely O’Carroll in revenge for his murdered soldiers and until ‘the people of Fircall, of Upper Leinster, and Westmeath, made full submission to him, and formed a league of friendship with him’. Later on in 1600 as the war turned against the Irish, the English army reconquered Laois and Offaly. However, war returned to Fircall in the winter of 1601 as Red Hugh O’Donnell passed through the territory on his epic march to Kinsale.
Not surprisingly all this warfare and the to-ing and fro-ing of so many opposing armies through the Fircall region had a terrible impact on the local population. One of the family, a Franciscan friar Francis O’Molloy, later wrote that ‘the kingdom of Ireland was devastated with famine, fire and sword, and in the utmost dearth of provisions, in Queen Elizabeth’s time’. However, Father O’Molloy also records that Calvagh O’Molloy, concerned for the welfare and possibly the very survival of his followers ‘invited to his house nine hundred and sixty persons for the feast of Christmas, entertained them there for the space of twleve days’. This was a remarkably generous deed by the O’Molloy chieftain, which was probably inspired by some of the famous ‘invitations’ issued by a number of prominent Gaelic Irish chieftains in late medieval times. O’Molloy’s Christmas feast was probably not unique in Gaelic Ireland during the Nine Years War but it is the only one that I am aware of. The feast I think illustrates the concern some Gaelic Irish chieftains had for the own family and followers and also their attitude to war and famine relief. However, Calvagh O’Molloy’s Christmas feast must have been unusually generous. A stanza of bardic poetry was also written to commemorate his very generous deed. Translated from Irish it reads:
‘Thrice three hundred and three score -Tale unheard by thee before – Feasted free in Calvagh’s hall – Caring light what might befall’.
Hope you enjoyed my Christmas blog. Have a great Christmas and New Years everyone.
Surnames of the Cenél nEógain
My new book The Kings of Aileach and the Vikings, AD 800-1060 is due to be published by Four Courts Press in January 2020. While the main theme is Viking activity in the north of the island of Ireland, the Cenél nEógain dynasty, the dominant Irish population group in this region, is another. Many of the Cenél nEógain kings became high-kings of Ireland during the ninth and tenth centuries. A major discovery of my research was that the Cenél nEógain also had kings that were powerful at a local level, who administered the Cenél nEógain kingdom while their most able dynasts were either pursuing the business of the high-kingship or were striving hard to inherit this prestigious title. Claimants to the high-kingship were known as rígdamnae Érenn (one eligible to become high-king), while the local rulers usually bore the title king of Aileach. However, there were no hard and fast rules and a high-king of Ireland or one of the rígdamnae Érenn could also be king of Aileach. There were only two kingship rules among the early medieval Cenél nEógain. These appear to have been ‘once a king always a king’, and ‘succession of the collaterals’ – cousins often succeeded each other as kings of Aileach with sons rarely succeeding fathers. However, an able son of a prominent Cenél nEógain king usually got to the chance to become king himself, but only after the intervening reigns of one or two cousins.
An important part of my new book is also a study of the many branches and families that by the twelfth century went to make up the wider Cenél nEógain dynasty. Strictly speaking this aspect of the history of the Cenél nEógain came after the Viking Age was mostly over in medieval Ireland. However, I found that once surnames began to be used among the Cenél nEógain, which began during the tenth century (very early by Irish standards), that this helped to make much more sense of the geographical distribution of the branches of the dynasty and also of the lists of Cenél nEógain kings. In particular I took an interest in the families that made up the western Cenél nEógain during this period, located in the modern areas of Inishowen and the extreme east of Co. Donegal and also west Co. Derry and the very west of Co. Tyrone. The Cenél nEógain families of these areas went into decline during the thirteenth century and were largely forgotten in the history of late medieval and early modern Tyrone. Attached below is a piece that did not make it into my book about the O’Laverty family of west Tyrone. A prominent branch of the Cenél nEógain who provided kings of Aileach during the ninth century, the family experienced a resurgence of power and influence during the 1100 and 1200s. Then for some now unknown reason the power of the O’Laverty family collapsed and they became a minor family living in the Ardstraw region but no longer recorded in the Irish annals. The unused piece from my book contains my research into the origins of this family and also illustrates how complicated the genealogical history of the Cenél nEógain population group can be.
I hope readers will appreciate and understand the portions of this book that deal with the family divisions and surname development among the Cenél nEógain. Some of this material is from the twelfth century and does not strictly concern the Viking-Age in the north of Ireland. However, this book would not have been written but for my research into the medieval branches of the Cenél nEogain. It was my early research into the history of my own MacEiteagáin (McGettigan) family that sparked my interest in the Cenél nEógain in medieval times. Charlie Doherty in UCD suggested that I read Seamus Ó Ceallaigh’s Gleanings from Ulster History, although it took me a long time to figure out what may have been happening in the complex genealogical world of the early medieval Cenel nEógain. Charlie’s UCD colleague Professor F.J. Byrne, once astutely wrote that only a well-trained genealogist could make any sense of the many branches that had proliferated among the Cenél nEógain dynasty. While I do not make any claim to be an expert genealogist, I do believe that by this stage my knowledge of the many branches and surnames of the Cenél nEógain is quite good. Just to take one prominent example, the Ua Flaithbertaig (O’Laverty) surname, probably the third most senior family among the Cenél nEógain. Based in west Tyrone near Clady and Ardstraw, this distinguished family appears to be descended from Flaithbertach, a king of Aileach who died c.896, who was descended from the Cenél nEógain High-King of Ireland, Áed Oirdnide (d.819). Some genealogical collections give an alternative origin for the Ua Flaithbertaig family, with the ancestor figure being Áed Allán, another High-King of Ireland from the Cenél nEógain dynasty, who died in 743 AD. However, this genealogy may be a forgery which may have been commissioned by Ruaidhri Ua Flaithbertaig, a later king of Tyrone in 1186-7. There are also references in the Irish annals to an Ua Flaithbertaig family, lords of the Clann Domhnall branch of the Cenél nEógain (the descendants of Domnall Dabaill, d.915). This family may be descended from Flaithbertach (d.919) son of Domnall Dabaill, via his famous grandson Murchad Glúnillar (Eagle-knee), a king of Aileach who died in 974. However, it is just as likely that the Ua Flaithbertaig lords of Clann Domhnall were from the first family here discussed, who were located geographically close-by. Clann Domhnall may have become a territorial designation (Urney and Inchenny) in west Tyrone by the twelfth-century. There could have been three separate Ua Flaithbertaig families among the medieval Cenél nEógain, all of whom may have had distinguished ancestry. After my research I believe there was probably only one. To illustatrate how confusing the genealogical world of the early medieval Cenél nEógain can be the Clann Flaithbertaig branch of the dynasty were also located in the same area of the Cenél nEógain kingdom. However, they were a branch of the Clann Conchobair, descended from Flaithbertach, one of the many sons of Conchobar, an important ancestor figure among the Cenél nEógain who flourished in the mid-eighth century. The most prominent surnames of this branch of the Cenél nEógain were Ua Dubhda (Duddy) and Ua Baoighill (O’Boyle).
New Book Early 2020
It is with great pleasure that I would like to announce the publication of the last installment in my trilogy of books about the history of medieval Ireland, The Kings of Aileach and the Vikings, AD 800-1060. Published by Four Courts Press (with whom I have a very good relationship by this stage), my new book is due to be published in very early 2020. This book is primarily concerned with Viking activity in the north of Ireland and their interaction with my ancestors, the Cenél nEógain population group of the Inishowen Peninsula and Central Ulster. My new book should appeal to students and teachers of early medieval Irish history and also to local historians across a wide stretch of the north of Ireland. My book deals extensively with the local history of the Inishowen Peninsula and adjacent areas in Co. Donegal and also with almost the entire area of the modern counties of Derry and Tyrone that were inhabited by the Cenél nEógain people in early medieval times. Also covered are Co.s Antrim, Down and Louth, the land of the Ulaid people during this time. All these areas had a definite regional dynamic throughout the Viking Age. So please keep an eye out for the new book in the shops from early in the new year. I will post another blog when I receive my first copy which is always an enjoyable time for an author.
My work as a Genealogist
Along with my research as a historian and author I also work occasionally as a genealogist. In 2010 I created my genealogy website www.familyhistoryireland.com and wrote a genealogy blog, which was quite popular, and which ran for a number of years. While I no longer work full-time as a genealogist I do accept some genealogy commissions, usually during the summer months when I have more free-time. With my latest commission (2015) I was able to trace my client’s ancestors back to a Gaelic chieftain who lived towards the end of the thirteenth century. So feel free to contact me if you want to commission some genealogical research, and I will let you know when I have a free window when I will be available.
I hope to upload some of my more popular blogs onto this website over the next few months.